President Trump reportedly told Attorney General William Barr that he wanted to do away with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
In a discussion last year about reauthorizing the spying law, Trump said he would rather abolish the law altogether than overhaul it, according to Axios.
Barr told Trump reauthorization was needed, without any changes, for national security reasons. Several provisions of the law are set to expire in less than a month.
“I trust you, Bill, but if it was up to me, we’d get rid of the whole thing,” Trump said, according to a source familiar with the conversation.
The discussion happened several months before the Justice Department’s independent watchdog released a blistering report on its investigation into alleged surveillance abuses against the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz found 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the FBI’s applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The Justice Department later determined that at least two of the four warrants were invalid.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers has been working on a number of potential reforms to the surveillance law, including mandatory, random audits of applications and requiring the bureau to turn over exculpatory evidence when pursuing warrants. The FBI and the FISA court itself have also been considering and implementing reforms following the inspector general’s investigation.
