Congress is voting on whether to re-authorize FISA Section 702, which would allow the FBI to secretly spy on Americans without warrants. Glenn speaks to 3 congressmen who are leading the charge to prevent this. First, Rep. Chip Roy accuses House Speaker Mike Johnson of standing in the way of an amendment to force the FBI to obtain warrants before spying on U.S. citizens. Then, Rep. Thomas Massie lays out the "biggest red flag" he's seen: “There’s 2 carve-outs in here for congressmen…Only if you’re a Senator or US Representative do they have to notify you” if they’re spying on you without a warrant. And lastly, Rep. Warren Davidson explains his his “Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale” amendment, which would put an end to this shady practice.
TranscriptBelow is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: House Republicans are divided. I don't know how they're divided on this.
Read the Constitution. Where do you find in the Constitution warrants, Pat?
PAT: Well, you have the Fourth Amendment. For instance.
GLENN: Which is?
PAT: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.
And no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause. Supported by oath or ampliation.
GLENN: So wait. Wait. Wait.
That's the Fourth Amendment. What does that mean?
The reason why this was written in, is because the king used to issue general warrants. And that meant Pat Gray, there's something wrong with him. Go find it. And they could look into anything.
They could go into your house, go through all of your papers. Where a warrant, now, our kind of warrant has to be sworn out. By the police and somebody else, you know, somebody tips them off.
And they say, look, I know he robbed somebody, or he killed somebody. And he's keeping their necklace in their house.
It's in his safe, in his wall, and in his bedroom. They go to the judge, and the judge says, really?
And listens to all of it. And he's supposed to be skeptical and protect your right to privacy.
But if they have enough evidence to make the judge go, I think you're right. He did.
Then he issues that specific warrant. They can't just go into your business. And everything else.
And just look through stuff.
They have to know what they're looking for, and generally, where it is.
PAT: And if they find something else, that incriminates them on some other issue. You can't use it.
GLENN: You can't use it, okay?
That's the Fourth Amendment. This is where we get warrants. This is why you can't just stop people in the streets, and search them.
Okay?
This is why America doesn't say, papers please. You can't do that! Because of the Fourth Amendment. Now, we were all really drunk and stupid, when we passed the Patriot Act. And in the Patriot Act, it has Section 702.
And it's the foreign intelligence surveillance act.
And we ail talked about it, at the time. And we all trusted our government, at the time.
Strangely, except for actual liberals, which I don't think exist anymore.
And they were the ones that were saying, tonight. Don't do this.
This -- this will -- they will scoop Americans up into this.
PAT: And we said at the time, eh, that's fine. It's not going to happen. Because I was for it, at the very beginning.
A few weeks into it, I was like, oh, wait. It's going to be a problem.
I remember thinking, all they have to do is just change the meaning of terrorist. If they -- if they decide a group of Americans are terrorists, we're done.
And that's exactly what they've done now.
So what happens is, they -- they get a warrantless surveillance of foreigners.
We don't have to have a warrant on foreigners.
So they go to the FISA court, and they say, look, we're going to listen to these people.
And they don't need a warrant. And they go and they listen to those people.
The problem is: It's a giant chain.
That person, if that person is foreign, and he calls somebody here in America, then that person is tracked.
And everyone else that he talks to. And everyone else that they talk to.
And so on. And so on.
Do you remember the old -- you know, the shampoo commercial?
And so on. And so on. And it kept dividing itself, until the whole screen was just nothing, but faces.
That's exactly what is happening. And they are scooping up all kinds of information on you. That doesn't have anything to do, with terror overseas.
This has got to stop. You know, when they -- when they built, after 9/11, they built the visitor's center of Washington, DC.
What you don't know, is -- or may not know.
Is underneath the visitor's center, we don't even know how many floors, there are.
Underneath that.
It's all top secret.
Your -- some of your senators and some of your Congressmen can't even get into the floors. They're top secret, because they're FISA courts.
