Katie Pavlich of Townhall wrote an article last week about Rand Paul’s efforts to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
FISA is up for reauthorization and Paul claims that President Trump won’t approve FISA in the upcoming weeks unless serious reforms are carried out.
“I just came from the White House and the President made it absolutely clear, no quibbling about it, absolutely clear he will not sign clean reauthorization of the Patriot Act unless we reform FISA,” Paul informed Fox Business host Lou Dobbs. “The proposal I gave him was this: don’t use FISA, which is a foreign intelligence court, to spy on Americans. Simply say that Americans, if you want to spy on them, you have to go to a constitutional, Article III court to get the wiretap. This would protect Americans from the abuses that happened in the Trump campaign, but these abuses could happen to Republicans or Democrats if we have biased people in the FBI or the intelligence agencies. So, I think the best reform is let’s take Americans out of FISA and let’s keep the foreign surveillance court targeted toward foreigners.”
House Democrats are refusing to reform the FISA court as the March 15 deadline for expiration approaches.
Back in January, the FISA court issued a memo confirming that spying on Trump campaign official Carter Page was uncalled for and unjustified based on information that the FBI withheld from the court. Additionally, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz discovered rampant abuse of the system.
Rand Paul has thrived during the Trump era and shown liberty conservatives how to position themselves properly as Trump supporters, while pushing for limited government principles.
We should look at how Paul operates and take note of it when doing outreach with other factions of the Trump movement.
