Amna Nawaz:
The president has made his permanent pick to oversee U.S. intelligence. And the choice comes as a key surveillance tool is about to expire.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, powers must be authorized by tomorrow night. But Congress has refused, with concerns over privacy and the interim intelligence chief Trump appointed previously.
Our congressional correspondent, Lisa Desjardins, is here with more.
So, Lisa, where do things stand with this intelligence program? Is it going to expire?
Lisa Desjardins:
Almost certainly, it will. As you say, it’s slated to expire tomorrow night at midnight. Today, the House failed to pass a short-term extension. It didn’t even get a majority vote; 19 Republicans and most Democrats voted against it.
And then the House left for a week. So that’s really basically the endgame for FISA being extended right now. The president is offering one idea. He says he might be able to extend it by executive order. However, it’s not clear that’s legal or that private companies would really acknowledge it.
Amna Nawaz:
But another thing is, just before, hours before the House left, the president did something Speaker Johnson and others have been urging him to do to help break that standoff over FISA. He named a nominee as his permanent pick for the director of national intelligence. Tell us more about him and why that matters.
Lisa Desjardins:
He’s not a traditional national security figure. But who he is right now is the U.S. attorney, the federal prosecutor in Manhattan.
Now, he has there handled terrorism and national security cases. Now, Jay Clayton was involved with the review of the Epstein documents. He was in charge, in fact, Amna, of making sure to protect victims’ identities. That’s something that has been controversial. In addition, he is someone who’s known as a confidant of President Trump. He golfs with him.
He’s also a vocal supporter. In fact, just this week, he echoed Trump’s baseless claims that the California election should be questioned as fraudulent. Now, how will he do in Congress? Well, interestingly enough, tonight, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Jim Himes, has said he’s a terrific choice.
But he also said this choice comes too late, because Democrats still object to the man who is about to be in the job in a short-term way. That is Bill Pulte, who we have talked about before. He right now runs the federal housing programs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He has no national security experience at all.
And that is, by the way, required by law to be in that position. So here’s the thing. Why this is all affecting FISA? To pass this FISA authorization, Democrats are needed in both the House and the Senate. They see Bill Pulte as a problem for national security. There’s some Republicans who have civil liberties concerns.
Together, that’s blocking everything up probably until Jay Clayton can be confirmed. The Senate’s moving fast. Already, we just in the past few minutes heard he’s got a confirmation hearing next week.
Amna Nawaz:
And remind us that FISA, this intelligence program, especially the warrantless section, how does it work?
Lisa Desjardins:
Yes, this is one of these things I think people have trouble understanding, but you can simplify it.
This is called Section 702. This is the one that gets the most attention. It’s a powerful piece of law. It allows the FBI and other U.S. agencies to gather communications, phone calls, e-mails from foreign sources overseas, only foreigners.
It, by law, is not supposed to collect data on Americans or people in this country. However, we know sometimes it has. And that’s the civil liberties concern. The Intelligence Committee, Amna, says that this program is responsible for 60 percent of what’s in the president’s daily briefings.
FISA has never had even more than a few days of a problem being extended.
Amna Nawaz:
So, if or when it expires, what does that practically mean?
Lisa Desjardins:
Yes, we spend a lot of time trying to search this out.
There is really actually a debate over this. Let’s first talk about what we know. FISA’s search parameters under 702 make it so that it is allowed — it is confirmed for a year and when it is put into operation. Now, that happened in March. So, current orders, all of that, in theory, mean that all of the current search parameters are allowed for another year.
But there is a concern that telecommunications companies, AT&T, T-Mobile and all of those, may think that that doesn’t protect their liability. This has come up in the past. I reached out to some of them. T-Mobile got back to me and they said, we are closely reviewing and monitoring this situation.
So they’re not committing to whether or not they will still give the data that the U.S. needs. It’s going to be a real question for our intelligence agencies. Now, some see this, of course, as being very dangerous in a vulnerable time.
Here’s Senate Leader John Thune.
Sen. John Thune (R-SD):
At a time when we’re hosting the World Cup, we got 250th anniversary celebrations going around this country. This is a time of risk for the American people. And so we’re going to shut the lights off on this program and put at risk the American people.
Lisa Desjardins:
But others disagree and say that there are other programs that can be used and that much of what’s happening now can still happen.
This is Pat Eddington of the Cato Institute.
Patrick Eddington, Cato Institute:
The lapse of that will create a slight issue ultimately for the U.S. intelligence community, but not something that people should be completely freaking out about or engaging in a lot of kind of over-the-top rhetoric, as we have seen a lot of House and Senate members do.
What I think is important about this, to kind of understand, is that not all the FISA goes away here.
Lisa Desjardins:
Bottom line, this will expire, and we don’t really know how dangerous it will be.
Amna Nawaz:
All right, congressional correspondent Lisa Desjardins, thank you so much.
Lisa Desjardins:
You’re welcome.