We know now, that the FISA courts are completely corrupt. We know that the FBI is changing the facts, when they go to the court.
They're changing -- they've actually changed, sworn testimony. And no one is punished for it.
We cannot allow section 702 to pass.
Now, there is a -- an amendment to the bill. That has been suggested.
But the bill is coming up, this week. The G.O.P. representative Laura Lee of Florida, is the one who has put the amendment in.
Titled reforming intelligence and securing America act. It would reauthorize section 702 of FISA for five years.
And aims to impose a series of reforms. I don't believe any of the reforms.
I don't believe those will ever happen. We have given the keys to everything about us.
To the government. And the government has turned hostile on many Americans.
So, what do we do? We have Chip on yet?
CHIP: We passed a rollout committee yesterday, that would include -- that had a rule that said we will have a vote on a warrant. The problem is that the Speaker of the House, has now come out against the warrant amendment. That's a problem. Because the Speaker has pit his finger on the scale to shift the conversation. And to say publicly, we don't need the warrant.
GLENN: What the hell is wrong with this guy?
CHIP: Well, that's for another conversation. For the purpose of today, when we go to the floor, in an hour and 40 minutes, we're bringing to the floor under a bill that has an amendment to add the Fourth Amendment protection, the warrant protection that we could still pass, but seems like we won't. Because the speaker has put his finger on the scales.
So now since the speaker has done that, we now have to decide, whether or not we stop the whole process by killing the rule.
And then force it to be only reauthorized under its current form.
Which, of course, still wouldn't give us the protection of the warrant.
GLENN: No.
CHIP: But our concern is, there are other amendments in this, that would expand FISA in the name of going after --
GLENN: Oh, my gosh.
CHIP: Right. And so, for example, there is well-intended legislation, to go after. To be able to collect data. Collect information. Relative to drug trafficking like fentanyl.
The problem is, in the definition, about precursors, and other stuff. It expands FISA. Expands the amount of information they were collecting. You could be about talking about an American citizen, buying, you know, whatever. Cold medicine.
That's the precursor for making meth.
So we're all alarmed, that it's expanding FISA, and we're trying to run all these pieces to ground.
Meanwhile, that's all stuff that's been added to it. You know, by the leadership.
So now, we're trying to figure out, what we do. With a rule here at noon.
We are conflicted because of the current regime, doesn't have the Fourth Amendment warrant, you know, a language in there.
Obviously, we still have protections in American citizens under the Constitution. But if you don't put this provision in place, it's not as strong in terms of what we're trying to do to protect American citizens.
THOMAS: The biggest red flag in this. And I spent 15 minutes last night. The rules committee, going back and forth to the chairman of the Intel committee. We finally got him to admit, this is inside his bill. A carve-out for congressmen. I don't know if Chip mentioned it.
GLENN: No. He didn't.
THOMAS: Okay. They are trying to tell you, they have 53 reforms in here that will take care of all the problems. Well, the congressman who are voting for this aren't convinced, because they get a carve-out. There's two carve-outs here for congressmen.
Number one, the FBI is surveilling you, using FISA. They're going into this database, and searching with your name and your congressman. And they're ostensibly doing it for your own good.
Because they're worried about foreign actors. They have to notify you.
Only if you're a congressman. Only if you're a senator or US representative.
Do they have to notify you. And I asked, why did they put that in there? They were afraid of political bias.
What about school boards? Aren't you afraid of political bias there? And oh, by the way, does this apply to candidates, or just incumbent congressmen? It only applies to incumbent congressmen. How special is that?
So my solution here is, get a warrant. And then you don't have to put out carve-outs for congressmen.
GLENN: Correct.
THOMAS: And here's what's especially despicable about the carve-out. That's to get congressmen's votes. There's at least one Congressman we know -- Darin LaHood. He's said this publicly. He's on the Intel community, and he was being spied on by the Intel community.
He's responsible for their oversight. So he was worried enough about this. That he insisted, there would be some provision. Now, his concern is legitimate.
I'm not tingeing him, per se.
