Episode 163 LIVEļ¼ The Illegal Spying Agenda (feat. Reps. Dan Bishop & Warren Davidson) - Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
Summary
In this episode of the Firebrand Podcast, we are joined by former House of Representatives candidate and current firebrand member of Congress, Dan Danan. We discuss the current state of the Republican majority in Congress, the lack of progress, and the growing government.
Transcript
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matt gates the biggest firebrand inside of the house of representatives you're not taking matt
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gates off the board okay because matt gates is an american patriot and matt gates is an american
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hero we will not continue to allow the uniparty to run this town without a fight i want to thank
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you matt gates for holding the line matt gates is a courageous man if we had hundreds of matt gates
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in dc the country turns around it's that simple he's so tough he's so strong he's smart and he
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loves this country matt gates it is the honor of my life to fight alongside each and every one of you
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we will save america it's choose your fighter time send in the firebrand
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welcome to firebrand warren i'd love to start with you it's your first time with us uh what has been
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your assessment of people's reaction to this republican majority as you've chatted with folks
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over the last two weeks as we've been out of town yeah people are very frustrated they definitely
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feel like republicans have squandered our majority they're like you know you guys said you were going
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to cut spending and you said you were going to secure the border and you said a whole lot more
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and none of that's going really well and you know the one bright spot i could hold up is say you know
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a majority of the party actually said no thanks to the big spending bill right before this break
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so you got to look for bright spots and at least that was something this is the argument that uh tom
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cole a republican member from oklahoma said to me said matt you know you seem discouraged and you reflect
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the discouragement of people who think we should be doing more but without this republican majority we
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would have gotten another american rescue plan another big spending bill and at least we stood as a
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ballast against that uh in north carolina dan do you sense people are appreciative of what we've
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stopped or unfulfilled by the the lack of uh of our diligence north carolinians do not consider
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uh you know it could have been worse without us being here a great argument for having delivered on
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our mandate and that's it's just not i mean i hear it every time and i uh people come up to me every
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i'm campaigning across north carolina now in a statewide campaign and i you know i just get never it never
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ends and people comparing other members in in the republican majority who did vote in favor of that
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that bill and uh they're fed up and no they're not consoled in any way uh by tom cole's excuses
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so 1.2 trillion dollars in spending 3 000 pages of legislative text they waived the 72 hour rule
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so that we couldn't give itemized review and due consideration to the things we were considering and
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then as congressman davidson points out a majority of republicans vote no but we still have over a hundred
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who vote yes alongside the democrats um what what feedback do you think they're getting because
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i've had people ask me well why did this person vote for this big spending bill why what was their
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justification or reason they gave you frankly when i talked to folks um their reason for voting yes was
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often some niche issue that they cared about but that allowed us to go on a suboptimal path
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rather than having i think the boldness and courage to confront our economic conditions what you think
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warren yeah i mean i think look obviously everybody left of center thinks that the solution's more
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spending more government the all they can all they want is more and republicans i go back this is kind
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of a hobby i did a little bit of it over the break and look at members websites when they campaign
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what do they say and virtually every republican you can research it they all say some version of
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i want a smaller more accountable government and if you had one party that was for a smaller
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government and one party that was for a bigger government you would think that sometimes you
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would get a smaller government and sometimes you would get a bigger government but every congress
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it grows so somebody's not telling the truth and i think the voting record outs it and i think that's
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the thing go look at the voting record and send us the right reinforcements indeed and that growing
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government is becoming increasingly more dangerous and that's where i want to really drive our conversation
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today around the foreign intelligence surveillance act most people had never heard of fisa before until
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the 2016 presidential contest when this authority was principally used to go after the trump campaign and to
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spy on what would otherwise be politics and so dan if you were just talking to a regular person out
