Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - April 09, 2024


Episode 163: Illegal Spying Agenda (feat. Dan Bishop & Warren Davidson) - Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Topics
FISA violations and reforms public Wi-Fi and Fourth Amendment protections FISA bill vote and amendments
Hosted by
Matt Gaetz
Guests
Dan Bishop Warren Davidson
Mentioned
Warren Mike Johnson Mike Turner Hank Johnson Joe Biden Davidson Osama Bin Laden Jerry Nadler Walter Jones Donald Trump Zoe Lofgren Adam Schiff Tom Cole Congresswoman Lofgren Dwight Eisenhower Pramila Jayapal Chuck Schumer Sarah Jacobs Dan Crenshaw Jim Jordan and 6 more
Episode 162 LIVE: Anatomy of a Bribe (feat. Tony Bobulinski) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz Episode 164: Clemson University vs. Free Speech (feat. Trevor Tiedeman) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Episode Stats


Length

45 minutes

Words per minute

167.83

Word count

7,642

Sentence count

450

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On today's show, we have a special guest on the show, Dan Warren, who is a freshman Congressman from North Carolina. He joins us to talk about the current state of the Republican majority in Congress, what it means for the country, and why he thinks it's time for a smaller government. We also hear from some of our listeners who are frustrated with the lack of progress from the current Republican majority and why they don't think it's a good thing. And we hear from others who have been in Congress for a few weeks and have been frustrated with what they see going on in Washington, D.C. and what they want to see the country do moving forward. We wrap up the show with a special segment where we discuss the latest in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) scandal and why we should be concerned about it. Thanks to our sponsor, Caff Monster Energy Drink, for sponsoring this episode! Don't Tell Mom: Rate/subscribe in Apple Podcasts! Rate, review, and subscribe to our new podcast! Subscribe, comment, and tell a friend about what you think of the show! Timestamps: 3:00 - What would you like to see in the next episode? 4:30 - What's the worst thing you've heard from Congress? 5:15 - What do you think about the new Republican majority? 6:40 - Is Matt Gaetz off the table? 7:10 - How do you feel about it? 8: What's going to happen next week? 9: What are you looking forward to the future of the country? 10:00 11:50 - What are your favorite part of the political landscape? 13:00 | What's next? 16:30 17:10 18:40 19:15 21:10 | What s the biggest takeaway from the new government? 22:30 | What is your favorite piece of news? 27: What s going to be the most important thing? 26:15 | What does it mean to you're going to get the most dangerous? 29: What is the biggest thing you're looking for? 30:40 | What do we're watching? 31:00 / 32:00 + 33:00 // 33:20 35:00 & 36:00 ? 36:30 // 35:40

Transcript

Transcripts from "Firebrand - Matt Gaetz" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Thank you.
00:02:00.000 You're not taking Matt Gaetz off the board, okay?
00:02:03.000 Because Matt Gaetz is an American patriot and Matt Gaetz is an American hero.
00:02:07.000 We will not continue to allow the Uniparty to run this town without a fight. 1.00
00:02:13.000 I want to thank you, Matt Gaetz, for holding the line.
00:02:17.000 Matt Gaetz is a courageous man.
00:02:19.000 If we had hundreds of Matt Gaetz in D.C., the country turns around.
00:02:24.000 It's that simple.
00:02:24.000 He's so tough, he's so strong, he's smart, and he loves this country.
00:02:29.000 Matt Gaetz.
00:02:30.000 Wow!
00:02:31.000 It is the honor of my life to fight alongside each and every one of you.
00:02:36.000 We will save America!
00:02:38.000 It's choose your fighter time!
00:02:39.000 I'm sending the fire brains.
00:02:41.000 I'm sending the fire brains.
00:02:46.000 I'm sending the fire brains.
00:03:16.000 I'm sending the fire brains.
00:03:31.000 Warren, I'd love to start with you.
00:03:32.000 It's your first time with us.
00:03:34.000 What has been your assessment of people's reaction to this Republican majority as you've chatted with folks over the last two weeks as we've been out of town?
00:03:43.000 Yeah, people are very frustrated.
00:03:45.000 They definitely feel like Republicans have squandered our majority.
00:03:48.000 They're like, you know, you guys said you were going to cut spending, and you said you were going to secure the border, and you said a whole lot more, and none of that's going really well.
00:03:57.000 And, you know, the one bright spot I could hold up is say, you know, a majority of the party actually said no thanks to the big spending bill right before this break.
00:04:05.000 So you gotta look for bright spots, and at least that was something.
00:04:09.000 This is the argument that Tom Cole, a Republican member from Oklahoma, said to me.
00:04:14.000 He said, Matt, you know, you seem discouraged and you reflect the discouragement of people who think we should be doing more, but without this Republican majority, we would have gotten another American Rescue Plan, another big spending bill, and at least we stood as a ballast against that.
00:04:31.000 In North Carolina, Dan, do you sense people are appreciative of what we've stopped or unfulfilled by the lack of our diligence?
00:04:40.000 North Carolinians do not consider, you know, it could have been worse without us being here, a great argument for having delivered on our mandate.
00:04:52.000 I hear it every time.
00:04:55.000 People come up to me.
00:04:57.000 I'm campaigning across North Carolina now in a statewide campaign.
00:05:02.000 It never ends.
00:05:05.000 People comparing other members of the Republican majority who did vote in favor of that bill.
00:05:13.000 They're fed up.
00:05:14.000 No, they're not consoled in any way by Tom Cole's excuses.
00:05:20.000 So $1.2 trillion in spending, 3,000 pages of legislative text.
00:05:25.000 They waived the 72-hour rule so that we couldn't give itemized review and due consideration to the things we were considering.
00:05:33.000 And then, as Congressman Davidson points out, a majority of Republicans vote no, but we still have over 100 who vote yes alongside the Democrats.
