Top House Republicans said the consideration of any reauthorization of recently expired Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorities should be held off until the Justice Department’s inquiry into the Russia investigation is complete.
A “Dear Colleague” letter, authored by Rep. Jim Jordan, the ranking member of the House oversight panel, and signed by eight top subcommittee Republicans, was sent to the entire GOP conference in the House.
“Many of us were encouraged when President Trump declared his principled opposition to proceeding with reauthorizing provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” the letter reads. “The President is right.”
The letter pointed to a late May tweet by Trump, which derailed the FISA reauthorization effort that appeared set to pass in the House as it had in the Senate. Trump tweeted, “I hope all Republican House Members vote NO on FISA until such time as our Country is able to determine how and why the greatest political, criminal, and subversive scandal in USA history took place!”
Jordan and the others argued on Tuesday that “we need to allow the ongoing federal investigations to be completed so that Americans can fully understand how and why the Obama-Biden Administration weaponized our national security apparatus and the FISA process to target its political adversaries.”
The investigations are largely headed by U.S. Attorney John Durham, the Connecticut federal prosecutor picked by Attorney General William Barr to investigate the origins of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the actions taken by law enforcement and intelligence officials during the Trump-Russia inquiry.
U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Jensen of Missouri was also picked by Barr earlier this year to review the government’s case against retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and the information he unearthed led the Justice Department to move to dismiss the charges against the former Trump national security adviser. U.S. Attorney John Bash of Texas was assigned by the attorney general to investigate “unmasking” requests by Obama administration officials. Both Jensen and Bash are believed to be assisting Durham in his investigation, which is expected to wrap up this summer.
The three FISA authorities that expired in March largely are not related to the wrongdoing unearthed in recent DOJ watchdog reports on the Russia investigation. They were: “roving wiretap” powers that let agents continue tracking a suspect even if they keep switching burner phones, the “lone wolf” amendment that allows officials to monitor suspected terrorists with possible links to foreign groups, and the “business records” provision that gives investigators the court-authorized ability to collect documents and follow the money in terrorist plots.
The Senate voted 80-16 in mid-May to reauthorize the three surveillance programs that lapsed earlier this year over a Republican stalemate on the legislation, but following strong indications from Trump that he would veto the legislation, House Republicans opposed the reauthorization, and it was pulled by Democrats due to opposition by both parties.
Jordan and his GOP colleagues said Tuesday that “before we move forward” with renewing the FISA powers, “it is a good time to take stock of what we have learned to date.” Jordan pointed to what he saw as five major revelations: “massive surveillance of U.S. persons,” “FISA spying on a Trump campaign aide,” “systematic deficiencies with FISA substantiation,” “widespread ‘unmasking’ of a Trump campaign aide,” and “Obama-Biden misleading narrative about Russian collusion.”
In an October 2018 opinion, declassified and released in October 2019, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court revealed the FBI ran 3.1 million queries against FISA-acquired data in 2017, yet failed to keep records of which queries involved U.S. persons. The court concluded it was “likely” that a “substantial percentage” of those millions involved U.S. persons.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report in December that criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to FISA warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page in 2016 and 2017 and for the bureau’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s salacious and flawed dossier. Recently declassified footnotes showed the FBI was aware that Steele’s dossier might have been compromised by Russian disinformation.
Horowitz also released a memo in April showing FISA flaws were not just limited to the surveillance of Page, with his audit focusing on the FBI’s requirement to maintain an accuracy subfile known as a “Woods File” and finding serious problems in each of the 29 FISA applications his team examined — including four FISA applications where the Woods File was either missing or never existed.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who is now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and other top Obama officials received information in response to “unmasking” requests related to Flynn in the final weeks of their administration.
Obama’s former spy chief, James Clapper, and other top national security and law enforcement officials testified that they did not see direct evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, according to recently released House Intelligence Committee transcripts.
Republicans said Tuesday that all of these revelations justified hitting the pause button on FISA power renewal.
“Now is our opportunity to reform the FISA process to ensure the illegal surveillance and targeting of the Trump campaign will never happen again to any presidential campaign, Republican or Democrat,” Jordan and his colleagues said. “But more importantly, we need to ensure that this sort of abuse cannot happen to any American.”
