Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican, dropped the proverbial hammer on FBI Director Christopher Wray during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that was held on Tuesday after he refused to answer questions concerning the abuse of a controversial surveillance tool. By the way, after the whole incident with former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband, am I still allowed to say “drop the hammer” or is it too soon?
During the hearing, Lee asked the FBI director a series of questions about alleged and hypothetical examples of potential abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, wanting to know if, any these situations, the agency would take away security clearances or fire agents who were involved in violations.
“I don’t know that I can speak to specific instances, but what I can tell you and I think this is important to this exchange is that all the instances you just listed off all involve conduct that occurred before the reforms that we put in place,” Wray responded.
.@FBI, it's supposed to be hard for the government to spy on Americans.
That's why we have a Constitution. pic.twitter.com/28F3iOzZIR
— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) December 5, 2023
“I have been on this committee for 13 years. During the entirety … I have expressed concerns to FBI directors appointed by presidents of both political parties and three different presidential administrations,” Lee said in response to Wray. “Every darn one of them has told me the same thing: ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ve got this taken care of, we’ve got new procedures. It’s going to be different now.’ It’s never different. You haven’t changed. And you keep referring to these … new procedures. We haven’t seen that, we’re not even allowed to have access to it, and we have absolutely no reason to trust you because you haven’t behaved in a manner that is trustworthy.”
According to a transparency report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the government used FISA Section 702 in 2021 to conduct millions of warrantless backdoor searches. That is not a good look, my friends. As if we needed even more reasons not to trust the FBI. These guys are definitely not batting a thousands are they?
“You can’t even as we sit here tell me that people who intentionally, knowingly, deliberately violated the civil rights of American citizens that they were fired or that they had their security clearance stripped,” Lee added.
via The Daily Caller:
Lee is part of a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers that introduced the Government Surveillance Reform Act in November, which reforms FISA Section 702, ending warrantless searches on Americans. The legislation’s objective is to “reauthorize and reform Section 702,” as well as safeguard Americans’ rights while keeping the tool’s important surveillance authorities, according to an advisory on Democratic Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden’s website.
At the end of the day, the FBI needs to be held accountable for all of the instances of overreach it has committed against the American public. It’s become obvious that the federal law enforcement apparatus is just a weapon for the progressive deep state, looking to force the general population to comply with the left-wing agenda through the use of intimidation tactics.
Enough is enough.
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