00:05:42.000 What feedback do you think they're getting?
00:05:45.000 Because I've had people ask me, well, why did this person vote for this big spending bill?
00:05:49.000 What was their justification or reason they gave you?
00:05:53.000 Frankly, when I talk to folks, their reason for voting yes was often some niche issue that they cared about, but that allowed us to go on a suboptimal path rather than having, I think, the boldness and courage to confront our economic conditions.
00:06:07.000 What do you think, Warren?
00:06:07.000 Yeah, I mean, I think, look, obviously, everybody left of center thinks that the solution's more spending, more government, all they want is more.
00:06:14.000 And Republicans, I go back, this is kind of a hobby, I did a little bit of it over the break, and look at members' websites.
00:06:21.000 When they campaign, what do they say?
00:06:23.000 And virtually every Republican, you can research it, they all say some version of, I want a smaller, more accountable government.
00:06:30.000 And if you had one party that was for a smaller government and one party that was for a bigger government, you would think that sometimes you would get a smaller government and sometimes you would get a bigger government.
00:06:38.000 But every Congress, it grows.
00:06:40.000 So somebody's not telling the truth.
00:06:42.000 And I think the voting record outs it.
00:06:44.000 And I think that's the thing.
00:06:45.000 Go look at the voting record and send us the right reinforcements.
00:06:49.000 Indeed, and that growing government is becoming increasingly more dangerous.
00:06:53.000 And that's where I want to really drive our conversation today around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
00:06:58.000 Most people had never heard of FISA before until the 2016 presidential contest when this authority was principally used to go after the Trump campaign and to spy on what would otherwise be politics.
00:07:12.000 And so, Dan, if you were just talking to a regular person out there and you were describing, like, what is FISA? Because a regular American might think, I don't do international business.
00:07:22.000 The farthest person I talk to away from is my aunt who lives in the Midwest.
00:07:27.000 How would you describe what it is and maybe how these authorities could be used against regular folks?
00:07:33.000 So what they used against the Trump campaign back in 2016 is a different part of FISA than is before us this week.
00:07:40.000 This is what they call section 702. There's a big database.
00:07:44.000 They go abroad.
00:07:47.000 And they vacuum up all of their communications.
00:07:50.000 And there's just massive database with hundreds, thousands of what they call selectors, just people abroad.
00:07:57.000 And sure, it may be Osama bin Laden or the like, but it may also be most of the people in the Western governments.
00:08:07.000 Or corporate leaders or whatever.
00:08:09.000 So if you're an American citizen who's having a business abroad, it's a big connected global community.
00:08:16.000 But that means that Americans' data is also in that database.
00:08:19.000 And so these backdoor searches, the FBI has access to, and what the study indicated in 2019, you go back and they were engaged in millions of violations in the way they searched the database.
00:08:31.000 Even in 2021, after their supposed reform efforts, 278,000 I think was the number of violations then.
00:08:40.000 And so it's just a, you know, it's an enormous backdoor opportunity to look at Americans' data that is collected by our intel state.
00:08:50.000 And it's a horrendous abuse of Americans' privacy.
00:08:54.000 And it seems to have been used against people on the right, on the left.
00:08:57.000 I mean, you had it deployed against some of the BLM rioters.
00:09:01.000 You had people who were just in Washington on January 6th.
00:09:04.000 We're kind of drawn into this FISA network.
00:09:07.000 And so, Warren, you have been a critic of a lot of these really constitutional violations that have been embedded in the Patriot Act and then emerged out of that and really gone well beyond their original intent.
00:09:22.000 That system that Dan described, it would seem like in some circumstances you would want to keep an eye on bad guys abroad who are not American citizens, but these 287,000 violations, the fact the FBI was breaking the law 38 times an hour, like you've been the thought leader on what needs to be done to fix FISA. So lay out how you fix FISA. Yeah, so you think about the Patriot Act.
00:09:44.000 It was passed right after 9-11.
00:09:47.000 It was an expansion of some—FISA goes back to the 70s, I think 78. But, you know, we support the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
00:09:54.000 We want to stop, you know, bad guys from harming American citizens, right?
00:09:59.000 There's a reason there's not a domestic surveillance act.
00:10:02.000 It's called the Fourth Amendment, right?
00:10:04.000 You're not supposed to be able to get Americans' data unless you get a warrant or subpoena with probable cause, some justification as to where you're going.
00:10:13.000 And if you try these vast, sweeping searches in a normal case, even if you're going after potentially really bad people, you have to have a probable cause and you have to present what you're going to search and why.
00:10:27.000 To get the warrant.
00:10:28.000 And in this case, they've already done the seizure.
00:10:31.000 They've collected all your stuff.
00:10:32.000 And then they'll say on the back end, well, we're not searching it.
00:10:36.000 We're querying it.
00:10:37.000 And that's what they call it.
00:10:38.000 They call it querying the database.
00:10:40.000 Now, anyone with a thesaurus handy or a reasonable grasp of the English language will know that query means search, right?
00:10:47.000 But they draw this distinction.
00:10:49.000 So they go pull everything out of the database that's already been collected.
00:10:53.000 And then they say, okay, now I've built everything that I want to get, and I know exactly where it is in the database, so let me go get a warrant for that.
00:11:01.000 And so that's a complete corruption of our system, of the Constitution.
00:11:06.000 And when you say, well, you know, it really is to keep us safe, Well, if men were angels, we wouldn't need most of the government.
00:11:14.000 Go back to the basic premise of how we even have a government.
00:11:20.000 If don't hurt people and don't take their stuff was so easy to get along with, Cain would have never killed Abel, and we wouldn't even need judges, let alone prosecutors.
00:11:28.000 But now we know that human nature is going to be corrupted, and we know that the FBI is telling on themselves.
