Photo by Michael Brochstein/Shutterstock.
House Speaker Mike Johnson joined with Democrats on Friday to defeat an amendment that would have required the federal government to obtain a warrant before spying on Americans without having been accused of a crime.
The amendment was proposed by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and would have altered Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Acts (FISA) and would have mandated that federal authorities obtain a warrant before surveiling American citizens. 86 Republicans, including Speaker Johnson, joined with Democrats to kill the amendment in a 212 to 212 vote.
“The administration cites multiple examples where using Section 702 [has been used] to monitor foreign targets and provide critical intelligence,” Biggs said during a speech on the House floor. “But when it comes to warrantless searches for Americans, they can’t provide any examples of where … that’s provided any useful information, and yet they want to continue to look at U.S. persons’ information without a warrant.”
The House voted 273 to 147 to reauthorize the federal government’s use of FISA for the next two years, instead of the proposed five years.
“The two-year timeframe is a much better landing spot because it gives us two years to see if any of this works rather than kicking it out five years,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said. “They say these reforms are going to work. Well, I guess we’ll find out.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-UT) blasted the vote and said “This is how the Constitution dies”.
Former President Trump took to Truth Social on Wednesday to call for FISA to be killed, and said that “It was illegally used against me, and many others. They spied on my campaign.”
“The FBI obtained a surveillance warrant against former Trump campaign staffer Carter Page through a secret FISA court and did not alert the court that Christopher Steele, the man behind the discredited ‘Steele Dossier,’ was a spy,” the Federalist reported.
Earlier this week the left-wing Brennan Center for Justice claimed this week that Section 702 is being abused and is being used to spy on 200,000 Americans illegally each year, accusing the Federal government of spying on campaign donors and journalists as well as private citizens.
Section 702 was originally proposed following the September 11th 2001 attacks to allow the government to collect information on foreign targets in an effort to prevent further terrorist attacks.
The Brennan Center claimed that the bill would have only made minor changes but “would do nothing to prevent the intelligence agencies’ pervasive abuses of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights under Section 702”.