The FISA Bill
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
180.57819
Summary
The FBI has been spying on Donald Trump for years, but no one has ever been charged for it. Now that we know it actually happened, what will happen to the agencies involved? What will they do now that they ve been exposed? And what will the Republican Party do in response to this? What can they do to rein in these agencies? What should they do in the wake of this revelation? What are the lessons we can learn from this? And why should we celebrate this victory for Donald Trump and the American people, who were wronged by the intelligence agencies for years by the Democratic Party and the media? All of these questions and more will be answered in this episode of Conspiracy Theories, hosted by Alex Castellanos and John Avlon. Subscribe to our new podcast, The Avlon Report, wherever you get your podcasts, to get the latest conspiracies and conspiracies. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Like, comment and tell a friend about what's going on in your favorite podcast episode of CRTV or GMAIL. Subscribe to CRTV.TV Subscribe on Podchaser Radio - use the promo code CRTV at CRTV_TV at sign up for a chance to win a FREE ad-free VIP membership! and CRTV is giving out a discount code called CRTVPROMO at checkout to receive $5 and receive 20% off your first month of a new CRTV PRIVATE membership plan when you enter CRTV gets a new ad-only version of CRITED. CRTV PROACTIVATED in the CRTV - CRITED? CRITED at CRITED PRODCASTLEPRODCAST! CRODER PRODUCYER PROMO is giving CRITED is giving you an ad-FREE PRODOCORY is giving a FREE PRODOGAILER FRIENDS get $5,000 and CREDIBLE VOTING PRACTICALLY GET $5 OFF YOUR FIRST MONTH AND VIP PRIVODY AND VIP VIP SUPPORTING CRITED VOTORISTS GET $10 OFF THE FAST FOLLOWING CREDITSORRY PROMOTION AND VIPILER IS A SUBSCRIBE TO CHECK OUT CRITED, VIPILARY IS A FRIEND WILL BE REVIEW AND PATRIOTS BUY A VOTER IS PROGRAM WITH VIP SUPPORTED INCLUOR IS AVAILABLE?
Transcript
00:00:00.000
A few years ago, we learned conclusively that, in fact, the FBI and the federal intel agencies,
00:00:16.940
the dozen or more federal intel agencies we have for some reason, had been working secretly
00:00:21.800
against Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Trump had whispered about this, then shouted
00:00:26.160
about it, was roundly denounced as a conspiracy nut, a lunatic. But in the end, he was vindicated.
00:00:32.060
It was true. These agencies spied on Trump and they leaked some of what they'd learned
00:00:36.060
to the media, which used it against Trump. Then these agencies concocted false stories
00:00:41.020
about Trump. They tried to crush Trump completely in 2016 and then for the entire course of his
00:00:46.580
presidency. Then they did the same thing in 2020 during the presidential election, and
00:00:51.320
they're doing it still. They're trying to put him in prison for the rest of his life.
00:00:54.640
So if you take three steps back, what you have here is what we're seeing now. For the
00:01:01.160
third time in three consecutive cycles, secretive federal agencies are trying to rig our presidential
00:01:07.660
election. This is what the Democrats refer to as democracy, and they're trying to defend
00:01:12.340
it. But of course, it's the opposite of democracy. It's in fact the end of democracy in any semblance
00:01:18.560
of a constitutional republic we ever had. If you have a secret police force threatening people,
00:01:23.800
spying on them and working secretly the levers of political power, then you don't have a
00:01:30.940
democracy. You have no control over really anything as a voter. So if there's one thing
00:01:36.380
the Republican Party, the opposition party should be doing in response to this right now, it's
00:01:41.600
fighting back against this dissent into totalitarianism. They should be working to return freedom and
00:01:46.740
democracy to the country. They should defend the constitution. They should rein in these agencies,
00:01:51.580
Washington secret police. But you will not be surprised to learn they've been busy doing just
00:01:56.860
the opposite. So if you're wondering why no one has gone to prison for any of this now that we know
00:02:02.500
it actually happened, well, the reason is in part a law called FISA, the Foreign Intelligence
00:02:06.660
Surveillance Act. It's been around a long time. Teddy Kennedy first proposed it, by the way, back in the
00:02:12.000
mid-1970s. And that law allows the federal government to spy without a warrant on foreigners outside the
00:02:17.940
borders of the country. And the idea is bad people are doing bad things against us. We need to know
00:02:22.160
what they are. And we can't bother to go to a court to get a warrant every time we want to know.
00:02:26.580
But it will never be used against American citizens. Well, of course, now that we know
00:02:30.000
it has been at scale. But that law, FISA, has made it possible. So that law is now up for
00:02:38.180
reauthorization in the House of Representatives. And amazingly, the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson
00:02:44.160
of Louisiana, has spent the last couple of weeks doing all he can to get that law reauthorized.