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there and you were describing like what is fisa because a regular american might think i don't do
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international business the farthest person i talked to you know away from is my my aunt who lives in the
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midwest right how would you describe what it is and maybe how these authorities could be used against
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regular folks so what they used against the trump campaign back in 2016 is a different part of fisa
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than is before us this week this is what they call section 702 there's a big database they go abroad
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uh and they vacuum up all of their communications and there's just massive database with you know
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hundreds thousands of what they call selectors just people abroad and and sure it may be osama bin laden
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or the the like but it may also be you know most of the people in the western governments and so
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if you're or in you know corporate leaders or whatever so if you're an american citizen who's
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having a business abroad it's a big connected global community but that means that americans data
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is also in that database and so these backdoor searches the fbi has access to and what the and what
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the study indicated in 20 what 2019 you go back and they were engaged in millions of violations in the
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way they searched the database even in 2021 after their supposed reform efforts 278 000 i think was
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the number of violations then and uh and and so it's just a you know it's an enormous backdoor
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opportunity to look at americans data that is collected by our intel state and uh it and it's it's a
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horrendous abuse of americans privacy and it seems to have been used against people on the right on the
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left i mean you had it deployed against some of the blm rioters you had people who were just in
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washington on january 6th kind of drawn into this fisa network and so warren you know you have been a
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critic of a lot of these uh really you know constitutional violations that have been embedded
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in the patriot act and that emerged out of that and really gone well beyond their original intent so
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that system that dan described it would seem like in some circumstances you would want to keep an eye
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on bad guys abroad who are not american citizens but these 287 000 violations the fact the fbi was
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breaking the law 38 times an hour like you've been the thought leader on what needs to be done to fix
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fisa so lay out how you fix fisa yeah so you think about the patriot act it was passed uh right after
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9 11 it was an expansion of some fisa goes back to the 70s i think 78 but you know we we support the
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foreign intelligence surveillance act we want to stop you know bad guys from harming american citizens
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right there's a reason there's not a domestic surveillance act it's called the fourth amendment
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right you you're not supposed to be able to get americans data unless you get a warrant or subpoena
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with probable cause some justification as to where you're going and if you try these vast
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sweeping searches in a normal case even if you're going after potentially really bad people you have
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to have a probable cause and you have to present what you're going to search and why to get the
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warrant and in this case they've already done the seizure they've collected all your stuff and then
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they'll say on the back end well we're not searching it we're querying it and that's what they call it
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they call it querying the database now anyone with a thesaurus handy or a reasonable grasp of
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the english language will know that query means search right but they draw this distinction so
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they go pull everything out of the database that's already been collected and then they say okay now
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i've built everything that i want to get and i know exactly where it is in the database so let me go
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get a warrant for that and so that's a complete corruption of our system of the constitution and when
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you say well you know it really is to keep us safe well if men were angels right we wouldn't need
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most of the government go back to you know the basic premise of how we even have a government if
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if if don't hurt people and don't take their stuff was so easy to get along with kane would have never
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killed abel and we wouldn't even need judges let alone prosecutors but now we know that human nature
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is it's going to be corrupted and we know that the fbi is telling on themselves as to yeah we're doing
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this wrong but trust us we're going to fix it and no we don't trust you we're going to do what the
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constitution said is not to trust the federal government the whole point of the fourth amendment
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and it's the most infringed in my opinion of the bill of rights is to limit the government's ability
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to go after you in certain ways the the first amendments get five protections in it the second
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is keeping bare arms the third's to give quarter to the government but the fourth is to protect you
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from unreasonable searches and seizures it's a right to privacy not a right to secrecy so they can go
