Nineteen Congressional Republicans helped tank a procedural vote on Wednesday, preventing the House from advancing a bill — backed by “Republican” Speaker Mike Johnson — that would renew government spying on American citizens without a warrant.
The 193-228 vote blocked Rep. Laurel Lee’s, R-Fla., Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, which would have extended Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for five years. Section 702 has allowed the government to carry out warrantless surveillance of American citizens in violation of the Fourth Amendment and will expire on April 19 without further action from Congress. A whopping 193 Republicans voted to advance the bill and thus the rogue security state.
Section 702, enacted in America’s post-9/11 era in 2008, allows federal agencies to surveil foreign nationals without a warrant. The security state has habitually used it to spy on innocent Americans, however, with bogus justifications about national security and foreign intel.
“FISA authorities have been used to violate the law more than 278,000 times by the national security state, and there has yet to be any consequences for this illegal activity by our government,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said in a Wednesday statement. According to the liberal Brennan Center for Justice, the FBI, CIA, NSA, and National Counterterrorism Center conduct more than 200,000 warrantless searches every year to review Americans’ private communications.
Data collected through warrantless surveillance can be used, as the ACLU puts it, “to prosecute and imprison people, even for crimes that have nothing to do with national security.”
The FBI infamously spied on former President Donald Trump’s campaign after obtaining a surveillance warrant through a secret FISA court to target staffer Carter Page. The warrant was based on faulty information and left out key details that blew up the FBI’s basis for surveilling Page in the first place.
As the Brennan Center for Justice reported:
Among many other examples, the government has performed baseless searches for the communications of members of Congress, journalists, and 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign. The FBI has performed “tens of thousands” of unlawful searches“related to civil unrest,” including searches targeting 141 people protesting the murder of George Floyd and more than 20,000 people affiliated with a group suspected of involvement in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Most recently — and despite procedural changes implemented by the FBI to stem abuses — FBI agents performed improper searches for the private communications of a U.S. senator, a state senator, and a state court judge who reported alleged civil rights violations by a police chief to the FBI.
Speaker Johnson said the renewal would include safeguards to prevent similar instances — but it doesn’t seem to pass the smell test.
“It’s a critically important piece of our intelligence and law enforcement in this country because it allows us to continue killing Hamas terrorists,” Johnson said, according to The Epoch Times. “It allows us to track shipments of the least illicit chemicals used to make fentanyl, it allows us to protect US warships from attacks by Houthi rebels, allows us to stop China from stealing American intellectual property, and it prevents ransomware attacks against American companies.”
Johnson reportedly claimed there would be amendments to protect Americans from “politicized FBI queries” and to “prevent another Russia hoax debacle, among many other important reforms.”
“No more Steele dossiers; no more of the intelligence community relying on fake news reports to order a FISA order; no more collusion; these changes will make sure that that doesn’t happen,” Johnson added.
The House Judiciary Committee supported an amendment that would require officials to obtain a warrant if the communications they’re targeting include an American citizen, according to Fox News, but Johnson reportedly opposed it.
Among those who support and called upon Congress to renew warrantless searches on Americans are the same “experts” who infamously discredited Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020 as Russian disinformation, which led to mass censorship of those who tried to share the story. Their fearmongering about national security in light of political and unconstitutional abuses rings hollow.
Here are the Republican representatives who voted against abridging constitutional liberties:
- Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida
- Rep. Greg Steube of Florida
- Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida
- Rep. Cory Mills of Florida
- Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado
- Rep. Michael Cloud
- Rep. Chip Roy of Texas
- Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina
- Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona
- Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona
- Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona
- Rep. Bob Good of Virginia
- Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana
- Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee
- Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee
- Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina
- Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina
- Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania
- Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisianna