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Was Donald Trump for the PATRIOT Act before he was against it? Later today, the House will vote on reauthorizing the controversial Section 702 of the law, which has come under fire for its potentially overbroad reach. Opponents of the current law have offered a “USA Rights” amendment to the bill aiming to curtail government surveillance authority and jurisdiction, which has picked up bipartisan support. Republican leadership opposes the USA Rights amendment, and at least as of yesterday, so did the Trump administration, which issued a statement urging the House to reject it and preserve 702 as is:
And that held up for … oh, twelve hours or so. This morning, Trump blamed Section 702 for the “discredited and phony” Steele dossier produced by Fusion GPS and other abuses with this message on his favorite platform:
That may complicate matters for the Section 702 renewal, which has already been delayed once. Privacy advocates have made a strong push to roll back 702, efforts led by both conservatives and liberals in both chambers of Congress:
Without some changes to 702, Rand Paul has threatened to filibuster the 702 renewal in the Senate:
Bear in mind that 702 reauthorization is a high priority not just for the intel community, but also for Trump’s own Department of Justice and its domestic counter-terrorism efforts. Until this morning, they probably figured that they could focus their resources on Capitol Hill to push it through. Now they may need to reconvince the commander in chief all over again. Otherwise, Trump’s broadside this morning will give political cover to the USA Rights amendment’s advocates, and might even spell trouble for Section 702 entirely. And so far, we don’t even know why Trump appears to have reversed himself, or at least the White House position which presumably got it from Trump. Is internal communication that bad, or is Trump that mercurial? Update: Fifty minutes later, the climb-down:
“Get smart”? It was looking more like KAOS this morning on Twitter. Trump appears to be arguing now that he’s already fixed the law, but that’s not possible. He might direct his administration to adhere to better discipline on unmasking, but unmasking is only a small part of the objections that prompted the USA Rights Amendment, and it doesn’t permanently solve even the unmasking issue. He’s given Paul and other privacy advocates plenty of steam for their amendment vote today, and now Mike Lee has pledged his support to Rand Paul to get it:
Update: “Disarray” …. or KAOS? Thanks to Trump’s tweets, the reauthorization might get pulled altogether:
That would be a huge mistake, says James Comey:
That’s probably not an endorsement the White House will cite today, though. Update: Pelosi says Ryan should check in with the president before putting 702 reauthorization up for a vote:
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Poster Comment:
McConnell and Ryan must be tearing their hair out. Too funny.
In the interim, Ryan managed to pull the House together enough to pass the bill. On to the Senate!
#1: Hondo68 To: Tooconservative, Amash, Civil Rights Champion Trump, Paul, vs the DC swamp, *Bill of Rights-Constitution* (#0)
Rand Paul & Justin Amash stand with President Trump against Pelosi, Ryan, and the Constitution hating D&R swamp dwellers.
Hondo68 posted on 2018-01-11 12:51:14 Reply Private Reply
#2: Tooconservative To: hondo68 (#1)
We move now to the Senate. Mike Lee was tweeting his support for Rand and his efforts to block this.
If Lee stands with Paul, McConnell can't pass it in the Senate without a number of Dem votes. That's a lot of bribes for McConnell to be forced to offer to Red-state Dems and others. And once it is known that the Turtle is tossing bribes around the Senate, all the hogs will be lining up at the trough.
Tooconservative posted on 2018-01-11 12:54:56 Reply Private Reply