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after it here they don't they don't even have to they've got the data and they're just gonna
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keep doing it and frankly the the debate process that we're entering into right now says they're not
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content with the current level of spying on americans they want to expand the ways that they can spy on
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americans yeah so so i i do want to get to some of the ways that our colleagues even our colleagues in
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the republican party are wanting to advance the authorities that we're worried about rub up against
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our constitutional mores but but one fix just so that we're able to bullet point this is a warrant
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requirement for u.s citizens but but you talked about the importance of the fourth amendment and one
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of the things dan that we've worked on is ensuring that the fourth amendment is not for sale that the
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government not utilize data brokers who are themselves commercially kept collecting all this
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information right uh to then do an end run around the fourth amendment so maybe talk a little bit
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about why that's an important part of of this fisa discussion you know and warren may be even better
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suited to talk about it than me uh we've all we've passed in the judiciary committee where you and i serve
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uh we've we've passed that uh bill through in fact it always has very broad bipartisan support some of
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the farther left uh democrats uh actually joining this the idea that uh your data collected by virtue of
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your interactions with google and facebook and all every social media company all sorts of other stuff
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can be is assembled by data brokers and they can get you know a handful of pieces of information
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they can tell exactly who you are what your preferences are and they data breakers uh brokers maintain
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these massive warehouses of this data and it can be purchased well the federal government which
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couldn't get any of that data without a warrant can go to data brokers and inquire it commercially
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and and conduct surveillance on the entire population it is sick and uh warren so warren that's your bill
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yeah so zo lofgren and i uh sponsored that in the house and it's called the fourth amendment's not
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for sale it passed judiciary committee 38 to 1 how many times does jim jordan agree
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with jerry nadler jerry nadler agree with jim norton pretty much never you've got me and zo lofgren
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who was the one um hank johnson hank johnson oh wow we don't even know that's how he intended to vote
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that really is extraordinary and that means i voted the same way as adam schiff
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congratulations don't tell everybody please don't make that a clue but but but the it's that's worth
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pausing over because everybody talks about we should have bipartisan accomplishment well that's as
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bipartisan as you get and yet there's another part of both the democrat conference and the republican
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conference which are the sort of the deep staters the intel uh advocates and and the bipartisanship
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falls apart at that point it's one of the only issues left that doesn't break on normal party lines
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and you know there's so there's no one person i think right now that the american public trusts on
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politics that really across the political spectrum they would look at it whether it's in the news
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or certainly in elected office that they would say oh i trust this one person but maybe when you look at
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it and you you've got the range span you know from me to pramila jayapal from jordan to nadler from
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mr bishop to sarah jacobs you know you to adam schiff you know the range is well we agree that we should
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actually get a warrant we agree that you should stop buying data that you would otherwise need to
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get a warrant or a subpoena for uh in circumventing the fourth amendment and i think hopefully the
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country knows that this is how we protect our rights we might disagree on a gazillion other things and we
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do but at least here you're saying this is being abused by our intelligence agencies and if it's going
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to be allowed to continue to exist it should be reformed and so when we see that type of uh kind of
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cross-partisan collaboration to try to improve this system it makes you think wow that might be
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a real opportunity to make that change in the bill so we've got the underlying base text of this fisa
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reform bill and we've identified two key fixes one a vote on a warrant requirement two the fourth
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amendment is not for sale act my reports right now from the rules committee are that we're going to get
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a vote on your amendment mr davidson on the warrant requirement but that we aren't going to get a vote
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on the fourth amendment is not for sale act uh if if that is how our decision process is truncated
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do you think that's a fair rule to proceed on well i don't like the rule the way it's going so let's go
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back to the way we're here um judiciary is supposed to be the base text the judiciary committee bill that
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passed out a committee passed out a committee 35 to 2 overwhelmingly bipartisan again um and it it had
