Part 1: Despots, Spooks, and Goons — Unconstitutional Intelligence Gathering Abuses and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
Guest post by Endangered Speechies
PART I. America’s Recurring Nightmare: Unconstitutional Intelligence Gathering Abuses and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
FISA’s section 702 and other components that permit and govern warrantless intelligence gathering on foreign targets located abroad were originally set to expire on December 23, 2023.
Only months prior, a fresh scandal broke that the FBI had abused the warrantless search tool yet again by weaponizing it against American citizens for their activities while on US soil.
According to the well-established doctrine of the exclusionary rule in this country, this intelligence and all subsequent evidence gathered from these illegal, warrantless searches is tainted and inadmissible.
At least that’s what any reasonable person would think, were it not for the judges in D.C. who have been subverting the rule by repeatedly allowing cases built in this way to proceed.
Per the letter of the current law, any and all incidental data gathered on American citizens anywhere in the world ought to be destroyed and unactionable, whether it was gathered “downstream,” “upstream” or anywhere in between.
Given the FBI’s practice of violating the law with impunity under the Biden DOJ, if FISA 702 were allowed to expire, how naïve do we have to be to believe that they won’t just continue to flout the law and do whatever they want?
FISA section 702 and other amendments were not allowed to sunset last December, and due to Speaker Johnson’s penchant for playing kick the can, the mass, warrantless data gathering, along with other subsections of the 2008 amendments, are set to expire on April 19.
A myriad of intelligence agencies are scheduled to descend upon Congress on Wednesday, April 10 to make their case that, despite rampant abuses that have violated the fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth and fourteenth amendment rights of American citizens en masse, their ability to gather intelligence without a warrant should be extended or even expanded.
A fly on the wall in these upcoming meetings would likely report that the IC reps employed hybrid tactics, resembling both a protection racket and blackmail operation, to coerce Congressional members to grant their collective will. We can’t tell the future, but this is our educated hunch: the probability is high that unscrupulous proverbial arm twisting will take place.
It’s also likely that Speaker Johnson, after postponing the vote on proposed reforms and the sunset from December 23, 2023, will conduct this matter in the same disrespectful manner that he brought the minibus to the floor in March for a vote. (He only allowed 72 hours for members to read the thousand-plus page bill that spent 1.2 trillion dollars while also prohibiting any and all debate and amendments.)
This after the House Rules Committee scheduled consideration of the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act of 2024 for February 14, only to abruptly and inexplicably cancel the meeting without rescheduling.
So, what is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (1978,) Section 702 (2008)? You may or may not remember that the 2008 amendments codified Stellar Wind abuses that occurred during George W. Bush’s consecutive terms.
Chances are, you’re not too young to remember when former President Obama and his DOJ illegally and fraudulently abused FISA. They did so in collusion with a myriad of absurd and villainous characters, orgs and law firms which included self-described communist 1James Comey, diabolical freak show John Podesta and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, to spy on then candidate Donald John Trump in a fallacious attempt to set him up as a Russian agent. Yes, that FISA.
Intelligence agencies, although not specifically described in The Constitution, are the purview of the Executive Branch (Article II, Section 2 and 3.) However, these agencies often have been caught acting as rogue entities, violating the constitutional rights of American citizens both without the knowledge of the Commander in Chief or at the direction of the Commander in Chief and his proxies.
It has been at times of such scandals and constitutional crises that Congress sought to balance the power of the Executive by instituting some legal guardrails.
This is how both FISA (1978), born out of the Church Committee hearings, and the FISA Amendments of 2008 came to be. Both are fruit of the poisonous tree as the actual effect of both laws was to codify the abuses but regulate them with a secret court (FISC).
The purpose of this article is not to delve into the specifics of these hearings and the subsequent legislation. For anyone who has read this far that is interested in the history of FISA, there are voluminous writings on this.
Many of them are not worth the time. we reviewed dozens of them so that you don’t have to. The most objective, thorough and well written is from Jeff Clark for the Center for Renewing America.
It’s true that espionage is a filthy affair. At its core, the work of spies is deception which is the devil’s business. However, a nation without “intelligence” agents, aka spies or spooks, won’t remain a nation for very long.
With that in mind, to anyone who believes that Congress intends to just allow FISA section 702 to expire, we’re happy to be the one to inform you that the earth is not flat, Nancy Pelosi is never sober (upon information and belief) and Joe Biden did not get 81 million legitimate votes.
On the other hand, the abuses of the FISA program, particularly section 702 and its betrayal of our Constitutional Republic, have become so widespread and widely known that the American electorate is demanding meaningful reforms and many of our elected officials have lost all patience with being targeted by what has always been a rouge intelligence function.
Rather than serving at the pleasure of the President who serves at the pleasure of We The People, evidence supports that US intelligence agencies serve a permanent, unelected ruling class. Our Republic cannot withstand this constant onslaught from agencies filled with Benedict Arnolds.
The current target of this country’s federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies is turned inward upon the people they have a duty to serve. Where are the FISA 702 cases against the Mexican cartels’ massive human and drug smuggling operations?
Why is the FBI failing to bring cases against the CCP’s standing army sleeper cells or the Caliphate Jihadists imported over our southern border for the past three years? In refusing to serve “the people,” the Biden Regime’s DOJ has lost all legal authority granted to them by our constitutional system. They only rule by unconstitutional fear, coercive mandate and force.
Although Republicans currently hold a small majority in the House, recent analysis portends that Speaker Johnson will again betray his Constitutional duty to the American people and fail to enable meaningful reforms that require the Biden DOJ to heel.
The best hope for relief is coming from the Democrat controlled Senate where senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) have drafted the SAFE Act. The most hawkish civil rights orgs on the left are dissatisfied with the SAFE Act but at the same time critical of the Biden Regime’s rejection of this draft.
These orgs overwhelmingly prefer the Government Surveillance Reform Act of 2023 by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) which has bipartisan support in both houses of Congress. (Note that the Brennan Center conspicuously omits facts RE weaponization against J6 protestors, as if protesting an obviously stolen election renders them unhuman, or something.)
Regardless of what happens in Congress, Biden is unlikely to sign any reforms into law. The Daily Caller reported back in February that Biden’s DOJ has sought court approval to continue warrantless spying on American citizens until April of 2025.
According to the ACLU, FISC granted Biden’s request and they are not happy. It’s very hard to sympathize with their complaint even though they’re correct. The ACLU sits silent while the Biden Regime holds political prisoners without trial for over three years. They likely voted for him with the knowledge of Biden’s domestic spying legislation that he sponsored in the 1990’s and beyond.
These so-called “Civil Liberties” organizations took no action to challenge the obviously rigged election that installed this pathologically lying despot, who’s been on the take his entire career, into the White House. They are among many complaining now who are complicit in this unconstitutional tyranny.
In part two of this series, we will explore how Joe Biden’s legislative career demonstrates that he has only just begun to live out his long-running authoritarian dream of being a despot in the White House.
The post Part 1: Despots, Spooks, and Goons — Unconstitutional Intelligence Gathering Abuses and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.