House Speaker Mike Johnson once wanted to add a warrant requirement to the controversial spy program, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
This is the same law used against President Trump in the Russiagate hoax.
But now Speaker Johnson has taken things up a notch.
So what changed Johnson’s mind?
Just a meeting with the deep state. That’s all it took. Clock:
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‘Fully informed’
Johnson had previously admitted to witnessing all manner of abuses by the FBI during testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. But once again, it only took one meeting to get him back in line.
“I encourage all members to go to the confidential briefing and listen and see everything, so they can assess the situation for themselves,” Johnson said on Thursday. “I think some opinions have changed in both directions, but that’s part of the process. You must be fully informed.
On Wednesday, 19 Republicans joined 209 Democrats to block reforms to FISA Section 702, which allows U.S. intelligence to collect texts, phone calls, emails and other electronic communications from foreigners in foreign countries.
The problem is that Americans’ data has also been captured in the past.
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Reject
Many are not satisfied with Johnson’s explanation and still want a mandate, as required by the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.
Edward Snowden in particular. The famous whistleblower wrote in X: “This is a textbook case of Congressional capture. With a single briefing, intelligence agencies routinely transform their most strident critics into docile cheerleaders.”
Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz said on his podcast: “I told the speaker, my friend, that we made him speaker so that the speaker would be more like Mike Johnson. We didn’t create Mike Johnson as the speaker so that Mike Johnson would be more like the speaker.
“We were on the Judiciary Committee with Mike Johnson. He sat next to me for seven years on that committee. Frankly, Mike Johnson makes the arguments we’ve made in this case [FISA] discussion, probably better than us,” Gaetz said. “If what he found from an information point of view, as a rapporteur, was so convincing as to lead him to make a U-turn, I think he would be obliged to convince his colleagues on the Justice Commission.”
Former Republican congressman and current U.S. Senate candidate Justin Amash had his own opinion.
Sharing Johnson’s remarks on X, Amash wrote: “Translation: “When I was a member of the judiciary, I saw FBI abuses, hundreds of thousands of abuses. And then when I became speaker, I got the confidential briefing from a different perspective: They said if I didn’t support FISA, I wouldn’t be speaker much longer.”
This seems like the way Washington works.
Matt Gaetz is right. If Republicans supported Mike Johnson for president to push back against official Washington, why does the new president replace the establishment almost immediately?
For all the media hyperventilation about how Trump “controls” Republicans in Congress, it doesn’t hold a candle to the power of the deep state.