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get a warrant it had the fourth amendment's not for sale it had an end to a bounce collection so the
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you know there were major reforms that were in the judiciary committee bill and the intel committee said oh
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well we can't have that and we need to expand the surveillance yeah i want to i want to get to the
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expansion first but so so the the the that process was blown up because intel wanted to do more so
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the speaker in december pulled the judiciary committee bill and did a short-term reauthorization
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till february or from december till april and then two months ago we were supposed to have this fight
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mike turner the chairman of intel created an international incident to blow up the debate process
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we were in rules committee where judiciary was presenting this unified front between jordan and
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nadler uh the ranking democrat and the chairman of judiciary saying we agree we should do these
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things and turner uh blew up the whole thing and wouldn't even come to rules committee to have the
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debate and part of it was to avoid answering the question on the fourth amendment's not for sale
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and so that process was rewarded this blowing up the process was rewarded by the speaker saying
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okay fine until we'll take out the fourth amendment's not for sale provision and he's actively working
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against the get a warrant pass and let's not forget mike johnson the current speaker was a member of
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judiciary committee and had previously voted for a warrant requirement and for the fourth amendment's
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not for sale now he's pulled the fourth amendment's not for sale and he's working this week with the whip
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process against the warrant requirement so it's going to be a fake reform with a it's got a title but it
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doesn't have content and i'm not sure there's one more fact that probably may not have gotten through
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and that is that instead of being the judiciary base text the base text for the bill on the floor
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is the intel committee's uh product well it's a compromise okay so what they did is they said the
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things you guys agree on we'll put into the base text and the things you don't agree on you'll offer
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amendments on yeah yeah well okay that was an agreement that agreements broke because they
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said to the judiciary committee well except for that you can't put that thing in as an amendment
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and that's the fourth amendment so that was another change to the terms that's the change i was talking
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about over the last two months when turner blew up the rules committee uh that he was rewarded by
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saying oh we're gonna cancel the deal yet again and go with a different product a different path
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i think people are used to watching the republicans fight against the democrats but here you have
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this unique issue where it's actually the judiciary committee with strong adherence to the constitution
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the fourth amendment fighting against the intelligence committee and and dan maybe respond to what some
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might say well gosh the intelligence committee this is an intelligence authority why should they not
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be be given the deference on on that dispute well i mean frankly some of their arguments are
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disingenuous so they they we've seen scheduled two or three times i've attended a couple of them we
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can't talk about details of what's done in it but uh where you have these briefings classified briefings
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you go down to the to the uh what do you call it i can't even think of the skiff uh sensitive
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compartmentalized intelligence facility or something like that information and uh and and then some
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people some bureaucrats from the intel agencies tell you these things and they're and frankly they're not
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very persuasive and yet uh there's an intent there's and there's an attempt to sort of intimidate
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people to say oh things are going to be horribly that go horribly wrong and you're going to be blamed
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if you reform this and provide for people americans privacy and and one one argument that is constantly
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made by mike turner the chairman of intel and this is he's and and others uh dan crenshaw is they say
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well all this this 702 database is all lawfully collected and once law enforcement lawfully collects
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information they routinely use it to look at other people well you have to understand in detail what
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we're talking about intel is collecting this database under the rules that say intel works
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abroad and they're supposed to be a firm wall they don't conduct domestic surveillance and these guys
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are using the usual situation where if you insert someone when you're arresting them and you find
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something in their pocket yeah that's that's that's fine you don't have to have a warrant for that it's
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fine to do but in this case you've got intel information collected abroad and they're saying because
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that's lawful for intel purposes they ought to be able to be able to go through it at at in any
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you know without any limitations whatsoever or that you don't need to have a warrant requirement it's