00:02:50.880
In other words, to allow the federal agencies to continue to spy upon and punish people who disagree
00:02:59.820
with him. In other words, Mike Johnson's own party, Republicans, Trump voters. Mike Johnson has
00:03:04.900
been working to do that. And that effort failed today because members of Congress heard from their
00:03:09.400
constituents or came to their senses, saw the truth in a dream. Whatever happened, they stopped Mike
00:03:14.540
Johnson from doing that for the moment. So that's a good thing. And you ought to be celebrating it,
00:03:20.480
even if you didn't know it was happening. And a lot of people didn't because it got very little media
00:03:24.140
coverage. But of course, this is a temporary victory. Like all bad things, like that chlamydia you
00:03:31.200
got in a hot tub in Cabo in college, it will come back. This attempt to spy on you, an American
00:03:38.140
citizen without a warrant because you've been politically disobedient. Why will it come back?
00:03:42.360
Because it's what they really care about. And so before it does come back, it's worth just a very
00:03:47.200
quick autopsy on what just happened. What do we just see so we can learn a couple of important lessons?
00:03:53.560
And the first lesson we're going to learn is that a lot of powerful people in the Congress
00:03:57.680
are liars. They lie without shame, in fact, with pride. And they do so at the behest of,
00:04:06.860
or because of blackmail instituted by the intel agencies. And at the head of that list would be
00:04:13.880
the chairman of the House Intel Committee, Mike Turner of Ohio. We're going to play you a clip
00:04:20.060
from Mike Turner of Ohio, seeing exactly the opposite of what is true. Here is Mike Turner
00:04:25.000
reassuring you that FISA would never, under the FISA law, the U.S. government would never be allowed to
00:04:31.000
spy on you without a warrant because that's unconstitutional. It's never happened. It never
00:04:33.780
will happen. And if you think otherwise, you're probably one of those UFO-believing nutjobs
00:04:37.680
who ought to stop doing ayahuasca. Here's House Intel Committee, pawn of the intel agencies,
00:04:45.780
They are, we're not surveilling foreigners in the United States. We're not surveilling
00:04:50.300
Americans in the United States. Those individuals who say that this is a warrantless search of
00:04:54.580
Americans' data are just not telling the truth. These are foreigners abroad. They're a select
00:04:59.600
group of individuals who are a national security threat. If you're an American and you're
00:05:03.920
corresponding with ISIS, yes, if we're spying on ISIS, your communications are going to be captured.
00:05:10.800
You would want us to do that. All Americans would want us to try to make certain that we keep
00:05:15.060
ourselves safe from these terrorist, outside terrorist groups and organizations. We are not
00:05:19.360
spying on Americans. This is not a warrantless surveillance program. This is foreigners who are abroad
00:05:23.600
only. Every word of that, a lie. And we don't need to guess. And I, and I hate to use that pronoun,
00:05:30.720
but I specifically don't need to guess because that actually happened to me. The NSA broke into my text
00:05:35.700
messages, read them, passed them to news organizations in order to discredit me, and then admitted that
00:05:43.980
they did that, admitted that they spied on me. And they did it under FISA because I was daring to text
00:05:49.500
with a foreigner outside our borders. So Mike Turner knows that. He's the chairman of the intel
00:05:55.020
committee. He knows he's lying, but he's doing it anyway, because it's that important to preserve
00:06:00.560
that core power. If you have the power to spy on someone and then to leak the information that you
00:06:07.720
gather or manipulate it and then leak it in order to control that person, that's a major power. In fact,
00:06:12.320
that's a bigger power than any voter in this country has. And so he's acting on their behalf when he lies
00:06:16.880
to you. And so it shouldn't surprise you that they want to keep that power. And they want to keep it
00:06:23.460
so badly that over the last week, U.S. government officials did something that may not have precedent
00:06:28.720
in Washington. They lobbied members of Congress directly. They, in the words they used in Washington,
00:06:35.520
they whipped the bill. Officials from the Department of Justice called, among others, Chip Roy of Texas to
00:06:42.380
demand that he vote for FISA reauthorization. Imagine that. DOJ, Department of Justice,
00:06:48.560
the federal law enforcement agency called Chip Roy and said, you've got to do this.
00:06:55.720
Think about that. Is there any group in this country more powerful than the Department of Justice? They
00:07:00.000
can put you in jail and they've shown a willingness to do that. They could put kiddie porn on your computer.
00:07:05.400
They've probably done that too. And everybody who serves in Congress knows that. And everybody's
00:07:10.200
afraid of them, along with the CIA and NSA and a bunch of other three-letter agencies.