00:11:35.000 As to, yeah, we're doing this wrong, but trust us.
00:11:38.000 We're going to fix it.
00:11:39.000 And no, we don't trust you.
00:11:41.000 We're going to do what the Constitution said, is not to trust the federal government.
00:11:44.000 The whole point of the Fourth Amendment, and it's the most infringed, in my opinion, of the Bill of Rights, It's to limit the government's ability to go after you in certain ways.
00:11:54.000 The First Amendment's got five protections in it.
00:11:57.000 The second is keeping bare arms.
00:11:59.000 The third is to give quarter to the government.
00:12:01.000 But the fourth is to protect you from unreasonable searches and seizures.
00:12:05.000 It's a right to privacy, not a right to secrecy.
00:12:08.000 So they can go after it.
00:12:09.000 Here, they don't even have to.
00:12:11.000 They've got the data and they're just gonna keep doing it.
00:12:14.000 And frankly, the debate process that we're entering into right now says they're not content with the current level of spying on Americans.
00:12:21.000 They want to expand the ways that they can spy on Americans.
00:12:24.000 Yeah, so I do want to get to some of the ways that our colleagues, even our colleagues in the Republican Party, are wanting to advance the authorities that we're worried about rub up against our constitutional mores.
00:12:36.000 But one fix, just so that we're able to bullet point this, is a warrant requirement for US citizens.
00:12:43.000 But you talked about the importance of the Fourth Amendment.
00:12:47.000 And one of the things, Dan, that we've worked on is ensuring that the Fourth Amendment is not for sale, that the government not utilize data brokers who are themselves commercially kept collecting all this information to then do an end run around the Fourth Amendment.
00:13:02.000 So maybe talk a little bit about why that's an important part of this FISA discussion.
00:13:07.000 And Warren may be even better suited to talk about it than me.
00:13:11.000 We've passed, on the Judiciary Committee where you and I serve, we've passed that bill through.
00:13:18.000 In fact, it always has very broad bipartisan support.
00:13:21.000 Some of the farther left Democrats Actually joining this, the idea that your data collected by virtue of your interactions with Google and Facebook and every social media company, all sorts of other stuff, is assembled by data brokers and they can get a handful of pieces of information.
00:13:43.000 They can tell exactly who you are, what your preferences are, and data brokers maintain these massive warehouses of this data and it can be purchased.
00:13:53.000 Well, the federal government, which couldn't get any of that data without a warrant, can go to data brokers and inquire it commercially and conduct surveillance on the entire population.
00:14:04.000 It is sick.
00:14:06.000 And Warren said, Warren, that's your bill.
00:14:08.000 Yeah, so Zoe Lofgren and I sponsored that in the House, and it's called the Fourth Amendment. 0.99
00:14:14.000 It's not for sale.
00:14:14.000 It passed Judiciary Committee 38 to 1. How many times does Jim Jordan agree with Jerry Nadler or Jerry Nadler agree with Jim Norton?
00:14:21.000 Pretty much never.
00:14:23.000 You've got me and Zoe Lofgren.
00:14:24.000 Who was the one?
00:14:26.000 Hank Johnson.
00:14:28.000 Oh, wow.
00:14:28.000 We don't even know that's how he intended to vote.
00:14:30.000 That really is extraordinary.
00:14:32.000 That means I voted the same way as Adam Schiff.
00:14:35.000 Congratulations.
00:14:36.000 Don't tell everybody that.
00:14:37.000 Please don't make that a clue.
00:14:38.000 But it's worth pausing over because everybody talks about we should have bipartisan accomplishment.
00:14:44.000 Well, that's as bipartisan as you get.
00:14:46.000 And yet there's another part of both the Democrat conference and the Republican conference, which are sort of the deep staters, the intel advocates, and the bipartisanship falls apart at that point.
00:14:56.000 It's one of the only issues left that doesn't break on normal party lines.
00:15:00.000 And, you know, there's no...
00:15:04.000 One person, I think, right now that the American public trusts on politics, that really, across the political spectrum, they would look at it, whether it's in the news or certainly in elected office, that they would say, oh, I trust this one person.
00:15:17.000 But maybe when you look at it and you've got the range spanned, you know, from me to Pramila Jayapal, from Jordan to Nadler, from Mr. Bishop to Sarah Jacobs, you know, you to Adam Schiff, you know, the range is, well, we agree.
00:15:32.000 That we should actually get a warrant.
00:15:34.000 We agree that you should stop buying data that you would otherwise need to get a warrant or a subpoena for in circumventing the Fourth Amendment.
00:15:42.000 And I think, hopefully, the country knows that this is how we protect our rights.
00:15:46.000 We might disagree on a gazillion other things, and we do, but at least here you're saying, this is being abused by our intelligence agencies.
00:15:54.000 And if it's going to be allowed to continue to exist, it should be reformed.
00:15:57.000 And so when we see that type of kind of cross-partisan collaboration to try to improve this system, it makes you think, wow, that might be a real opportunity to make that change in the bill.
00:16:08.000 So we've got the underlying base text of this FISA reform bill, and we've identified two key fixes.
00:16:15.000 One, a vote on a warrant requirement.
00:16:17.000 Two, the Fourth Amendment is not for sale act.
00:16:20.000 My reports right now from the Rules Committee are that we're going to get a vote on your amendment, Mr. Davidson, on the warrant requirement, but that we aren't going to get a vote on the Fourth Amendment is not for sale act.
00:16:34.000 If that is how our decision process is truncated, do you think that's a fair rule to proceed on?
00:16:41.000 Well, I don't like the rule, the way it's going.
00:16:43.000 So let's go back to the way we're here.
00:16:46.000 Judiciary is supposed to be the base text.
00:16:49.000 The Judiciary Committee bill that passed out a committee passed out a committee 35 to 2, overwhelmingly bipartisan again.