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a totally dishonest disingenuous argument those are the kinds of things that i think uh look at
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tactics of the folks who are devoted to the intel state uh in in how we've dealt with this and and i think
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it denigrates the unfairly denigrates the rights of americans to privacy and they ought to be able to
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expect that from their government and we've talked about two of the antidotes right the warrant requirement
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and the fourth amendment's not for sale act we get a vote on warrant we don't on fourth amendment not
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for sale how do you think that vote's going to go do you think that we'll have a sufficient number of
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democrats vote with us to to put a warrant requirement on the bill well i think we would
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but here's what's gone on they've been working for months now to whip the votes and they're look i
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still remember you know this guy who's a legend walter jones who's a member of congress when i first
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got here rest his soul north carolinian yeah good north carolina guy and uh you know when i was a new
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guy here there was something that passed the house like 420 something to seven and i thought it'll
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help solve a problem be popular with the public passes the house isn't even partisan why in the
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world won't the senate take this up walter and he said well i hate to be cynical but probably because
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it would pass right and and i think that's the fear they don't want to allow a vote on the fourth
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amendment's not for sale because it could pass so you're supporting the house and the senate so that
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means they must not think that the warrant requirement on the fourth amendment will pass so we get a vote on
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something they think won't pass we don't get a vote on something they think will correct all right
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well now let's get to the dangerous expansion of these authorities that may be presented to votes for
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us and the first deals with public wi-fi i don't think most americans believe that when they get on
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a mcdonald's wi-fi or a public library wi-fi that they have consented to some new level of search into
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all of their digital existence but i think as i'm hearing it now there's going to be an amendment
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to essentially make the utilization of of public wi-fi an erosion of your constitutional protections
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against uh against those unlawful searches and seizures either of you i'd love your your thoughts
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on on that provision well if you go to the mcdonald's wi-fi in eaton ohio in a little rural
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county with about 40 000 people in it and you use their wi-fi i'm pretty sure they're not targeting
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foreigners there right not saying there aren't any foreigners there but the balance of it's not
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foreigners and when they log on to the wi-fi there they're not logging on uh to do foreign
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intelligence i'm not saying that would never happen in eaton ohio but normally it's because people want
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to get better wi-fi than the cell service out there and it's faster than maybe what they got at home
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they'll come in and hang out and use it well now mcdonald's if they want to still have wi-fi available
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to the public they have to go to like you're opening up a bank account they got to know your
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customer rule where they collect all this info who are you why are you using the internet who are you
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using the internet with let us know more about you and tell us how that's foreign intelligence and
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again this is where the jurisdictional line crosses intelligence is supposed to be on foreigners our
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intelligence service collects on foreigners and american citizens that jurisdiction is judiciary
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you're supposed to be protected by the fourth amendment do you think that'll pass dan um you
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know i uh i don't know i they i understand that they they keep denying that it does that uh but i
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can't see the language having been totally clarified well it's just hard to take their word for it when
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they're breaking the law 38 times an hour on their existing authorities but and yet that's what we're
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doing that's what their the entire picture is from the intel perspective in terms of the amendments
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they want to offer take their word for it why do we not need a for a um you know a warrant requirement
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why should that amendment be defeated well because it might leave us open to attack in some way and
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because uh the fbi has done all the reforms that are necessary well the evidence would suggest there's
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no well there's no basis in evidence to conclude that and there is an evidence goes the other direction
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in terms of the previous tests and and particularly on this wi-fi matter i worry about someone making a
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foreign contact that they don't even know that they're making right if someone is utilizing public
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library wi-fi and they go there to get customer support for their washing machine and it just so
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happens that they're connected to some online chat center to help them with customer service and some
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other person who works at that chat center and india is connected to a a dangerous organization
