At one point, House Speaker Mike Johnson wanted to add a warrant requirement to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a controversial spy program.
This is the same law used against President Trump in the Russiangate fraud case.
But now Chairman Johnson has flipped.
So what changed Johnson’s mind?
A one-time encounter with the deep state. That was it. see:
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‘Completely known’
Johnson previously acknowledged in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee that he witnessed all sorts of abuses by the FBI. But just one more encounter and you’ll be back in line.
“I encourage all members to attend the confidential briefing to hear everything and see for themselves to assess the situation for themselves,” Mr Johnson said on Thursday. “I think some opinions have shifted to both sides. But that’s part of the process. You must be fully informed.”
On Wednesday, 19 Republicans joined 209 Democrats to block reform of Section 702 of FISA, which allows U.S. intelligence agencies to collect texts, phone calls, emails and other electronic communications from foreign nationals abroad.
The problem is that Americans’ data was also captured in the past.
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pushback
Many were dissatisfied with Johnson’s explanation and still wanted a warrant requirement as required by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
Especially Edward Snowden. “This is a textbook case of a congressional arrest,” a prominent whistleblower told X. With one briefing, the intelligence community routinely transforms its most aggressive critics into its most tame cheerleaders.”
Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz said on his podcast: “I told my friend, the speaker, that we made him speaker so that the position would be more like Mike Johnson. We didn’t make Speaker Mike Johnson more like Speaker Mike Johnson.”
“We were on the Judiciary Committee with Mike Johnson. He sat next to me on that committee for seven years. Frankly speaking, Mike Johnson probably makes the arguments we made in this FISA debate better than we can,” Gaetz said. “If what he was exposed to as speaker from an intelligence standpoint was so compelling that he reversed course, I think he would have an obligation to persuade his colleagues on the Judiciary Committee.”
Former Republican congressman and current U.S. Senate candidate Justin Amash had an idea of his own.
Sharing Johnson’s comments about X, Amash wrote: “Translation: “When I was a member of the judiciary, I saw FBI abuses, hundreds of thousands of abuses. And when I became speaker, I received classified briefings from a different perspective. “They told me that if I didn’t support FISA, I would no longer be speaker.”
That seems to be how Washington works.
Matt Gaetz has a point. If the Republican Party backed Chairman Mike Johnson for a pushback against official Washington, why is the new Chairman moving on almost immediately?
Despite the media’s hyperbole about how Trump “controls” the Republican Party in Congress, he doesn’t hold a candle to the power of the deep state.