00:16:57.000 And it had get a warrant.
00:16:59.000 It had the Fourth Amendment's not for sale.
00:17:02.000 It had an in to a bounce collection.
00:17:04.000 So, you know, there were major reforms that were in the Judiciary Committee bill.
00:17:10.000 And the Intel Committee said, oh, well, we can't have that.
00:17:13.000 And we need to expand the surveillance.
00:17:15.000 Yeah, I want to get to the expansion first.
00:17:17.000 So that process was blown up because Intel wanted to do more.
00:17:23.000 So the speaker in December pulled the Judiciary Committee bill and did a short-term reauthorization from December to April.
00:17:34.000 And then two months ago, we were supposed to have this fight.
00:17:37.000 Mike Turner, the chairman of Intel, created an international incident to blow up the debate process.
00:17:42.000 We were in rules committee where judiciary was presenting this unified front between Jordan and Nadler, the ranking Democrat and the chairman of judiciary, saying, we agree, we should do these things.
00:17:56.000 Turner blew up the whole thing and wouldn't even come to Rules Committee to have the debate.
00:18:00.000 And part of it was to avoid answering the question on the Fourth Amendment's not for sale.
00:18:04.000 And so that process was rewarded, this blowing up the process, was rewarded by the Speaker saying, okay, fine, until we'll take out The Fourth Amendment's not for sale provision.
00:18:17.000 And he's actively working against the get a warrant pass.
00:18:20.000 And let's not forget, Mike Johnson, the current speaker, was a member of Judiciary Committee and had previously voted for a warrant requirement and for the Fourth Amendment's not for sale.
00:18:31.000 Now he's pulled the Fourth Amendment's not for sale, and he's working this week with the whip process against the warrant requirement.
00:18:39.000 So it's going to be a fake reform.
00:18:42.000 It's got a title, but it doesn't have content.
00:18:44.000 And I'm not sure there's one more fact that probably may not have gotten through, and that is that instead of being the judiciary base text, the base text for the bill on the floor is the Intel Committee's product.
00:18:54.000 Well, it's a compromise.
00:18:56.000 Okay.
00:18:56.000 So what they did is they said, the things you guys agree on, we'll put into the base text, and the things you don't agree on, you'll offer amendments on.
00:19:02.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:19:03.000 Well, okay, that was an agreement.
00:19:05.000 That agreement's broke.
00:19:06.000 Because they said to the Judiciary Committee, well, except for that.
00:19:10.000 You can't put that thing in as an amendment, and that's the Fourth Amendment.
00:19:14.000 Fourth Amendment's not for sale.
00:19:15.000 So that was another change to the terms.
00:19:17.000 That's the change I was talking about over the last two months when Turner blew up the Rules Committee.
00:19:23.000 He was rewarded by saying, oh, we're going to cancel the deal yet again and go with a different product, a different path.
00:19:30.000 I think people are used to watching the Republicans fight against the Democrats, but here you have this unique issue where it's actually the Judiciary Committee with strong adherence to the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment, fighting against the Intelligence Committee.
00:19:45.000 And Dan, maybe respond to what some might say, well, gosh, the Intelligence Committee, this is an intelligence authority.
00:19:51.000 Why should they not be given the deference on that dispute?
00:19:55.000 Well, frankly, some of their arguments are disingenuous.
00:19:57.000 So we've seen scheduled two or three times.
00:20:00.000 I've attended a couple of them.
00:20:01.000 We can't talk about details of what's done in it, but where you have these briefings, classified briefings.
00:20:07.000 You go down to the, what do you call it?
00:20:09.000 I can't even think of it.
00:20:10.000 The SCIF, Sensitive Compartmentalized Intelligence Facility, or something like that.
00:20:16.000 And then some people, some bureaucrats from the intel agencies tell you these things, and frankly, they're not very persuasive.
00:20:24.000 And yet, there's an attempt to sort of intimidate people to say, oh, things are going to be horribly, that go horribly wrong, and you're going to be blamed if you reform this and provide for people, Americans' privacy.
00:20:37.000 And one argument that is constantly made by Mike Turner, the chairman of Intel, and others, Dan Crenshaw, is they say, well, this 702 database is all lawfully collected.
00:20:49.000 And once law enforcement lawfully collects information, they routinely use it to look at other people.
00:20:54.000 Well, you have to understand in detail what we're talking about.
00:20:57.000 Intel is collecting this database under the rules that say Intel works abroad.
00:21:03.000 And there's supposed to be a firm wall.
00:21:05.000 They don't conduct domestic surveillance.
00:21:07.000 And these guys are using the usual situation where if you would search someone when you're arresting them and you find something in their pocket, Yeah, that's fine.
00:21:15.000 You don't have to have a warrant for that.
00:21:16.000 It's fine to do it.
00:21:17.000 But in this case, you've got intel information collected abroad and they're saying because that's lawful for intel purposes, they ought to be able to go through it without any limitations whatsoever or that you don't need to have a warrant requirement.
00:21:31.000 It's a totally dishonest, disingenuous argument.
00:21:35.000 Those are the kinds of things that I think look at tactics of the folks who are devoted to the intel state In how we've dealt with this, and I think it denigrates the, unfairly denigrates the rights of Americans to privacy, and they ought to be able to expect that from their government.
00:21:52.000 And we've talked about two of the antidotes, right?
00:21:54.000 The warrant requirement and the Fourth Amendment's Not For Sale Act.
00:21:57.000 We get a vote on warrant, we don't on Fourth Amendment Not For Sale.
00:22:00.000 How do you think that vote's going to go?
00:22:02.000 Do you think that we'll have a sufficient number of Democrats vote with us to put a warrant requirement on the bill?
00:22:10.000 Well, I think we would, but here's what's gone on.
00:22:13.000 They've been working for months now to whip the votes.