00:07:14.180
Members of Congress are afraid of them because they know the consequences of disobedience. And so for
00:07:19.700
them to call directly a member of Congress, they'd be like the FBI coming to your house on election day
00:07:24.620
and demanding that you vote for their designated candidate. And then having access to the record of
00:07:30.080
who you actually voted for, as they do in the Congress. Can you imagine? You'd be highly motivated to
00:07:35.580
vote for their candidate, wouldn't you? Yes, you would. So they're willing to do anything to get
00:07:42.940
this enshrined in law because it gives them legal cover to subvert democracy, which is their program,
00:07:47.960
of course. And everybody knows it. Mike Johnson knows it, but he's not telling his conference that,
00:07:53.560
his fellow Republicans. In a meeting today with his Republican conference on Capitol Hill,
00:07:58.160
Mike Johnson said, you must vote for this and you must vote for it because America hangs in the
00:08:02.280
balance. And if you had the intelligence that I've seen in my classified briefings, which you cannot
00:08:07.600
see, you would know that it's your moral responsibility to vote for this. And by the way,
00:08:12.500
if you don't vote for it, Americans will die. Johnson didn't mention that the FISA law warrantless
00:08:19.360
spying did not prevent 9-11 or the coal bombing or any major act of terror in the last 50 years,
00:08:26.800
almost 50 years that we've had it. No, I mean, it's ridiculous on its face, but why is Mike Johnson
00:08:31.040
saying this? Well, there are only two possible explanations. One is that he's just stupid and
00:08:36.780
doesn't know and believes his intel briefers. Every person who has spent any time in DC knows
00:08:42.300
the intel briefing, the classified intel briefing in the SCIF is merely a leash. It's a collar around
00:08:47.560
your neck connected to a chain. And the other hand is your handler from some federal agency with a black
00:08:54.240
budget whose total you can't know. Of course, it's a way to control you, giving you information that
00:08:59.320
you can't repeat to anyone else that you have no way of verifying and telling you that if you don't
00:09:03.220
go along with the program, Americans will die. Right. So he either doesn't know that that's the
00:09:08.680
way things actually work in DC. Oh, of course, Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. You want
00:09:13.920
to get America vaporized in a nuclear attack? Invade, et cetera, et cetera. Many precedents for this.
00:09:19.920
I mean, it's the oldest story there is. Either he doesn't know that or there's another agenda
00:09:25.020
we can't know for certain. But consider this. Mike Johnson has been speaking of their house
00:09:32.820
for not very long, just several months now. He got the job accidentally. And in the time that he's
00:09:37.640
had it, what have his priorities been? Well, there've been two big ones, two issues on which he's willing
00:09:42.020
to call his fellow Republicans into the room and say, you have to do this. The first one is Ukraine
00:09:47.620
funding. And he's done that again and again. Either we send another $60 billion to Ukraine or he implies
00:09:55.420
American soldiers will have to fight in Ukraine because we're going to prevent Putin from rolling
00:10:00.040
into San Antonio or whatever. Of course, all untrue. In fact, ridiculous. But that's what he said.
00:10:07.160
In effect, Ukraine funding has been his top priority. And his second this week was more warrantless
00:10:14.040
spying on Americans. Well, what's interesting is that those are also Joe Biden's top priorities.
00:10:21.180
Those are not the top priorities of Republican voters. They're not the top priorities of American
00:10:25.340
voters. Look at the public opinion polling. It's available on Google. No, those are Joe Biden's
00:10:30.400
priorities because both expand his power. So what's interesting is that the Republican Speaker of the
00:10:37.300
House shares those priorities, not closing the border. He didn't call his conference in to say,
00:10:41.940
shut down the border tomorrow because 70% of Americans are demanding that. And 100% of our
00:10:48.500
own voters are demanding that. And that will save this country from certain destruction. He didn't
00:10:53.040
say that. He said the number one thing we need to do is continue to have the legal right to spy
00:10:58.920
unconstitutionally on American citizens without bothering to get a warrant. And again, is it an accident
00:11:05.460
that's Joe Biden's top priority too after Ukraine, which he's still pushing? We'll let you decide.
00:11:12.300
But the bottom line is over time, people who don't live in Washington don't know the complexities
00:11:17.140
of the process who aren't impressed by Johnson's claim. I've only got a one seat majority. I have to
00:11:22.440
do this. People are looking at this cold with just the big facts available. We'll start to notice that
00:11:27.800
the priorities of one party mirror the priorities of the other party. And they may ask themselves two
00:11:33.020
questions. First, who's got my priorities top of mind? And second, why even bother with the Republican
00:11:43.260
party if all they're going to do is ratify what Joe Biden wants? And they may ask that question really