Leading House Republicans won't back the reauthorization of powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act without major reforms in the wake of the FBI’s FISA abuses and special counsel John Durham’s report.
Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL), the Turner-designated leader of the committee’s FISA Working Group, and Rep. Mike Garcia (R-CA), another key committee member, all spoke with the Washington Examiner about the need for guardrails before FISA powers are reauthorized.The trio of lawmakers want reforms at the FBI and at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves the secret warrants. Their demands are at odds with the Biden administration, which wants to reauthorize FISA Section 702 powers without changes before it expires at the end of 2023.
“We have been very clear on a bipartisan basis with the intelligence community and the FBI that there is no support in Congress for a clean reauthorization of 702,” Turner told the Washington Examiner. “Reforms are necessary. We will be taking up the issue of reforms, and they will not be limited to 702 itself. It will encompass both abuses that we are aware of and abuses that are now in the public domain as a result of disclosure and Durham.”
It's "essential" to have access to the national security tool, Turner said, but "it is equally essential that reforms occur to stop the abuses.”
Turner and LaHood took particular aim at fired FBI Director James Comey's role in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Russia collusion in the 2020 presidential election. Durham’s report in May on his investigation of the Trump-Russia investigators revealed FISA wrongdoing related to the FBI’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited and Democratic-funded dossier to obtain flawed FISA surveillance against Trump campaign associate Carter Page during and after the 2016 election.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence then declassified a FISA Court opinion last month showing the FBI committed FISA violations 278,000 times in recent years, including on people believed to be connected to violent George Floyd protests and the Capitol riot.
Another recently declassified intelligence document concluded that “misunderstandings regarding FBI’s systems and FBI’s querying procedures caused a large number of query errors” related to 702.
The 702 portion of the FISA law is not directly connected to the Trump-Russia saga but relates to what the ODNI describes as “a key provision" of FISA "that permits the government to conduct targeted surveillance of foreign persons located outside the United States.”
The reauthorization has met opposition from many Republicans and some Democrats in the House and Senate. Leading the bipartisan working group is LaHood, who says he was subjected to an improper FBI FISA query in 2019.
"He is a victim — he was subject to improper 702 query, so he brings with him both an understanding of FISA and the importance of stopping the abuses,” Turner said. “We’re going to be looking at all aspects of FISA for reform, including the manner in which cases are processed by the FISA court, the manner in which people have access to FISA information, the standards that are applied for its access, and the manner in which the intelligence community shares that information among themselves.”
LaHood echoed to the Washington Examiner that “there is no clean reauthorization whatsoever — that is just off the table.” The congressman said “FISA can be made better” with “strong and systematic reforms.”