DOJ: Barr would ask for Trump veto on FISA bill as it stands now

Attorney General William Barr would recommend a presidential veto of a bill that focuses on extending three expired surveillance tools the FBI uses to pursue terrorists and spies, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

The issue, according to the agency, are the changes that would be made to these Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorities.

“Although that legislation was approved with a large, bipartisan House majority, the Senate thereafter made significant changes that the Department opposed because they would unacceptably impair our ability to pursue terrorists and spies,” Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd said in a statement.

“We have proposed specific fixes to the most significant problems created by the changes the Senate made. Instead of addressing those issues, the House is now poised to further amend the legislation in a manner that will weaken national security tools while doing nothing to address the abuses identified by the DOJ Inspector General,” Boyd added Wednesday.

House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy also declared his opposition to the FISA legislation as it stands, telling Fox & Friends that he “asked Democrats to hold this bill up.” The California Republican was actively whipping the Republican conference to vote against the bill, according to Politico.

“We haven’t gotten to the bottom — and they haven’t come forward — with all the surveillance that we’re finding," McCarthy said. “Every single day we get new information about where Obama had utilized this, maybe even against our own members and senators.”

"We need to get to the bottom of that, and make sure the FISA court is protecting the liberties of Americans before we move another bill forward," he added.

Three FISA authorities expired back in March, including: “roving wiretap” powers that let agents continue tracking a suspect even if they keep switching burner phones, the "lone wolf" amendment that allows officials to monitor suspected terrorists with possible links to foreign groups, and the “business records” provision that gives investigators the court-authorized ability to collect documents and follow the money in terrorist plots.

The House voted in bipartisan fashion to renew the powers in March with input and support from the Justice Department, but the Senate instead unanimously agreed to a 77-day extension of the powers in exchange for a debate over amendments to the spy law. The House never passed the 77-day extension, so the powers have been dormant for over two months.

Two weeks ago, the Senate voted 80-16 to reauthorize three surveillance programs that lapsed earlier this year over a Republican stalemate on the legislation.

Republican allies of Trump have demanded reforms after Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report in December that criticized the DOJ and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the FISA surveillance of Trump campaign associate Carter Page, a U.S. citizen who was never charged with wrongdoing, and its heavy reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s salacious and unverified dossier.

The renewal bill includes new privacy protections that Barr had helped negotiate and had new requirements for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It also ended a dormant NSA program that allowed the agency to obtain Americans’ phone records in terrorism investigations, with court approval.

But the Senate version threw in a major change that the previous House-passed version backed by the Justice Department did not: the expansion of a court-appointed amicus, including in cases involving First Amendment concerns and other sensitive investigative matters. That amendment still had the support of House Democrats and GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, as of Tuesday morning during a virtual Rules Committee meeting.

Another proposed amendment stopping the Justice Department from obtaining internet browsing history on U.S. persons during national security investigations barely failed in the Senate, but House Democrats and Jordan are in favor of pursuing it in the lower chamber.

“Given the cumulative negative effect of these legislative changes on the Department’s ability to identify and track terrorists and spies, the Department must oppose the legislation now under consideration in the House. If passed, the Attorney General would recommend that the President veto the legislation,” Boyd said.

Jordan called the FISA bill before the House a “huge improvement,” but added that he would be willing to add even more protections if that is what Trump wants.

A vote on the amendments and the FISA power reauthorization was expected to come as soon as this week, but Trump signaled his opposition on Tuesday night, tweeting, “I hope all Republican House Members vote NO on FISA until such time as our Country is able to determine how and why the greatest political, criminal, and subversive scandal in USA history took place!”

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany signaled this might be coming when asked about FISA during a Tuesday afternoon briefing.

“It’s very personal to the president when it comes to FISA. This is an important tool in the intelligence community. He knows that. But he also knows it was used and abused and politicized,” McEnany said, adding, “FISA was not used appropriately when the Steele Dossier full of lies that was quote ‘salacious and unverified’ in the words of Jim Comey was used as the basis to get a FISA warrant and attested to as if it were truthful and a reason to spy on Carter Page… The Fourth Amendment rights of several Americans were violated and a political campaign was spied upon, so any FISA concerns the president has they’re real, they’re personal, and they should be considered as we move forward to reauthorize this critical tool.”