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there are so many opportunities for people who have no intention to even uh subject themselves to this
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spying even a lot of email accounts of the data servers or the data the servers for a lot of email
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services and for some of the search engines are globalized and so you may just be checking your
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email account and the server is now routed through another country and that makes every bit of
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collection on that email account permissible once it's expanded i'm also understanding that that
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chairman turner will be offering an amendment to expand the scope of faiza to have anything to do
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with narcotics or the narcotics trade uh what's your perspective on that amendment well i think again
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it's the question of what is the purpose of the collection of this database and if you begin with
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that origin then you generally you turn it into a generalized uh surveillance tool to uh to monitor a
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particular form of criminal activity and domestically you've violated the essence of that uh firm wall
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that's described and and i i just think i just think it can be abused right and left yeah i mean
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no one is sympathetic to drug dealers but at the same time if you're going to get rid of the fourth
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amendment in the digital atmosphere for drug dealers why not just get rid of the fourth amendment
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altogether in narcotics cases like there there's a reason we believe these things and i'm worried that
00:24:54.560
we're bifurcating our rights from irl to our digital existence 100 you look at look there are all kinds of
00:25:02.020
heinous crimes i mean why not go after pedophiles i mean why subject that to the fourth amendment that's
00:25:06.500
a horrible crime so uh they're still protected by the fourth amendment uh against uh unlawful search
00:25:12.660
and seizure and and so i've got a bill to address the problem they say that they want to address
00:25:18.120
which would escalate collection on cartels to a tier one threat so you could collect intelligence on them
00:25:23.860
the same way we were collecting on al-qaeda or isis or north korea or iran they would be a true enemy of
00:25:32.000
our country and the cartels are the cartels control the black market in america largely for the black
00:25:37.920
market drugs but also sex trafficking human trafficking labor trafficking all the smuggling across the border
00:25:44.200
of all kinds of things and uh and a lot of the money laundering is done facilitated by these guys
00:25:50.200
so you could already do that under existing authorities if you wanted to uh we can't get
00:25:57.000
them to go after the cartels and prioritize it we can't get them to do it while you're not going to
00:26:01.260
the top of the food chain to the cartels and using the powers you have to do that in a legitimate way
00:26:05.640
they want to open up this vast new repository of searchable data against americans for whatever
00:26:11.680
crimes they may be involved that involved with it that turn out to be narcotics yeah well i mean i i think
00:26:16.720
about just the innocent person who maybe they they bought a house that had been used improperly in
00:26:21.940
some time past and all of a sudden they have no fourth amendment protections based on a review of
00:26:26.900
all of their their digital communications um it could truly be innocent people that could be caught in
00:26:31.780
this so you know warren you really are one of the recognized experts on the stuff you have been since i
00:26:36.280
got to congress when i got here i thought the fbi were the good guys and and we've seen uh we've seen
00:26:42.820
a lot of good there but we've also seen a lot of bad uh if the way this shakes out is that we don't
00:26:48.900
get a vote on the important fourth amendment protections but there is a vote authorized on
00:26:54.180
these expansions wi-fi and narcotics and assuming those were to pass like do you think that that our
00:27:01.660
liberties would be more protected under the current system or under a system contemplated by
00:27:07.300
uh the base bill as amended with these expansions of fisa authorities i mean why would we be expanding
00:27:13.980
something that's already abused and look uh there are ways to do this that are different like i said
00:27:19.460
you could focus on the cartels and collect against the cartels if you like and you know the idea that
00:27:25.060
we would allow something that is known to be abused to continue to exist without real reform
00:27:32.260
and let's face it uh if it passes the way that you just stated it's simply a placebo it's say oh i took
00:27:39.880
medicine it's supposed to be better no it has no effect it's worse than not taking medicine you're
00:27:46.180
wasting your time taking something because it gives people the cover to say oh i did something no what you
00:27:52.360
did is actually make your condition worse because you didn't even treat the underlying problem which is
00:27:57.820
the abuse by these agencies of authorities that they were trusted with what happened to mike johnson
00:28:03.740
i mean i never would have thought we would have gotten here dan we've been on the judiciary committee
00:28:07.520
with mike johnson he sat next to me for seven years on on that committee frankly mike johnson makes
00:28:12.940
the arguments that we've made in this discussion probably better than we do yeah in in debate when he
00:28:19.340
has the opportunity to question senior officials at doj or fbi he often focused as a committee member
00:28:26.120
on fisa and on fisa abuses and i told the speaker my friend that we made him speaker so that the
00:28:33.300
speakership would be more like mike johnson we didn't make mike johnson speaker so that mike johnson would
00:28:38.880
be more like the speakership and and unfortunately on this issue we've seen the speaker make 180 degree
00:28:46.020
reversal and if what he has encountered from an information standpoint as speaker was so persuasive
00:28:52.720
that it would cause him to make a reversal then i would think he would be obligated to convince his
00:28:58.060
colleagues from the judiciary committee why and i have not been drawn into any of that discussion i
00:29:03.200
don't know you have if you have but as we look at our friend who was our brother in arms on these
00:29:08.480
things now wearing the jersey of the other side what do you attribute that to um i guess the power of
00:29:15.200
the dc cartel i it is very it's disheartening you know a lot of number of us have been sympathetic to
00:29:22.760
speaker johnson taking on uh that role in midstream a lot of things that already been decided in terms
00:29:30.200
of spending bills and so forth that kind of left him with not much maneuvering room and so if more