00:22:16.000 Look, I still remember this guy who's a legend, Walter Jones, who's a member of Congress when I first got here.
00:22:22.000 Rest his soul.
00:22:23.000 North Carolinian.
00:22:24.000 Yeah, good North Carolina guy.
00:22:27.000 You know, when I was a new guy here, there was something that passed the House like 420-something to 7. And I thought, it'll help solve a problem, be popular with the public, passes the House, isn't even partisan.
00:22:38.000 Why in the world won't the Senate take this up, Walter?
00:22:42.000 And he said, well, I hate to be cynical, but probably because it would pass.
00:22:47.000 Right.
00:22:48.000 And I think that's the fear.
00:22:50.000 They don't want to allow a vote on the Fourth Amendment that's not for sale because it could pass.
00:22:54.000 It's got support in the House and the Senate.
00:22:56.000 So that means they must not think that the warrant requirement on the Fourth Amendment will pass.
00:23:00.000 So we get a vote on something they think won't pass.
00:23:02.000 We don't get a vote on something they think will pass.
00:23:05.000 Correct.
00:23:05.000 All right, well now let's get to the dangerous expansion of these authorities that may be presented to votes for us.
00:23:11.000 And the first deals with public Wi-Fi.
00:23:14.000 I don't think most Americans believe that when they get on a McDonald's Wi-Fi or a public library Wi-Fi, that they have consented to some new level of search into all of their digital existence.
00:23:26.000 But I think as I'm hearing it now, there's going to be an amendment to essentially make The utilization of public Wi-Fi, an erosion of your constitutional protections against those unlawful searches and seizures.
00:23:41.000 Either of you, I'd love your thoughts on that provision.
00:23:44.000 Well, if you go to the McDonald's Wi-Fi in Eaton, Ohio, a little rural county with about 40,000 people in it, and you use their Wi-Fi, I'm pretty sure they're not targeting foreigners there.
00:23:56.000 I'm not saying there aren't any foreigners there, but the balance of it's not foreigners.
00:24:00.000 And when they log on to the Wi-Fi there, they're not logging on to do foreign intelligence.
00:24:07.000 I'm not saying that would never happen in Eaton, Ohio, but...
00:24:10.000 Normally, it's because people want to get better Wi-Fi than the cell service out there, and it's faster than maybe what they got at home.
00:24:17.000 They'll come in and hang out and use it.
00:24:18.000 Well, now, McDonald's, if they want to still have Wi-Fi available to the public, they have to go to, like, you're opening up a bank account.
00:24:26.000 They've got to know your customer rule where they collect all this information.
00:24:29.000 Who are you?
00:24:29.000 Why are you using the Internet?
00:24:31.000 Who are you using the internet with?
00:24:33.000 Let us know more about you.
00:24:34.000 And tell us how that's foreign intelligence.
00:24:37.000 And again, this is where the jurisdictional line crosses.
00:24:41.000 Intelligence is supposed to be on foreigners. 1.00
00:24:43.000 Our intelligence service collects on foreigners.
00:24:45.000 And American citizens, that jurisdiction is judiciary.
00:24:49.000 You're supposed to be protected by the Fourth Amendment.
00:24:52.000 Do you think that'll pass, Dan?
00:24:54.000 You know, I don't know.
00:24:57.000 I understand that they keep denying that it does that, but I can't see the language having been totally clarified.
00:25:05.000 Well, it's just hard to take their word for it when they were breaking the law 38 times an hour on their existing authority.
00:25:11.000 And yet, that's what we're doing.
00:25:12.000 That's what the entire picture is from the intel perspective in terms of the amendments they want to offer.
00:25:18.000 Take their word for it.
00:25:20.000 Why do we not need a warrant requirement?
00:25:24.000 Why should that amendment be defeated?
00:25:25.000 Well, because it might leave us open to attack in some way, and because the FBI has done all the reforms that are necessary.
00:25:32.000 Well, the evidence would suggest There's no basis in evidence to conclude that, and the evidence goes the other direction in terms of the previous tests.
00:25:42.000 And particularly on this Wi-Fi matter, I worry about someone making a foreign contact that they don't even know that they're making.
00:25:48.000 If someone is utilizing public library Wi-Fi and they go there to get Customer support for their washing machine.
00:25:56.000 And it just so happens that they're connected to some online chat center to help them with customer service.
00:26:01.000 And some other person who works at that chat center in India is connected to a dangerous organization.
00:26:08.000 There are so many opportunities for people who have no intention to even subject themselves to this spying.
00:26:15.000 Even a lot of email accounts, the servers for a lot of email services and for some of the search engines are globalized.
00:26:24.000 And so you may just be checking your email account and the server is now routed through another country and that makes every bit of collection on that email account permissible once it's expanded.
00:26:36.000 I'm also understanding that Chairman Turner will be offering an amendment to expand the scope of FISA to have anything to do with narcotics or the narcotics trade.
00:26:47.000 What's your perspective on that amendment?
00:26:49.000 Well, I think, again, it's a question of what is the purpose of the collection of this database?
00:26:53.000 And if you begin with that origin, then you turn it into a generalized surveillance tool to monitor a particular form of criminal activity domestically.
00:27:05.000 You've violated The essence of that firm wall that's described.
00:27:13.000 And I just think it can be abused right and left.
00:27:16.000 Yeah, I mean, no one is sympathetic to drug dealers.
00:27:19.000 But at the same time, if you're going to get rid of the Fourth Amendment in the digital atmosphere for drug dealers, why not just get rid of the Fourth Amendment altogether?
00:27:26.000 In narcotics cases, there's a reason we believe these things.
00:27:30.000 And I'm worried that we're bifurcating our rights from IRL to our digital existence.
00:27:37.000 A hundred percent.
00:27:38.000 You look at, look, there are all kinds of heinous crimes.
