House Speaker Mike Johnson has delayed a vote on two bills relating to FISA Section 702 extension and reform, making it likely that the unconstitutional Section 702 will be renewed without change until April 2024.
Johnson has reportedly refused to take a side on this issue and continues to change his stance. Johnson previously said he would bring both bills to the floor.
Washington Examiner reports,
Neither of the two bills to reauthorize and reform a powerful spy tool used by American intelligence agencies will be voted on this week after the Rules Committee pulled the legislation amid intense backlash.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who sits on the Rules Committee, confirmed to the Washington Examiner that neither the House Judiciary Committee nor Intelligence Committee bills to reauthorize and reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would be voted on this week.
The original plan was to put both bills on the floor and allow members to vote for them, and whichever one received the most votes would be the one the House advanced.
But after a heated conference meeting where Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), who sits on the Judiciary Committee and helped craft that version of the bill, accused Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) of “f***ing lying” about the judiciary bill, the tides started to shift away from the “queen of the hill” scenario.
The Gateway Pundit recently reported on Rep. Andy Biggs’ (R-AZ) Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act (PLEWSA), bipartisan legislation to overhaul Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that was approved by the House Judiciary Committee.
Section 702, a law intended to authorize intelligence agencies to surveil foreign threats, is set to expire at the end of the year, and Congress is considering reauthorization. While it purports to keep us safe from threats, this law also gives federal agencies the power to spy on innocent Americans and access their stored communications data without a warrant, according to a news release from Congressman Biggs.
The new legislation will protect our Fourth Amendment rights by limiting the FBI’s ability to surveil Americans and ending the current practice of collecting and spying on Americans’ communications without a warrant.
The issue of warrantless searches under FISA 702 was also highlighted in a recent op-ed by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), published on The Gateway Pundit. Read more about why Congressman Gosar opposes reauthorizing Section 702 here.
The other bill, advanced by the House Intelligence Committee, would reauthorize FISA 702 for eight years with minimal provisions to protect Americans’ rights to privacy.
Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) chimed in on the FISA 702 reauthorization bill, calling it “a thinly veiled way of saying ‘FISA 702 is just fine as it is—and we’re not too concerned about the millions of times it’s been abused by the FBI—so we’re proposing only cosmetic reforms.’” He also writes in a recent op-ed that FISA 702 has been used “to conduct warrantless ‘backdoor’ searches of the private electronic communications of American citizens.”
This is a thinly veiled way of saying “FISA 702 is just fine as it is—and we’re not too concerned about the millions of times it’s been abused by the FBI—so we’re proposing only cosmetic reforms.”#EndBackdoorSearches#StopTheNDAA https://t.co/lRGeAXBD2V
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) December 8, 2023
Instead, the House will vote on temporary reauthorization of FISA 702, pushed by deep state former national security officials, that will rubberstamp the extension of FISA 702 and warrantless surveillance of Americans through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) until April 2024.
The Federalist reports,
The same intelligence “experts” who penned the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter in October 2020 are now calling on lawmakers to reauthorize the warrantless surveillance state through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
On Monday, 46 former national security officials signed a letter urging Capitol Hill to rubber stamp the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The same law was abused by deep-state FBI agents to surveil members of Trump’s campaign. The more than three dozen former national security officials who signed the letter invoked the fentanyl crisis and overseas turmoil to make their case for unconstitutional surveillance.
“As you well know, our nation is under significant threat today with wars in Europe and the Middle East, a potential conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific, and the deadly flow of fentanyl across our southern border,” they wrote. “In these circumstances, we cannot hamstring the U.S. Intelligence Community either by failing to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or by limiting it in ways that would make it difficult for the government to protect Americans.”
Many of the same “former National Security officials” who caused the US media to widely spread the lie that the Hunter Biden laptop was “Russian disinformation” are now warning that we”ll all be endangered if we don’t renew NSA/FBI warrantless spying on Americans: https://t.co/fgzbnS3l72
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 11, 2023
Four of the letter’s signatories also signed the letter in the fall of 2020 that sought to discredit Hunter Biden’s laptop as an instrument of Russian interference. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Deputy Director for the National Security Agency (NSA) Richard Ledgett, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Acting Director Michael Morell, and former CIA Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash each put their names on both the humiliating 2020 laptop letter and Monday’s call to reauthorize baseless surveillance.
The House is expected to vote on the National Defense Authorization Act on Thursday, temporarily extending
Biggs, the sponsor of legislation to overhaul FISA Section 702 and end warrantless searches of innocent Americans, tore into House Speaker Mike Johnson last week, commenting, “he’s failing to actually take the courage necessary to lead, and that is just dismaying to someone who’s known him for seven years.” He added, “You have the intelligence committee and the intelligence community that have come to him scared the bejeebes out of him,” and “It looks like just an absolute, utter capitulation on his part.”
Via The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson:
Speaker Mike Johnson is becoming a MAJOR disappointment.
Congressman Andy Biggs (@RepAndyBiggsAZ ) blames Johnson’s staffers, intel community and more.
WATCH: pic.twitter.com/VBrZ5EZ3JV
— The Absolute Truth with @EmeraldRobinson (@AbsoluteWithE) December 7, 2023
The post GOP Rep. Andy Biggs: “Utter Capitulation on His Part” – House Speaker Mike Johnson Pulls Judiciary Committee’s FISA 702 Overhaul and Intel Committee’s 702 Reauthorization Bills, Will Not Consider Either Until After The New Year appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.