A group of House Republicans voted with Democrats on Wednesday afternoon to derail legislation designed to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and address longstanding concerns over mass surveillance.
Over a dozen Republican lawmakers joined with Democrats to tank the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, a bill that would re-authorize FISA section 702 for five years and institute a series of reforms to mitigate perceived abuses by the intelligence community.
The vote comes after months of debate over two separate bipartisan FISA authorization proposals in the House Intelligence Committee and Judiciary Committee respectively. The bill proposed by the Judiciary Committee would have required a search warrant to conduct FISA searches on American citizens, a key difference between the two packages.
Three members of the House Freedom Caucus, Representatives Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.), Anna Paulina Luna (R., Fla.) and Tim Burchett (R., Tenn.) came out against the legislation earlier today, leading the Republican opposition. Additionally, former president Donald Trump spoke out against FISA re-authorization ahead of the procedural vote and claimed it was used to spy on his presidential campaign.
“KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!” Trump said on Truth Social this morning. He was likely referring to the FBI’s discredited Crossfire Hurricane investigation of Russian collusion claims based on the debunked Steele Dossier. Special counsel John Durham found the FISA authorization process was abused during the investigation in order to spy on formerTrump official Carter Page, despite the lack of evidence against him and factual errors on the FISA applications.
A coalition of hardline conservatives and progressives have objected to the warrantless monitoring of American citizens made possible by loopholes in FISA section 702, a law crafted to enable intelligence officials to conduct warrantless surveillance on foreign threats.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) urged Republicans to get behind the FISA authorization bill despite his agreement with Trump on the intelligence community’s past FISA abuses. Johnson noted the Trump administration used FISA to help kill terrorists and touted the accountability measures in the legislative package.
Johnson’s rift with the hard right on FISA authorization and military aid for Ukraine could add momentum to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R., Ga.) challenge to his speakership after less than a year.
The intelligence community led by FBI director Christopher Wray has pushed for FISA re-authorization to ensure the ability of U.S. officials to thwart foreign threats. Wray argued last year the warrant requirement would be equivalent to a ban on searching Americans because of the bureaucratic delays created by the application process.
FISA authorization is set to expire on April 19 and it’s unclear if congress will be able to re-authorize the program in time. Republicans are reportedly meeting at 4.p.m eastern to discuss the situation.