“It has never been our goal to allow Section 702 to sunset. For months, House Democrats have offered to work in good faith with House Republicans, our colleagues in the Senate, and the intelligence community to reauthorize Section 702 in a manner that both preserves the necessary authority and protects our privacy. Despite this, Speaker Johnson has never invited Democrats to the table.
“Our touchstone has been a fundamental principle at the core of the Fourth Amendment: a judge must come between the federal government and Americans’ private communications. The FBI has abused this powerful surveillance authority for decades. The FISA court has serious questions about how Section 702 operates today. Instead of implementing the modest, self-administered guardrails Congress required as part of our 2024, the FBI appears to have been actively circumventing them. Clearly, we cannot trust Kash Patel, who readily admits he ‘queried some databases’ to dig up dirt on journalists who report about him and his girlfriend, not to abuse FISA.
“By appointing Bill ‘Palantir’ Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence, President Trump has made clear that he intends to use FISA to investigate his political opponents. Director Pulte has no national security experience. Apart from attempting to start a fist fight with other members of the Cabinet, he is famous largely for bringing Palantir into the Federal Housing Finance Agency to help him scour sensitive financial data for dirt on Trump’s perceived political enemies.
“We continue to stand ready to strike a deal that will reauthorize Section 702 for years to come—a deal that will protect both our national security and our civil liberty by putting federal judges, not Kash Patel or Bill Pulte, in charge of protecting Americans from illegal government surveillance.”
