On the recordMarch 11, 2020
I appreciate my friend yielding to me, and I appreciate my colleague, Ms. Lofgren's comments. Any law that is based on a lie has a good chance of being a problem. The lie starts with the initial FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Yet, it is not foreign. Now, since I have been here, whether it is the PATRIOT Act or reauthorizing the FISA court, we are told: Look, American citizens have nothing to worry about because the only American citizen that gets caught up through the FISA court is somebody that is dealing with a known foreign terrorist or a known foreign organization engaged in terrorism. You know, just avoid dealing with terrorists, and you are going to be okay. The problem is, I keep hearing, this is a good first step. No, this isn't the first step. This is the last step, and as my friend Ms. Lofgren said, it doesn't go far enough. As my friend Michael Cloud said, under the current bill, they ignored the penalty for lying to the judge, which was a 5-year sentence. Now, under the new law, they can ignore an 8-year sentence. That doesn't really help preserve anybody's rights. This was not done in the committee. It did not have proper debate. The secret court had the bill pulled away from the full committee, so we couldn't debate it. We couldn't discuss it, and it was pulled into a secret negotiation that many of us were not part of.…