GLENN: No. I know.
THOMAS: For asking for this. It should be solved for everybody, not just congressmen.
GLENN: Thank you. So tell us what your amendment actually will do.
WARREN: Okay. So the amendment we have is called the Fourth Amendment is not for sale. So one of the most important ones in the bill is to get a warrant.
And let's go back in the fall. The base tax had getting a warrant, and the -- what is the Fourth Amendment not for sale do?
It prevents the federal government from buying data from data brokers that they would otherwise have to get a warrant for a subpoena to obtain. So it was in the data broker loophole. So it was in the base text. The Speaker essentially works with the Intel committee to gut the bill, of some of these important provisions.
And at least the warrant requirement is going to be able to be offered as an amendment. But he basically strips the Fourth Amendment is not for sale, from even getting a vote.
And part of the reason, I still remember, you know, a long time member of Congress, again, Walter Jones, asked him one time when a bill was popular in the House. Passed with like 420 some votes.
Only seven no votes. Would help solve a problem. Be popular with the public. Why in the world won't the Senate pick this up?
And he said, well, I hate to be cynical. But probably because it would pass. And why would they strip this out?
Well, because Dick Durbin, who is the Chairman of Judiciary in the Senate has a similar bill in the Senate, and Chuck Schumer is a cosponsor.
So this is an issue that does not break on party lines. When it was offered as a standalone bill in the Judiciary Committee last summer, it passed 36 to one through the committee. So how often did Jim Jordan and Jerry Nadler agree on something? Pretty rare.
But this is one that at least, this isn't a total party line issue like so many other things are.
GLENN: So they're stripping it out.
And he's actually going around the rules to make sure that it's -- that it never makes it to the floor, is it he not?
WARREN: Well, it doesn't make it as part of this debate. He has offered to give us a vote at a later time. But this is the problem.
If it's not attached to something that has passed like FISA. Well, of course, the administration wants to keep spying on Americans. They have already said that. So if there was a way to pass it through the House -- and even if there is a way to pass it through the Senate. The administration, you know, simply would veto it.
That's why it should be part of the FISA debate. That's why the judiciary committee had it as part of the base text of the bill, that essentially the Speaker reworked.
GLENN: So I'm hoping that most of the people that are hearing your voice right now, are the kind of people that maybe used to say. Well, I don't have anything to worry about.
Because I'm not doing anything illegal.
And realize now, the government has turned hostile towards American citizens.
And all of the information that is out there, it's very dangerous for individuals.
Tell me what -- why the average person should care. Why does this matter?
You know, to those people who are not breaking the law, et cetera, et cetera?
WARREN: Well, the barbecue to the founding of the country, and why was the revolution ticked off. One of the major causes according to John Adam was the general warrant stop the king. King George was basically saying, well, we're looking for bad people. So under the guise of looking for bad people, we will just come and rummage through your personal effects. And, you know, in the concept of privacy.
Well, the Fourth Amendment doesn't say, well, if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear.
It says that as an American, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
That without probable cause, and they can't search your stuff, and with probable cause, they have to get a warrant. Even for really bad people.
Even to go after pedophiles. You have to get a warrant. And that's the way. The foreign surveillance act, is designed to collect intelligence on foreigners. That part is broadly supported.
It's been very effective. We want to stop threats to our country. But when it comes to citizens, there's a reason there's no Domestic Surveillance Act. It's because the Fourth Amendment says that we have an expectation of privacy.
And we have to defend that. It's probably the most infringed part of the Bill of Rights at this point.
GLENN: So what is the most effective thing people can do today?
WARREN: Call their member of Congress. Tell them to demand that their number of votes are for a warrant requirement. And ask them to say, we should be voting on the Fourth Amendment is not for sale.
The government should not be circumventing the warrant requirement, to buy data, that they would otherwise get a warrant. They don't want the warrant requirement in the first place. But in the event, that should pass, in a lot of ways, they're saying, well, it's not as consequential. Because we could just buy our ways around it.