At a House Judiciary Committee hearing before the Congressional recess, Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL) spoke about FISA.
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00:00The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Moore.
00:03Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:05Mr. Chair, quick question.
00:06The Crossfire Hurricane investigation and subsequent surveillance of Carter Page revealed dysfunction and political bias,
00:12obviously on the part of the FBI leadership, but also it revealed problems with FISC. Is that correct?
00:19It did.
00:20It illustrated that FISC does not always examine the warrant applications under Title I with sufficient care,
00:27and that's one of the reasons that our organization, working with Senator Lee and many others,
00:32has been pushing for reforms at the FISC that would allow amici, friends of the court,
00:38to participate in important FISC proceedings to ensure that privacy is protected.
00:43So one of the reforms, are there other reforms that you recommend to help as we work through this process of reauthorizing 702
00:51that we could put into the law that would help eliminate some of these abuses?
00:55And, Lord, there have been a number of them.
00:56Well, the amicus requirements were strengthened somewhat in RISA.
01:02I think they can be strengthened still further.
01:06RISA did contain a very useful provision in that it allowed the chair and the ranking member of this committee,
01:12for example, to sit in on FISC proceedings so that there's more of a window of transparency there.
01:17And certainly FISC needs additional staff.
01:22They need to have additional people who are cleared so that they can process their business more expeditiously.
01:30Also, RISA, I think we put in the required the same judge to renew the application process.
01:37And there were some other things, too.
01:41One of the things that the reason I was a no vote is I thought there should be a warrant requirement.
01:46Would you agree with that?
01:47Absolutely.
01:48And so that was stripped out of the end.
01:49And that was a tough vote for many of us.
01:51We wanted to do what we could to renew this thing.
01:52But when you got, you know, when I came to D.C., they wanted to issue me another government phone.
02:00And I said, I think you just need to put everything on one phone.
02:04They're like, well, sir, if we do that, we're going to know everything that's on your phone.
02:06I thought to myself, like, you don't already, right?
02:09So as we're going through these hearings, we understand they're spying on U.S. citizens without warrants.
02:13And so that was one of the things that I thought we absolutely needed to do.
02:15And what are improvements that Congress can consider to forfeit on how it operates?
02:21Some other improvements as we're going through this process?
02:24None beyond those I've just mentioned.
02:27Okay.
02:27Very good.
02:28Mr. Shernowski, will you explain how the government has abused nondisclosure orders relating to the use of information obtained under FISA?
02:36Yeah.
02:37Thank you for the question, Representative.
02:39The government has utilized the information gathered underneath FISA in numerous of instances to spy on Americans,
02:45whether that was spying on protesters during the Black Lives Matter riots or looking at the communications of 19,000 donors to a political campaign.
02:55The list goes on and on.
02:57And really, when people see that revelation coming out after the fact, it does undermine their trust because they feel that the government now is starting to snoop at them.
03:06That has a real chilling effect.
03:07If now, simply because you want to support a candidate, now you could be subjected to government surveillance.
03:13I think that that is a pretty unnerving kind of outcome for people to see kind of carry out.
03:18And even in this most recent iteration of the FISA reauthorization fight, to see that those surveillance authorities had been abused to spy on a sitting member of Congress, a sitting member of the Senate,
03:28it showed to me that the intelligence community seemingly had no self-restraint on what they were willing to do in order to get access to whatever information they thought was necessary.
03:36And that's really alarming.
03:38Extremely alarming.
03:39And for those of us, one of the top issues was always the weaponization of a government.
03:44And certainly, certain members were spied on.
03:46And like you said, members of Congress.
03:48And with that, Mr. Chairman, I'll yield my remaining time to our friend, Mr. Klein, if he wants to take it.
03:56If not, I'll yield back to you.
03:57I appreciate the yielding.
04:02Mr. Kiko, do you think you would support an independent audit of these queries conducted under 702?
04:09Yeah, I would support that.
04:12How else can we ensure meaningful congressional oversight when most of the relevant details are classified and shielded from public scrutiny?
04:18Well, I just think that there's a lot of requirements that are already in the law.
04:27And I just would hope that the requirements are adhered to in a very quick manner.
04:35The audits are done in a very quick manner.
04:38And the audits and requirements are audited in the next year.
04:44So if they're not complied with, then you can deal with that through the next reauthorization.
04:50But I do think that, you know, the IG was very good in coming up with all the problems and everything.
04:58And the Congress responded to, you know, 15 or 20, you know, requirements.
05:03But it's basically oversight.
05:07You have to bring the intelligence community to heal.
05:11The gentleman's time is expired now.
05:15Recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. Kiley, for five minutes.