00:27:40.000 I mean, why not go after pedophiles?
00:27:42.000 I mean, why subject that to the Fourth Amendment?
00:27:43.000 That's a horrible crime.
00:27:45.000 So they're still protected by the Fourth Amendment against unlawful search and seizure.
00:27:52.000 I've got a bill to address the problem they say that they want to address, which would escalate collection on cartels to a Tier 1 threat.
00:27:59.000 So you could collect intelligence on them the same way we were collecting on Al Qaeda or ISIS or North Korea or Iran.
00:28:07.000 They would be a...
00:28:08.000 True enemy of our country.
00:28:10.000 And the cartels are.
00:28:11.000 The cartels control the black market in America, largely for the black market drugs, but also sex trafficking, human trafficking, labor trafficking, all the smuggling across the border of all kinds of things.
00:28:24.000 And a lot of the money laundering is done, facilitated by these guys.
00:28:29.000 You could already do that under existing authorities if you wanted to.
00:28:33.000 We can't get them to go after the cartels and prioritize it.
00:28:37.000 While you're not going to the top of the food chain to the cartels and using the powers you have to do that in a legitimate way, they want to open up this vast new repository of searchable data against Americans for whatever crimes they may be involved with that turn out to be narcotics.
00:28:53.000 Yeah, well, I mean, I think about just the innocent person who maybe they bought a house that had been used improperly in some time past, and all of a sudden they have no Fourth Amendment protections based on a review of all of their digital communications.
00:29:07.000 It could truly be innocent people that could be caught in this.
00:29:09.000 So, Warren, you really are one of the recognized experts on this stuff.
00:29:12.000 You have been since I got to Congress.
00:29:15.000 When I got here, I thought the FBI were the good guys.
00:29:17.000 And we've seen a lot of good there, but we've also seen a lot of bad.
00:29:23.000 If the way this shakes out is that we don't get a vote on the important Fourth Amendment protections, but there is a vote authorized on these expansions, Wi-Fi and narcotics, and assuming those were to pass, do you think that That our liberties would be more protected under the current system or under a system contemplated by the base bill as amended with these expansions of FISA authorities.
00:29:49.000 I mean, why would we be expanding something that's already abused?
00:29:53.000 And look, there are ways to do this that are different.
00:29:56.000 Like I said, you could focus on the cartels and collect against the cartels if you like.
00:30:00.000 And, you know, the idea that we would allow something that is Known to be abused, to continue to exist without real reform.
00:30:10.000 And let's face it, if it passes the way that you just stated, it's simply a placebo.
00:30:16.000 It's say, oh, I took medicine.
00:30:18.000 It's supposed to be better.
00:30:19.000 No, it has no effect.
00:30:21.000 It's worse than not taking medicine.
00:30:23.000 You're wasting your time taking something because it gives people the cover to say, oh, I did something.
00:30:29.000 No.
00:30:29.000 What you did is actually make your condition worse because you didn't even treat the underlying problem, which is the abuse by these agencies of authorities that they were trusted with.
00:30:40.000 What happened to Mike Johnson?
00:30:41.000 I mean, I never would have thought we would have gotten here, Dan.
00:30:44.000 We've been on the Judiciary Committee with Mike Johnson.
00:30:46.000 He sat next to me for seven years on that committee.
00:30:49.000 Frankly, Mike Johnson makes the arguments that we've made in this discussion probably better than we do in debate.
00:30:56.000 When he has the opportunity to question senior officials at DOJ or FBI, he often focused.
00:31:02.000 As a committee member on FISA and on FISA abuses.
00:31:06.000 And I told the speaker, my friend, that we made him speaker so that the speakership would be more like Mike Johnson.
00:31:13.000 We didn't make Mike Johnson speaker so that Mike Johnson would be more like the speakership.
00:31:18.000 And unfortunately, on this issue, we've seen the speaker make a 180 degree reversal.
00:31:24.000 And if what he has encountered from an information standpoint as speaker was so persuasive That it would cause him to make a reversal, then I would think he would be obligated to convince his colleagues from the Judiciary Committee why.
00:31:38.000 And I have not been drawn into any of that discussion.
00:31:40.000 I don't know if you have, but as we look at our friend who was our brother in arms on these things, now wearing the jersey of the other side, what do you attribute that to?
00:31:51.000 I guess the power of the D.C. cartel.
00:31:54.000 It's disheartening.
00:31:57.000 A number of us have been sympathetic to Speaker Johnson taking on that role in midstream.
00:32:05.000 A lot of things had already been decided in terms of spending bills and so forth that kind of left him with not much maneuvering room.
00:32:12.000 And so if more bad stuff on spending had to come through like the minibus, there's some sympathy there.
00:32:17.000 It's hard to have a lot of sympathy for this one.
00:32:20.000 And I fear that it really jeopardizes his support out in the country among conservatives who are counting on him as a conservative beginning to change this place.
00:32:34.000 It's disheartening to me.
00:32:38.000 I don't understand it.
00:32:40.000 I mean, I know what Mike Johnson has always thought.
00:32:42.000 And to your point, I mentioned earlier that they take us down the skiff and sort of do these dog and punishes.
00:32:48.000 They're not persuasive.
00:32:49.000 If you're a critical thinker, they are not persuasive.
00:32:53.000 In fact, as it begins sort of being clear that it's not persuasive, Mike Turner sort of takes over and keeps talking until everybody falls asleep.
00:33:01.000 So we know what those briefings have been.
00:33:04.000 If Mike Johnson has gotten some double secret briefing that has turned him around, as you say, maybe they can't give that briefing in all of its content to all members of Congress because it would risk sources or methods or the like.
00:33:19.000 But they're bound to be able to do better than the briefings that you and I have received.
00:33:25.000 They're bound to be able to do better and I'm just not seeing that.
