A key Republican senator said Tuesday that lawmakers cannot trust the FBI on issues related to warrantless surveillance of Americans because the bureau will not detail its reforms or say whether it has punished violators.
Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Republican, ticked off to FBI Director Christopher A. Wray numerous instances of the FBI illegally using against Americans the nation's chief spying tool, citing findings from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Mr. Lee asked Mr. Wray at the hearing whether any of the FBI employees who conducted the illegal searches using powers granted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were terminated or had their security clearances stripped.
The Utah Republican also noted that in 2022 the FBI and other agencies searched Americans' communications over 200,000 times and just 16 searches were only based on evidence of an existing crime.
The FISA Court has approved rules to enable the FBI and other agencies to query the FISA database for Americans' communications, and FBI personnel can currently do these searches when they think information will return about foreign intelligence or evidence of a crime.
The Judiciary legislation caps how many people in each FBI field office and at FBI Headquarters who would be eligible to conduct those queries.
A working group led by Rep. Darin LaHood, Illinois Republican and a member of the House intelligence committee, released a plan that would restrict the number of FBI personnel who can authorize a query of a U.S. person and require the FBI to obtain a warrant to conduct a query on Americans if they are only seeking evidence of a crime.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/dec/5/mike-lee-grills-christopher-wray-over-fbi/
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