Warner Open to Senate Vote on FBI Warrant Requirement

The Senate should bring the Intelligence Committee’s surveillance bill to the floor but allow those seeking an FBI warrant requirement to file an amendment, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., told reporters last week (see 2312140052).

He referenced a test vote in the Senate where the Senate Intelligence Committee’s S-3351 garnered 65 votes. “I think we’ve got a solid reform package,” but it would be “fair” to hold an amendment vote for those seeking a warrant requirement for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Section 702, he said.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Thomas Massie, R-Ky., support the opposite approach in the lower chamber. They believe their committee’s package, which includes a warrant requirement, should be the bill on the floor. House Intelligence Committee members can offer amendments if they choose, Massie said in an interview.

It’s clear House Judiciary has “primary jurisdiction” over FISA, and the Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act (HR-6570) should come to the floor, Massie argued. Offices for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, and ranking member Jim Himes, D-Conn., didn’t comment.

“We want our bill on the floor,” Jordan told us. “And we want an up-or-down vote on the question of a warrant requirement.”

Massie told us he was pleased to see the House abandon plans to consider competing bills from Judiciary and Intelligence (see 2312120073). “Mission accomplished,” he said. “I was against the beauty contest. You could have a fair process that involves flipping a coin, but that’s not how we’re supposed to legislate. And beauty pageants aren’t a good way to do it, either.”

“It’s very unfortunate” the competing bills were pulled from the floor, said House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y. Extending Section 702 as written is “wholly unsatisfactory,” he said. The “problem is” the House Intelligence bill was “so terrible that I don’t see a basis for compromise,” he said. “That bill, in fact, expands surveillance under the guise of reducing it.”

“There’s obviously still a strong divide [in the House] between two ways to look at reform,” said Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Marco Rubio, R-Fla. Congress must “deal with this no matter what,” he said. “I think there’s a strong commitment to reform the program. It’s just a question of how [far] the reforms need to go to get the votes on board” in both chambers. Added Warner, the path forward in the Senate “may be clearer” than in the House.

It’s proven there’s a “bipartisan coalition” for “real reform,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. Wyden and a bicameral coalition of civil liberty watchdogs, including Massie, introduced legislation seeking a warrant requirement (see 2311070065). Nadler previously told us he likes that bill but doesn’t believe it can win approval. Asked last week if he’s going to wait to see what happens in the House in 2024, Wyden said he will try “every day” to gather momentum for his legislation. The bill would allow the intelligence community to continue “fighting terror ferociously” but without “sacrificing civil liberties,” he said.

The “appetite for reform” is “very real” and this is the most momentum Congress has mustered on FISA revisions, said FreedomWorks Justice Reform Director Jason Pye. House Intelligence members might be “unhappy” to hear Massie say his committee has jurisdiction, but “he’s right,” Pye added. The debate concerns the “domestic side” of FISA, he said: “The FBI using the backdoor search loophole to go in and search Americans’ information without a warrant. That is a domestic issue -- plain and simple.”

Demand Progress Policy Director Sean Vitka agreed that House Judiciary has primary jurisdiction and its legislation is the only proposal with “real” privacy protections for Americans. The past month showed Turner and Himes will do anything to block meaningful changes from reaching the floor, Vitka said: They can file to amend the House Judiciary Committee’s legislation, but their “ability to defeat reform simply by bullying the rest of Congress is at its end.”