Attorney General William Barr met privately with Senate Republicans to convince them to extend soon-to-expire surveillance laws and allow him to implement separate reforms “fairly quickly” aimed at curbing the kind federal surveillance abuse that targeted President Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“The attorney general just wanted to underscore the importance of these provisions that were enacted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said Tuesday after the meeting. “They are still relevant to our efforts to go after terrorists today, just like they were after 9/11.”
There is bipartisan disagreement over whether to extend the provisions and what reforms, if any, to make legislatively.
The surveillance laws are considered an important anti-terrorism tool but have been criticized by civil liberties groups and a bipartisan group of lawmakers who say the surveillance must be reined in.
President Trump has been critical of the surveillance laws, asserting they were abused to permit spying on his presidential campaign and transition team.
Barr told senators he plans to enact rules changes that don’t require congressional approval quickly.
Congress may also act to implement changes in the law, but that should not prevent extending the expiring surveillance provisions, Barr told the group. A three-year extension has been proposed in a House measure.
Republicans who attended the meeting said Barr and GOP leaders prefer a “clean” extension, which would allow the Senate to take a slower, separate approach to developing legislative reforms later on.
The three provisions expire on March 15, and among them is a section allowing the ongoing collection of telephone records, including the authority to order phone and internet companies to hand over subscriber data in cases of suspected terrorism or espionage.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz determined last year that the FBI made many significant errors when it sought permission to spy on former Trump adviser Carter Page.
Barr told senators he is working on internal reforms to prevent errors from happening in the future.
“He’s going to do some things he can do. It’s not exclusive,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said after the meeting.
Beyond Barr acting internally, Graham said, lawmakers are considering their own measures.
“It might be some statutory change we make in the future as to how you use foreign intelligence surveillance on Americans who fall into a pretty limited category of probable cause,” Graham said.
The category would include “working with a foreign power but no crime.”
Graham said Barr plans to take the Horowitz report, “and add his own stamp on it.”
Barr plans to make the internal changes “fairly quickly,” Graham said.
In the meantime, Graham said, his committee will delve into the flawed process of obtaining surveillance warrants for Page, beginning with depositions next week.
“I want to find out what happened first,” Graham said.
Graham told CBS News that he would seek private depositions and public testimony from former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
The four signed off on the Page surveillance warrants despite the unverified nature of the underlying evidence, a dossier funded by the Clinton campaign that has been largely debunked.
“Why didn’t that get up to the top?” Graham said, referring to information discrediting the dossier.
