The deep state’s federal surveillance powers used to attack President Donald Trump are now being advocated by him.
There was a moment when it seemed that Donald Trump would listen to Judge Andrew Napolitano on federal surveillance law.
After the segment aired, Trump made a commonsense statement on Twitter:
“House votes on controversial FISA ACT today.” This is the act that may have been used, with the help of the discredited and phony Dossier, to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration and others?
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— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2018
Trump’s statement is absolutely true. I wish the President had decided to make that his last word on the subject. Alas, he did not.
Reason.com reports, “Trump Tweets Opposition to His Own Position on Federal Surveillance Laws.”
That tweet sat there this morning for a good two hours, causing a lot of head-tilting for those of us who have been following the FISA saga. After two hours (and, I’m assuming, at least one frustrated conversation with Chief of Staff John Kelly), the president walked back his own tweet and called for Section 702’s renewal:
He tweeted the following reply to his own original tweet:
With that being said, I have personally directed the fix to the unmasking process since taking office and today’s vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land. We need it! Get smart!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2018
That’s not actually what today’s vote is about. The bill House and Senate leaders are trying to push through would actually expand the Section 702 snooping authorities so that they can be used on Americans, secretly, for domestic purposes, without having to get a warrant.
Lawmakers like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) are trying to amend the law with the USA RIGHTS Act, to make sure that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency cannot abuse Section 702 to collect and store communications from Americans and then use them in court cases without getting warrants. The amendment they (and other co-sponsors) are proposing does not stop or hinder the use of Section 702 when it’s used the way it’s supposed to be used: to keep track of foreign targets.
The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by EagleRising.com
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