00:33:28.000 This government can't operate predicated on secret information of eight people plus maybe the president.
00:33:37.000 That can't happen.
00:33:43.000 It's inexplicable that he's taken the position that he is under all those circumstances as I explained.
00:33:50.000 Final question on this to you, Warren.
00:33:52.000 You've talked to more members than probably anybody on the Democrat side, on the Republican side.
00:33:58.000 What arguments move people?
00:34:00.000 What arguments get folks more on our side of supporting civil liberties?
00:34:06.000 Because we've seen from Chairman Turner and the intel community, when they talk about the open border and the threat of ISIS, that seems to motivate people to, I think, abandon the position that the three of us hold.
00:34:18.000 So what's our best argument?
00:34:20.000 Well, I think the base premise is when you personalize it and you talk to people about, like, let's take a look at your browser history or your Amazon account.
00:34:30.000 You know, we all like we go, let's say most everybody's probably gone to Amazon, they bought something.
00:34:35.000 We like when we go to Amazon and they kind of know us and they say, oh, well, since you bought this or read that, you might want to look at this.
00:34:41.000 That's helpful.
00:34:42.000 But they shouldn't be able to sell that information to somebody else Without our consent, without our informed consent, not some Weasley five-point font over 400 pages.
00:34:53.000 But specifically, they could say how many of whatever book Firebrand has sold, but they can't say whether Warren and Dan bought Firebrand.
00:35:04.000 And that's where it becomes personal.
00:35:07.000 And yeah, you might need to know that for a legitimate purpose as a law enforcement agent.
00:35:13.000 And if you need to know that about a foreigner, that's probably fine.
00:35:16.000 But if you need to know it about an American citizen, there's a process.
00:35:20.000 It's well-established, and it was so important that it was made our Fourth Amendment.
00:35:26.000 And it's held up by jurisprudence.
00:35:28.000 And the disappointing thing is not just that the executive branch is abusing this authority, or that the courts, Article III, courts haven't held that it's unconstitutional, because it is, It's that our own body hasn't done our duty, which we swore to do, to support and defend this Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
00:35:49.000 And I will tell you, one of the best speeches for people to look back to is Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address.
00:35:55.000 And he cautioned against two things.
00:35:58.000 One is the military-industrial complex.
00:36:00.000 And the scientific technical elite.
00:36:02.000 You think about the growth of the military police state and you think about like COVID, the technical elite.
00:36:09.000 And why did he caution against them?
00:36:10.000 Because he believed that they would potentially put their own interests and the truth at odds with the American interest.
00:36:18.000 And I think it was somewhat prophetic.
00:36:21.000 And I think the challenge for our time is to get a government that once again is small enough to fit back in the Constitution.
00:36:27.000 You know, this freedom's been surrendered.
00:36:29.000 It's rarely reclaimed.
00:36:31.000 And if we don't do it, it's not going to be.
00:36:33.000 We have to make that demand.
00:36:35.000 Great, great point to end our discussion on these spying authorities on.
00:36:40.000 Next week, I expect that we'll be facing a Ukraine bill of some kind.
00:36:45.000 And I recall one of the high watermarks for those of us who really adhere to an America First perspective was your legislation, Warren, that said before sending more money to Ukraine, we should at least see a plan.
00:36:57.000 We should at least have reduced to writing any plan from the administration that defines victory or that states our objectives.
00:37:06.000 And that has really morphed now into a uniparty desire to send funds without those things.
00:37:14.000 So what do you expect is coming on Ukraine?
00:37:17.000 How are you going to look at it through the lens of what were your demands of folks previously?
00:37:23.000 Yeah, I think there's like 10 of us that have not voted for a dime for Ukraine.
00:37:27.000 Probably 30% of us are right here.
00:37:29.000 And if you look at it, You know, rationally, until you tell me the mission, what is it you're trying to accomplish, how could I possibly tell you what resources I would support giving you?
00:37:41.000 And when you look back, like, I found that when the State Department was pushing to do this endless war in Afghanistan, they changed the mission in 2004 from going after bin Laden and the terrorists that attacked us on 9-11 to nation-building in Afghanistan.
00:37:59.000 And there was an op-ed in the Washington Post by this envoy that the State Department appointed, and he said, as much as it takes, as long as it takes.
00:38:08.000 What have we heard that for?
00:38:09.000 That is what they say the mission is in Ukraine.
00:38:13.000 Well, as much as it takes, as long as it takes to do what?
00:38:16.000 They never get around to defining it, and that was the whole point.
00:38:19.000 We did get 129 people.
00:38:22.000 We went from 10 Last summer, we got to 129, and I suspect we'll do better this time, even amongst Republicans.
00:38:30.000 And so I hope that we can expect some outcome.
00:38:32.000 But look, there's clear bipartisan support for more wars in more places.
00:38:37.000 They're more committed to funding Ukraine.
00:38:39.000 So I think the Speaker's going to move another omnibus, essentially, that funds Ukraine, funds Israel, funds the Pacific, and fails to do anything about defending America.
00:38:51.000 And what I've asked them to do is if you feel that you have to put something on the floor, give us one rule bill that requires a recorded vote, four separate recorded votes.
00:39:00.000 One to defend Ukraine, one to defend Israel, one to defend Pacific, but a fourth one to defend America. 0.56
00:39:08.000 And the sad reality of where we're at this Congress is the vote that would get the lowest total and may not even pass is the bill to defend America.
00:39:18.000 It's so reflective of a loss of focus, it seems.
00:39:22.000 You talked about what people are saying out there, and I don't know what you guys are hearing, but that's another one on which, I mean, every once in a while someone who's got an unusual perspective or a particular interest in Ukraine will come up and say they want that.
00:39:38.000 But it's overwhelmingly the other way, and it is another example of Of Mike Johnson totally reversing course on something he pledged.