00:29:35.740
bad stuff on spending had to come through like the mini bus there's some sympathy there it's hard to
00:29:41.080
have a lot of sympathy for this one and i'm i fear that it really uh jeopardizes his um uh his his
00:29:50.000
support out in the country among conservatives who are counting on him as a conservative beginning to
00:29:56.000
change this place it's disheartening to me um i i don't i i don't understand it i mean i know what
00:30:03.320
mike johnson has always thought and to your point i mentioned earlier they take us down the skiff and sort
00:30:09.660
of do these dog and punishes they're not persuasive if you're a critical thinker uh they are not
00:30:14.920
persuasive in fact as it begins sort of being clear that it's not persuasive mike turner sort
00:30:19.700
of takes over and keeps talking until everybody falls asleep and so we know what those briefings
00:30:25.820
have been if if mike johnson has gotten some double secret briefing that has turned him around as you
00:30:32.160
say maybe they can't give that briefing in all of its content to all members of congress because it
00:30:37.940
would risk sources or uh or methods or the like but they're bound to be able to do better than the
00:30:45.340
briefings that you and i have received they're bound to be able to do better and and i'm just not seeing
00:30:50.880
that this government can't operate predicated on secret information of eight people yeah plus maybe
00:30:59.040
the president that can't that can't happen um and uh so i i just uh i i don't it's it's inexplicable
00:31:07.920
that he's uh taking the position that he is under all those circumstances as i explained yeah i final
00:31:13.260
question on this uh to you warren you've talked to more members than probably anybody on the democrat
00:31:18.960
side on the republican side what arguments move people what arguments get folks more on our side
00:31:25.560
uh of of supporting civil liberties because we've seen from chairman turner and the intel community
00:31:32.060
when they talk about the open border and the threat of isis that seems to motivate people to uh i think
00:31:38.340
abandon the position that the three of us hold so what what's our best argument well i think the
00:31:43.280
the base premise is when you personalize it and you talk to people about you know let's take a look at
00:31:49.340
your browser history or your amazon account you know we all like we go let's say most everybody's
00:31:55.140
probably gone to amazon they bought something we like when we go to amazon and they kind of know us
00:32:00.100
and they say oh well since you bought this or read that you might want to look at this that's helpful
00:32:04.680
but they shouldn't be able to sell that information to somebody else without our consent without our
00:32:10.960
informed consent not some weaseley five point font over 400 pages but specifically no they could say
00:32:18.660
how many of you know whatever book uh you know firebrand has sold but they can't say whether warren
00:32:24.940
and dan bought firebrand you know and that's where it becomes personal and yeah you you might need to
00:32:32.040
know that for a legitimate purpose as a law enforcement agent and if you need to know that
00:32:37.140
about a foreigner that's probably fine but if you need to know it about an american citizen there's a
00:32:42.280
process it's it's well established and it was so important that it was made our fourth amendment
00:32:48.180
and it's held up by jurisprudence and the disappointing thing is not just that the executive
00:32:53.360
branch is abusing this authority or that the courts article three uh courts haven't held that it's
00:33:00.260
unconstitutional because it is it's that our own body hasn't done our duty which we swore to do
00:33:07.440
to support and defend this constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic and i will tell you
00:33:12.880
one of the best speeches for people to look back to is dwight eisenhower's fail world address
00:33:17.440
and he cautioned against two things one is the military industrial complex and the scientific
00:33:24.180
technical elite you think about the growth of the military police state and you think about like
00:33:29.300
covid the technical elite and why did he caution against them because he believed that they would
00:33:35.180
potentially put their own interests and the truth at odds with the american interest and
00:33:41.080
i think it was somewhat prophetic and i think the challenge for our time is to get a government
00:33:47.080
that once again is small enough to fit back in the constitution you know this freedom's been
00:33:51.560
surrendered it's rarely reclaimed and if we don't do it it's not going to be we have to make that demand
00:33:57.140
no great great point to end our discussion on these spying authorities on next week i expect that
00:34:04.540
we'll be facing a ukraine bill of some kind and i recall one of the high watermarks for those of us who
00:34:10.620
really adhere to an america first perspective was your legislation warren that said before sending
00:34:16.180
more money to ukraine we should at least see a plan we should at least have like reduced to writing
00:34:21.900
any plan from the administration that defines victory or that states our objectives and uh you know
00:34:30.180
that has really morphed now into a uniparty desire to send funds without those things so what do you
00:34:38.080
expect is coming on ukraine how are you going to look at it through the lens of kind of what were
00:34:42.600
your your demands of uh of folks previously yeah i think there's like 10 of us that have not voted
00:34:48.180
for a dime for ukraine probably 30 of us are right here and uh if you look at it um you know rationally
00:34:56.260
if until you tell me the mission what is it you're trying to accomplish how could i possibly tell you
00:35:01.100
what resources i would support giving you and when you look back like i found that when the state
00:35:08.320
department was pushing to do this endless war in afghanistan they changed the mission in 2004 from
00:35:15.080
going after bin laden and the terrorists that attacked us on 9-11 to nation building in afghanistan
00:35:20.920
and there was an op-ed in the washington post by this uh envoy uh that the state department
00:35:27.140
appointed and he said as much as it takes as long as it takes where have we heard that for that is
00:35:32.420
what they say the mission is in in ukraine well as much as it takes as long as it takes to do what
00:35:38.680
they never get around to defining it and that was the whole point uh we did get 129 people we went
00:35:44.960
from 10 to last summer we got to 129 and i suspect we'll do better this time even amongst republicans and
00:35:52.440
so i hope that we can expect some outcome but look there's clear bipartisan support for more wars in
00:35:58.460
more places uh they're more committed to funding ukraine so i think the speaker is going to move
00:36:03.940
another omnibus essentially uh that funds ukraine funds israel funds the pacific and fails to do
00:36:11.820
anything about defending america and what i've asked them to do is if you feel that you have to put
00:36:16.260
something on the floor give us one rule bill that requires a recorded vote four separate recorded
00:36:22.320
