FBI Director Christopher Wray has warned that the potential expiration of FISA could endanger Americans. He said the agency’s surveillance authorities under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act are “indispensable to the Bureau’s efforts to combat threats from foreign adversaries.”
At the behest of former President Donald Trump, a group of MAGA loyalists in the House including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and are opposing the renewal of FISA.
Former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) addressed the ongoing political debate on Fox News this week and reminded viewers that this isn’t the first time Trump opposed the reauthorization of FISA — and then changed his tune, as some expect he will do again. (Punchbowl News reports this morning that “abandoning a five-year FISA reauthorization for the two-year bill” may be enough to turn Trump around this time.)
Gowdy: Once before, Trump tweeted out that we should oppose reauthorization because he watched a legal commentor who used to be on fox conplain about FISA. Pompeo had to go get in the car and drive over there and flip the president’s position. pic.twitter.com/tKtOFLzPoL
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 11, 2024
Gowdy, who was Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations when Trump was President, said Trump’s opposition to FISA then was superficial, based on “watching a legal commentator who used to be on Fox complain about FISA.”
Gowdy recounts that Trump’s CIA Director Mike Pompeo “had to go get in the car and drive over there and flip the president’s position.” (Pompeo was director of the CIA from 2017 to 2018 and was U.S. Secretary of State from 2018 to 2021.)
Gowdy added: “I don’t hear his [Trump’s] former national security advisors opposing reauthorization. I hear him doing it but I don’t hear it from the people he put in charge of keeping our country safe opposed to this authorization.”
[NOTE: Trump’s opposition appears to come from a very personal vantage point, to judge by his all caps exclamations. The former President recently posted: “KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!”]
This week, Congress has the chance to pass the single-largest overhaul to the FBI in nearly 20 years.
Here’s why it’s in our interest to get this done https://t.co/OaimPr13lE
— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) April 10, 2024
On Wednesday, Pompeo, who has endorsed GOP presumptive presidential nominee Trump, wrote an op-ed for Fox News titled ‘Congress cannot let FISA Section 702 expire,’ with the subtitle ‘Our country’s safety is at stake. Congress must reauthorize a reformed version of FISA.’