In 2003, then-Senate candidate Barack Obama called the Patriot Act unconstitutional, “shoddy,” and “dangerous.” He went on to win the presidency running against it.
What was his running mate Joe Biden’s position on the Patriot Act? He bragged that he basically wrote it! This is worth remembering this week as Washington wrestles with Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reform and privacy protection.
The Patriot Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2001. Its purpose was to give intelligence officials broader power to monitor terrorists in the wake of 9/11. Its critics said it went too far in eroding citizens’ constitutional privacy rights. But Biden was completely in support of trampling over these rights.
In 2015, reporter Andrew Kaczynski compiled a number of examples of Biden claiming he essentially wrote the legislation:
On another occasion in 2002, when the FBI director was testifying before Congress, Biden said not only that he wrote the 1994 act, but Attorney General John Ashcroft called him to say it was basically the same as the bill they were introducing,” Kaczynski reported.
‘Civil libertarians were opposed to it,’ Biden said. ‘Right after 1994, and you can ask the attorney general this, because I got a call when he introduced the Patriot Act. He said, ‘Joe, I’m introducing the act basically as you wrote it in 1994.’
There are more examples.
So in addition to Biden, the probable 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, having an illiberal record on mandatory minimum sentencing, the Iraq War, and marijuana legalization, he also bragged about authoring the Patriot Act, legislation that liberals nationwide marched in the streets to oppose in 2003.
None of this is a good look for Biden right now.
On the current Republican side, on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, President Trump was at least hesitant about that war, long before he entered politics, and he proudly insists today that Bush lied America into that quagmire.
While not known for being a civil libertarian, Trump has taken a keener interest in protecting privacy rights once it was revealed that the FBI had apparently spied on his campaign in 2016.
They spied on my campaign! https://t.co/LpIc3cNBnr
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 27, 2020
In February, when Attorney General William Barr asked Republicans for a clean, reform-free extension of FISA, Sen. Rand Paul sought counsel with the president and reported that Trump, in fact, agreed with him that the federal government should be “forbidden” from spying on U.S. citizens.
The Washington Examiner reported two weeks ago that, “Paul’s comments on Thursday cast doubt on whether Congress will agree to renew key features of the Patriot Act. Three FISA provisions are set to expire on March 15.”
At a time when Biden worries Bernie Sanders’s supporters might not vote for him out of spite, and when those liberals can rightly point to Biden’s rotten record on their primary issues — why not emphasize Biden’s constant enthusiasm for the Patriot Act and the role he admittedly played in creating it?
In 2001, the Patriot Act was meant to be an extraconstitutional tool to take on the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. This hasn’t been the case for a very long time. It has since been used overwhelmingly more to target drug dealers, not al Qaeda. The Washington Post reported in 2011 that a decade after its enactment, the Patriot Act “ha[d] been used in 1,618 drug cases and only 15 terrorism cases.”
From a liberal view, Trump is already better on criminal justice reform than Biden thanks to the president signing the First Step Act. Trump’s foreign policy may be mixed, but he’s superior to Biden on the Iraq litmus test, and he’s also been more favorable to marijuana legalization than the former vice president.
On multiple issues, Trump has already proved to be a more “progressive” president than Biden was as a senator or vice president — so why not throw ditching the Patriot Act into that mix? Let Biden defend the Patriot Act on the debate stage. If he dodges, throw his words back in his face, while the president takes the more constitutionally conservative position.
If Trump chooses to add this issue to his 2020 campaign arsenal, there are many conservatives who would have his back — and perhaps even more liberals and independents who might find it harder to vote for Biden in November.
Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul.
