President Donald Trump spent years railing against government surveillance powers that were weaponized against him — until military ambitions in the Middle East changed his tune.
The president is pushing for Congress to renew Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) tools that allow federal agencies to obtain countless text messages, phone calls and other personal information before an April 30 expiration date. Anti-deep state Republicans blocked Trump’s preferred legislation on Thursday that would have renewed the tools for five years. Trump’s no-strings-attached FISA support marks a major change in tone since he previously promoted reforms after federal probes found the FBI unlawfully spied on his 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump’s shift on the issue continues a post-9/11 pattern of American leaders using the specter of war or terror threats to justify invasive government power.
“Since 2001, there has been a bipartisan trend in which a president, perhaps once critical of government overreach and surveillance abuses, embraces and expands those powers once in office, invoking military necessity and national security as blanket justifications,” Stephen Perez, program and communications director for the FISA-critical group Restore the Fourth, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “In just two decades, the U.S. moved from a (imperfect) legal framework requiring warrants to access Americans’ sensitive data to one allowing the government to amass such information without any suspicion of wrongdoing, catalyzed by the PATRIOT Act, the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, and each subsequent reauthorization.”
“Trump’s own reversal, from “KILL FISA” in 2024 to now urging Republicans to “UNIFY” behind a clean reauthorization is itself a clear illustration of how surveillance power expands regardless of which party holds the White House, because the temptation to keep and use these tools always outweighs the principle of restraining them,” Perez said.
Republicans, Democrats and Fourth Amendment rights groups have expressed alarm at how FISA surveillance scoops up American citizens’ private information, receives approval through secret courts outside public view and has a legally fraught track record.
The White House declined to comment further on Trump’s stance to the DCNF.
Trump administration officials arranged a meeting with lawmakers in early February to promote FISA programs without changes, weeks before the U.S. and Israel launched military strikes in Iran, media outlet The Record reported. Trump revealed in Truth Social posts in March and April that he believed the surveillance system is needed to protect the military campaign and prevent terrorist attacks.
“The fact is, whether you like FISA or not, it is extremely important to our Military,” he said in March. “I have spoken to many Generals about this, and they consider it vital. Not one said, even tacitly, that they can do without it — especially right now with our brilliant Military Operation in Iran.” Trump emphasized in an April 15 post that he is “willing to risk the giving up of my Rights and Privileges as a Citizen” by reauthorizing FISA tools.
A Long Train Of Abuses
Federal agents used false information to secretly obtain a FISA court warrant and illegally wiretap former Trump 2016 campaign adviser Carter Page as part of its probe into false claims that Russia helped Trump win the presidency. The investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing by Page or the campaign.
Officials later revealed that the FBI relied on claims from a Hillary Clinton campaign operative to obtain the warrant despite knowing he might have been peddling Russian government disinformation.
Trump began making headlines in 2017 and 2018 for accusing the Obama administration of spying on him, speculating that FISA “may have been used” without claiming it for certain. He then reauthorized FISA Section 702 spying in 2018 over terrorism and cybercrime concerns. The renewal came a year before former Department of Justice Special Counsel John Durham began his four-year probe into FBI misconduct that made the Trump-related spying a national scandal.
In response to Durham’s findings, Trump became a vocal critic of the FISA surveillance system between the end of his first term and Biden’s — before once again supporting its renewal over the Iran war.
FISA Section 702, which addresses spying on foreign individuals, was not the legal tool designed for “domestic” spying that was used on his 2016 campaign, Trump’s post said in defense. However, the government often sweeps up Americans’ data while investigating foreigners under Section 702, presenting the same privacy concerns, according to the federal Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB).
“Americans’ communications captured through surveillance can include discussions of political and religious views, personal financial information, mental and physical health information, and other sensitive data,” the board said in a 2023 report. This can happen to U.S. citizens who are not suspected of crimes simply because they are “in contact with Section 702 [foreign] targets for business or
personal reasons,” according to the agency.
The FBI went beyond Section 702’s boundaries more than 287,000 times between 2020 and 2021 to spy on left-wing and right-wing protesters and other individuals, according to an unsealed 2022 FISA court ruling — a rare public glimpse of FISA court proceedings.
In one example of Section 702 abuse, a National Security Agency analyst was caught conducting two data searches on people they met on an online dating service, the PCLOB’s 2023 report said.
Reform-minded lawmakers in both parties are also expressing concern that growing artificial intelligence (AI) tech will speed up the government’s ability to sift through Americans’ data, the Daily Caller previously reported. Through growing technology, eager executive officials and lack of executive pushback, FISA “quietly became one of the most powerful warrantless surveillance instruments ever aimed, however ‘incidentally,’ at the American people,” Perez told the DCNF.
‘The Intelligence Community Assures Us’
Former President George W. Bush immediately approved widespread warrantless spying after 9/11 in the name of stopping terrorists, prompting legal challenges from the American Civil Liberties Union and some congressional backlash. Congress passed FISA Section 702 in 2008 to legalize much of the program, and an appeals court further normalized Bush’s expanded executive power by ruling in his favor in 2008.
Congress has since renewed FISA powers with little restriction after encouragement from national security hawks across the political aisles.
“We must not forget the lessons of 9/11,” former Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, a Biden appointee, told senators in 2023 while pushing for reauthorization. Olsen also worked in Bush’s DOJ and helped it convince Congress to pass Section 702 for the first time.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson also became a leading supporter of vast spying authorities despite indicating he once opposed them. He gave a tie-breaking vote in 2024 to both renew the FISA program until 2026 and expand its authority. Former President Joe Biden signed that legislation into law.
Johnson’s office referred the DCNF to his April 15 comments to reporters about 56 “reforms” in the 2024 bill, the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act. “The intelligence community assures us; we had CIA Director [John] Ratcliffe come speak … that the reforms that we did in 2024 are working — the 56 reforms,” Johnson said. “And so, I mean, that’s a really important factor in all this.”
House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio is another Trump-friendly GOP leader whose voting pattern on the issue has shifted. Jordan voted against Johnson’s 2024 FISA bill after an amendment requiring warrants for Americans’ data failed. But he told news outlet The Hill in March that the 56 reforms made the program safe enough to reauthorize for now.
Jordan’s office pointed the DCNF to Jordan’s other comments that referenced the Iran war and terrorist threats during a March radio interview. “If the commander in chief says we can go for a temporary extension of the current FISA, after all the improvements we’ve made over the last 10 years, I think we can live with a temporary extension and then look to continue to do reforms as we move forward,” Jordan said.
Critics on the right and left have called the 56 changes from 2024 shallow and procedural. Johnson’s bill also broadened the kinds of tech providers whom the government can force to hand over data.
Johnson told reporters at the time that classified intelligence briefings showed him “how important [FISA Section 702] is for national security” despite the FBI’s abuses. “It gave me a different perspective,” Johnson added, encouraging colleagues to attend similar briefings.
At the time, Johnson and Trump were not aligned on the issue.
“KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social before the vote.
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