House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has asked Democratic leaders to hold off on putting a bill on the floor to renew a trio of expired surveillance tools, according to lawmakers and aides, raising new doubts about whether Congress can get the measure over the finish line this week.
Democratic leadership has yet to make a decision on the request. But there is concern in both parties that the bill’s support will crater following the addition of new amendments and last-minute opposition from President Donald Trump.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer will have to make the decision in a matter of hours, as the surveillance bill is due to be on the House floor Wednesday.
Aides to Pelosi and Hoyer did not immediately return a request for comment on the fate of the FISA bill Tuesday evening.
McCarthy’s push to delay the bill — which was crafted by Attorney General William Barr and Trump’s top conservative allies, and has already ping-ponged between the two chambers — came not long after Trump encouraged House Republicans to tank the legislation Tuesday evening.
“I hope all Republican House Members vote NO on FISA until such time as our Country is able to determine how and why the greatest political, criminal, and subversive scandal in USA history took place!” Trump tweeted.
Trump has a history of threatening to blow up the FISA reauthorization vote this year, venting angrily about abuses of the FISA process by FBI officials during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump has asserted without evidence that former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden — the presumptive Democratic nominee — were involved in an illegal effort to “spy” on his campaign.
The House is set to be in session Wednesday for the first time in 10 days. Voting will take place under a controversial new House rule that allows proxy voting on the floor. McCarthy and other GOP lawmakers are already suing over that.
The abrupt collapse of FISA talks was exacerbated by a late-developing rift among Democrats as well. The House reached an apparent breakthrough last week when Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) secured a vote on an amendment intended to ban the government from accessing the web browsing history of Ameircans using a provision of FISA. Lofgren’s amendment, introduced with Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), closely mirrored language that failed by a single vote in the Senate earlier this month, offered by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
But a change negotiated by Lofgren and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff appeared to rankle Wyden. Just hours after he praised the apparent agreement in the House, Wyden lashed out at Schiff in a statement, accusing him of undermining the original language of his proposal and calling on lawmakers to reject it — as well as the entire FISA reauthorization. It’s unclear why Wyden viewed Schiff’s changes as a non-starter.
“It is now clear that there is no agreement with the House Intelligence Committee to enact true protections for Americans’ rights against dragnet collection of online activity,” Wyden said in a statement.
Schiff indicated in an earlier statement that his talks with Lofgren produced “an agreement on modifications” to the Wyden proposal, which was also bipartisan. The language limited Wyden’s proposed protections to “U.S. persons,” which aides indicated would ensure the FBI could continue to collect web browsing information from foreign targets, such as terrorists or intelligence agents.
Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.