Attorney General William Barr last week urged Congress to renew a critical surveillance tool that helps federal law enforcement officials monitor and prevent terrorism and espionage.
But growing unease about privacy infringement and a recent inspector general report that found rampant errors and potential misuse of the surveillance laws to spy on the 2016 Trump campaign have prompted bipartisan opposition to renewing the law without first enacting significant reforms.
“The goal is to have the right balance between civil liberties and national security,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said after a critical committee vote to advance the measure was canceled at the last minute.
The House Judiciary Committee was planning to mark up legislation to renew three expiring provisions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act with new reforms negotiated between majority Democrats and the intelligence community.
But a top Democrat proposed a last-minute series of amendments that threatened to sink committee passage, and Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York canceled the vote.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California drafted five amendments based on her past efforts to reform FISA and rein in overly broad warrantless surveillance.
Democrats are now working to strike a deal among themselves by March 15, when the three surveillance provisions expire.
Pelosi said she backs the bill Nadler planned to bring up for a vote, noting that it strips out language allowing the National Security Agency to collect call records.
“There are others who would like to see some other provisions,” Pelosi said. “We’re just working through that now and respect for everyone’s point of view, but it is really important that we pass the FISA bill.”
Republicans seek additional changes in response to the December report produced by Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who found “17 significant errors or omissions” by law enforcement seeking to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
“We can’t simply reauthorize the system that allowed those lies and omissions to happen,” Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and staunch Trump ally, said. “Now is our chance to fix it.”
In the Senate, Republican leaders want to postpone reforms related to the Horowitz report, but some are willing to accept the House provision eliminating call-record collection.
Other Republicans, including Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, seek more drastic FISA changes.
Lee “made a long case” against renewing the FISA provisions during a private meeting with Barr last week, he said.
The Utah senator proposed several changes to the law, including an end to call-record collection and language to make it more difficult for the government to surveil targets “involved in First Amendment activities.”
“Without statutory changes, unaccountable bureaucrats will continue to be able to abuse this power,” Lee said.
President Trump will probably sign a bipartisan extension authored by Congress but has expressed a strong desire for reforms to the program.
He retweeted Jordan’s criticism of the FISA process and Jordan’s call for changes to the law that would prevent the kind of mistakes made when the court authorized the surveillance of Page.
“They spied on my campaign!” Trump tweeted last week.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and top Trump ally, promised the president he would use his perch as chairman of the Judiciary Committee to investigate the origins of the surveillance of Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Graham said his committee would delve into the flawed process of obtaining surveillance warrants for Page, beginning with depositions of former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
All four signed off on the FISA warrants for Page even though they were based on an unverified dossier of sordid information funded by Trump’s campaign rival, Hillary Clinton.
The FISA court determined in January that two of the four warrants lacked evidence “to establish a probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power.”
Graham said he would use his investigation to formulate reforms to the FISA law.
“I want to find out what happened, first,” Graham said.
