Democrats Block FISA Reform
Schiff and Nadler care more about their narrative
than about national security.
Are House Democrats willing to jeopardize national security to keep alive their Trump-Russia collusion narrative? On Wednesday they abruptly canceled a markup on a bill to reauthorize three critical surveillance tools that are due to expire March 15.
To listen to the liberal media, the bill has stalled over concerns about “civil liberties.” In truth it’s the latest casualty of Democrats’ refusal to acknowledge that the Federal Bureau of Investigation abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in its 2016 counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz laid out that appalling abuse in a 434-page December report. He documented the many ways the FBI had manipulated and duped the court in its drive to obtain surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Mr. Horowitz’s findings cried out for reforms, and they guaranteed that Congress’s reauthorization would become a flashpoint.
The three powers at stake in the legislation are different from the FISA listening authority the FBI used against Mr. Page. They involve the tracking of “lone wolf” terrorists, the use of “roving” wiretaps on targets who frequently change their phone numbers, and the power to obtain business records. The bill is nonetheless the first obvious vehicle by which Congress can broadly address problems the Horowitz report highlighted with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
But Democrats would rather ignore the report that exposed their collusion narrative as a political dirty trick aided by a rogue FBI. Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff in particular wants to deep-six the report, since to acknowledge it would be to admit that his infamous 2018 “memo” clearing the FBI of FISA abuse was hogwash. Mr. Schiff is so determined to ignore his fiction and the FBI’s abuse, the Intelligence Committee hasn’t held a single hearing on the biggest intelligence scandal in decades.
Mr. Schiff and Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler were in fact too busy with impeachment even to hit the initial reauthorization deadline of mid-December. Instead, they extended the law’s sunset by three months and have only recently jammed together a reauthorization bill that ignores even the most basic aspects of FISA reform.
Among those, Republicans would like a requirement that an outsider—or even a panel of outsiders—be appointed to critique government applications to the FISA court in politically sensitive cases. (The Democrats’ bill would leave it to the court to decide whether to appoint an outsider, a power the court already has and routinely fails to exercise.) Republicans have also floated limiting the government’s ability to present unverified information to the court, as well as imposing penalties on government actors who willfully or recklessly mislead the court. Democrats have rejected even these obvious and modest changes.
The Schiff-Nadler plan was to ram through the bill largely on Democratic votes. But then the party’s progressive wing, led by California’s Zoe Lofgren, on Wednesday revolted against even basic reauthorization. The American Civil Liberties Union and others who sat silent through the Page outrage now complain that the three separate powers at stake violate too many civil liberties. Democratic leadership may cave to some of their demands. Leave it to Democrats to potentially produce a bill that does nothing to rein in political abuses of surveillance, even as it strips honest intelligence officers of their ability to fight terrorists.
Attorney General William Barr is trying to rescue national security from this Democratic posturing and ineptitude. In a lunch this week, he assured Senate Republicans that he will soon release a set of administrative reforms to FISA, which will address some concerns. He pointed out that the three expiring provisions were enacted in the wake of 9/11 and remain crucial to preventing further attacks on the homeland. His plea is for Republicans to grit their teeth, sign on for a “clean” reauthorization of the three powers, and kick the broader FISA-reform debate to the future. (That assumes Democrats can get their act together enough to pass even a basic bill.)
That may be the wisest course, but Republicans need to tell the story of this week far and wide. The American public expects Congress to authorize tools to guard against terrorism and to ensure that corrupt actors don’t abuse those tools for political purposes. Democrats are proving this week that they can’t do either of those basic jobs, because they are so in thrall to their debunked collusion history.
Post a Comment