Surveillance bill veto suggested
Trump tweets about what he calls an illegal attempted coup
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump suggested on Thursday that he might veto a bipartisan surveillance bill, potentially disrupting an agreement to resolve a debate over national security and privacy before three FBI tools for investigating terrorism and espionage expire on Sunday.
“Many Republican Senators want me to Veto the FISA Bill until we find out what led to, and happened with, the illegal attempted ‘coup’ of the duly elected President of the United States, and others!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Trump’s comments came a day after the House passed a bipartisan bill to extend the expiring tools while also adding safeguards to national security wiretapping under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader, urged swift passage of the House’s bill.
The president did not explain whether he was suggesting that he might not sign the bill — negotiated this week by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, and Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader — or a short-term extension that Republican senators were contemplating.
If some kind of bill is not passed by Sunday, the FBI would at least temporarily lose three powers that lawmakers created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They include the authority to get a court order for business records that are relevant to a terrorism or espionage investigation.
An investigation by the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael Horowitz, concluded that the Russia investigation — including efforts to understand the nature of numerous links between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016 — had a lawful basis, and found no evidence that its opening was politically motivated.
Horowitz did, however, uncover serious errors and omissions in one aspect of the inquiry: investigators’ applications for permission from the FISA court to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser with many links to Russian officials.
None of the expiring tools were involved in the Page applications. But the legislation to extend them has become a vehicle for Congress to respond to the inspector general’s findings. The House bill, for example, would push the FISA court to appoint an outsider to critique the government’s arguments when a wiretap application raised serious issues about First Amendment activity, which could include political campaigns.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, was threatening to use procedural tools to prevent passage before the Senate leaves for a weeklong recess because he does not believe the House’s language sufficiently protects Americans’ civil liberties from government spying.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. and another critic of government surveillance, wrote on Twitter shortly after Trump’s post that he would “continue to stand” with him in opposition to party leaders “trying to ram through fake FISA amendments without any real changes.”
Civil libertarians on the right and left made similar objections in the House, but GOP Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Devin Nunes of California, who have led the attack on the FBI over the Page spying case, lent their approval to the bill.
The legislation has also received public endorsement from Attorney General William Barr and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Passage of either the bill or a short-term extension is now in doubt. The House would have to approve any shortterm extension as well, and it too would require Trump’s signature, raising the possibility of a lapse on Sunday. And even if the Senate did pass a 45-day extension, there is no guarantee the House would do so anytime soon. It was bogged down Thursday with legislation to address the unfolding coronavirus pandemic.