votes one to defend ukraine one to defend israel one to defend pacific but a fourth one to defend
00:36:29.800
america and the sad reality of where we're at this congress is the vote that would get the lowest
00:36:34.740
total and may not even pass is the bill to defend america it's it's um so reflective of a loss of focus
00:36:43.840
it seems you know that you talked about what people are saying out there and and i don't know what
00:36:48.060
you guys are hearing but that's another one on which i i mean every once in a while someone who's got
00:36:53.520
uh an unusual perspective or a particular interest in ukraine will come up and and and say they want
00:37:00.340
that but it's overwhelmingly the other way and it is another uh example of the uh of mike johnson
00:37:10.300
totally reversing course on something he he pledged so we you know he married up remember a number of us
00:37:17.000
were offended at the prospect that uh we'd we have we have to trade off ukraine funding to get a
00:37:25.280
complete border protection package in the united states but now it's the the u.s border that's going
00:37:31.820
to be apparently thrown aside in order to just do ukraine and these other uh other foreign aid matters
00:37:39.460
unpaid for uh more money borrowed from china to uh to do that and i you know what it what it leaves
00:37:48.660
you wondering about is what is the republican voter how do you motivate the republican voter to send a
00:37:53.020
republican majority back to congress and i think it may be sufficient but the but the only answer that
00:37:59.280
i can think of at this point is that donald trump needs to get elected president and we can't afford
00:38:04.500
for him to be bedeviled by a hakeem jeffrey's house of representatives but there's not much else
00:38:10.300
left and i i don't i think that's unforgivable i i don't know how the folks where i come from
00:38:16.340
and where i have the opportunities to talk about it always confront me with the you guys should shut
00:38:22.340
her down until they fix the border yeah i'm i'm not a cheerleader for shutdowns i'm not and i don't
00:38:28.700
think any of us are but we also have to understand leverage and i think that the great sin of our
00:38:34.000
majority has been the misunderstanding of how to utilize that leverage for some of the outcomes
00:38:38.580
we're seeking warren you've also been one of the leaders on war powers uh you talked about the
00:38:43.760
co-mingling of this ukraine issue with israel with what's going on in the pacific uh reports now are that
00:38:49.940
we're going to be using our united states military to build a floating barge off the coast of gaza do you
00:38:55.960
worry that we're setting ourselves up for some sort of gulf of tonkin moment where we're creating a
00:39:00.660
soft target in an environment where we can't really control the conditions to ensure people's safety
00:39:05.920
yeah i mean you know the sad reality is this wouldn't be the first time america funded both
00:39:10.560
sides of a war in the middle east actually usually we do yeah so look joe biden wants to have it both
00:39:16.620
ways and say i'm for israel but i'm also for hamas uh putting a port into gaza i would love to see
00:39:24.120
the classified briefing where there's some rational reason to do that that it's crazy uh that we're
00:39:29.920
going to put a port into gaza they still have american hostages let alone over a hundred israeli
00:39:34.400
hostages so the the the leadership in gaza hamas could end the fighting by simply giving up the
00:39:42.220
hostages and surrendering the people responsible for the 10-7 massacre and instead of uniting behind
00:39:48.160
our ally israel or frankly sending them more american tax dollars that the biden administration
00:39:53.560
will simply use as leverage to try to get parliamentary elections according to chuck
00:39:59.040
schumer to force bb out or you know to say well let's enter into a two-state solution and reward
00:40:05.380
the attackers of 10-7 nothing the biden administration is doing on foreign policy is coherent
00:40:11.240
if you're going to put american interests first so you know dan i think you're right but i think you do
00:40:16.280
need to force a debate so that you at least consider issues separately instead of in a giant omnibus
00:40:22.280
fashion we are to have single subject bills particularly related to this issue and for the
00:40:27.260
reasons you just identified these conflicts are so fundamentally different you've got great power
00:40:31.900
competition in the pacific you've got largely an urban war going on in gaza and then in uh in europe
00:40:40.240
you've got a massive power up against uh ukraine and i worry you know there you you could see the
00:40:46.480
ukrainians run out of men before they run out of bullets you know dan this this nuance that
00:40:51.160
warren's described in terms of how we ought to proceed forward do you think that can lead to
00:40:55.900
better outcomes and better decisions or do we sort of get to the same place of funding all of it
00:41:00.680
just in smaller bites rather than than one big bill well i mean and when you've seen the willingness
00:41:05.660
of the speaker and other republicans to depart from you know views that you know it's almost amazing
00:41:14.460
they'd be willing to go to voters with what they're already doing i don't know that segregating
00:41:19.240
out individual votes will do anything more than perhaps create a record for the future but i don't
00:41:24.160
know that it's going to actually bring any discipline to the decision making of the republican conference
00:41:29.360
in the house well we appreciate you both joining us uh this evening we've got votes in just a few
00:41:34.340
moments and so we've got to head back to capitol hill and if you're still watching and haven't
00:41:38.540
gotten out the sharp blade in the warm bath we appreciate it and i hope that you'll leave us a five
00:41:43.600
star rating on your listening platform of choice and make sure you share this content it's important that you
00:41:48.600
know the details and the specific votes that are happening and even more important it's important
00:41:53.400
you know what motivates those votes why certain things come under consideration and certain things
00:41:58.960
don't and that drives our choices here will be mine i will vote against the rule to proceed on the
00:42:04.900
fisa bill if that rule does not allow us to have a vote on the fourth amendment is not not for sale act
00:42:10.580
by congressman davidson and congresswoman lofgren and if it instead of doing that creates all these votes
00:42:16.300
to expand the authorities that have been violated count on me to vote against proceeding onto that
00:42:21.820
legislation unless we at least have the opportunity to get votes on the things that will fix the problem
00:42:27.200
if speaker johnson is unwilling to fix fisa we are left wondering what he is indeed willing to fix
00:42:34.140
we didn't fix the budget we didn't fix the border and now the very authorities that we saw
00:42:40.680
weaponized against president trump are are getting enhancements rather than the reforms that are so
00:42:46.260
desperately needed we'll keep fighting i'm grateful to my friends make sure that you follow them we've
00:42:51.740
got their information on the screen and we'll be back soon roll the credits