00:39:51.000 He married up, a number of us were offended at the prospect that we have to trade off Ukraine funding to get a complete border protection package in the United States.
00:40:06.000 But now it's the U.S. border that's going to be apparently thrown aside in order to just do Ukraine and these other foreign aid matters unpaid for, more money borrowed from China to do that.
00:40:24.000 And, you know, what it leaves you wondering about is what is the Republican voter, how do you motivate the Republican voter to send a Republican majority back to Congress?
00:40:33.000 And I think it may be sufficient, but the only answer that I can think of at this point is that Donald Trump needs to get elected president and we can't afford for him to be bedeviled by a Hakeem Jeffries House of Representatives.
00:40:46.000 But there's not much else left.
00:40:48.000 And I think that's unforgivable.
00:40:51.000 I don't know how...
00:40:52.000 The folks where I come from and where I have the opportunity to talk about it always confront me with that you guys should shut her down until they fix the border. 0.68
00:41:02.000 I'm not a cheerleader for shutdowns, and I don't think any of us are, but we also have to understand leverage.
00:41:09.000 And I think that the great sin of our majority has been the misunderstanding of how to utilize that leverage for some of the outcomes we're seeking.
00:41:17.000 Warren, you've also been one of the leaders on War Powers.
00:41:20.000 You talked about the co-mingling of this Ukraine issue with Israel, with what's going on in the Pacific.
00:41:26.000 Reports now are that we're going to be using our United States military to build a floating barge off the coast of Gaza.
00:41:33.000 Do you worry that we're setting ourselves up for some sort of Gulf of Tonkin moment where we're creating a soft target in an environment where we can't really control the conditions to ensure people's safety?
00:41:43.000 Yeah, I mean, you know, the sad reality is this wouldn't be the first time America funded both sides of a war.
00:41:49.000 In the Middle East, actually, usually we do.
00:41:51.000 Yeah.
00:41:51.000 So, look, Joe Biden wants to have it both ways and say, I'm for Israel, but I'm also for Hamas.
00:41:58.000 Putting a port into Gaza...
00:42:01.000 I would love to see the classified briefing where there's some rational reason to do that.
00:42:05.000 It's crazy that we're going to put a port into Gaza.
00:42:08.000 They still have American hostages, let alone over 100 Israeli hostages.
00:42:12.000 So the leadership in Gaza Hamas could end the fighting by simply giving up the hostages and surrendering the people responsible for the 10-7 massacre.
00:42:24.000 And instead of uniting behind our ally Israel, or frankly, sending them more American tax dollars that the Biden administration will simply use as leverage to try to get parliamentary elections, according to Chuck Schumer, to force Bibi out.
00:42:38.000 Or, you know, to say, well, let's enter into a two-state solution and reward the attackers of 10-7.
00:42:45.000 Nothing the Biden administration is doing on foreign policy is coherent if you're going to put American interests first.
00:42:51.000 So, you know, Dan, I think you're right.
00:42:52.000 But I think you do need to force a debate so that you at least consider issues separately instead of in a giant omnibus fashion.
00:43:00.000 We are to have single-subject bills particularly related to this issue.
00:43:04.000 And for the reasons you just identified, these conflicts are so fundamentally different.
00:43:08.000 You've got great power competition in the Pacific.
00:43:11.000 You've got largely an urban war going on in Gaza.
00:43:15.000 And then in Europe, you've got a massive power up against Ukraine.
00:43:22.000 And I worry, you know, there you can see the Ukrainians run out of men before they run out of bullets.
00:43:26.000 You know, Dan, this nuance that Warren's described in terms of how we ought to proceed forward, do you think that can lead to better outcomes and better decisions, or do we sort of get to the same place of funding all of it, just in smaller bites rather than one big bill?
00:43:41.000 Well, I mean, and when you've seen the willingness of the Speaker and other Republicans to depart From, you know, views that, you know, it's almost amazing they'd be willing to go to voters with what they're already doing.
00:43:54.000 I don't know that segregating out individual votes will do anything more than perhaps create a record for the future, but I don't know that it's going to actually bring any discipline to the decision making of the Republican conference in the House.
00:44:07.000 Well, we appreciate you both joining us this evening.
00:44:10.000 We've got votes in just a few moments, and so we've got to head back to Capitol Hill.
00:44:14.000 And if you're still watching and haven't gotten out the sharp blade and the warm bath, we appreciate it.
00:44:19.000 And I hope that you'll leave us a five-star rating on your listening platform of choice.
00:44:23.000 And make sure you share this content.
00:44:25.000 It's important that you know the details and the specific votes that are happening.
00:44:29.000 And even more important, it's important that you know what motivates those votes.
00:44:33.000 Why certain things come under consideration and certain things don't.
00:44:37.000 And that drives our choices.
00:44:38.000 Here will be mine.
00:44:39.000 I will vote against the rule to proceed on the FISA bill if that rule does not allow us to have a vote on the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act by Congressman Davidson and Congresswoman Lofgren.
00:44:50.000 And if instead of doing that, Creates all these votes to expand the authorities that have been violated.
00:44:56.000 Count on me to vote against proceeding onto that legislation unless we at least have the opportunity to get votes on the things that will fix the problem.
00:45:05.000 If Speaker Johnson is unwilling to fix FISA, We are left wondering what he is indeed willing to fix.
00:45:12.000 We didn't fix the budget.
00:45:13.000 We didn't fix the border.
00:45:14.000 And now the very authorities that we saw weaponized against President Trump are getting enhancements rather than the reforms that are so desperately needed.
00:45:24.000 We'll keep fighting.
00:45:26.000 I'm grateful to my friends.
00:45:27.000 Make sure that you follow them.
00:45:29.000 We've got their information on the screen and we'll be back soon.
00:45:32.000 Roll the credits.