President Donald Trump moved the effective date of Bill Pulte’s appointment to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to June 19 as the Senate nears a decision on renewing NSA surveillance under Section 702 of FISA. Support and opposition to
When Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia was asked for years about whether a key National Security Agency surveillance program could be abused to spy on Americans, Warner dismissed the idea—coming out among centrist Democrats who argued the safeguards were real.
Last week, Warner voted with every Senate Democrat except Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman to oppose advancing the renewal of the NSA program authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The vote landed as lawmakers watched the program’s authorization approach its Friday expiration.
But the question inside the Capitol has increasingly been less about whether Section 702 should be renewed and more about who now controls the machinery behind it. President Donald Trump declined to back down after naming Bill Pulte—an unqualified housing official accused of misusing sensitive databases to pursue the president’s political vendettas—as the person to oversee the nation’s spy agencies.
Trump said Tuesday that he was moving up the effective date of Pulte’s appointment to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to June 19.
Sen. Ron Wyden. D-Ore. a longtime critic of Section 702 and a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. said Tuesday that reform efforts have drawn rare bipartisan support. “I have been doing this a while,” Wyden told The Intercept on Tuesday. “I am the longest serving member of SSCI in history, and I’ve never had this kind of bipartisan support.”.
Even so, Wyden said the fight over Pulte’s role won’t automatically deliver the change he wants. Reformers are pressing for legal limits that would curb how analysts search through Americans’ communications.
Section 702 allows the FBI and other agencies, including ODNI, to pore through Americans’ communications collected abroad without a warrant. Ostensibly, safeguards are meant to prevent agencies from targeting specific Americans, but courts have repeatedly found widespread violations of those rules.
For years. civil liberties advocates have demanded a warrant requirement that would require the FBI and other agencies to go to a judge before reading through Americans’ communications. Warner and other defenders of Section 702 have argued that such a requirement would create insurmountable logistical obstacles for agents trying to prevent terror attacks. Warner has long allied with Republicans to push back on the warrant proposal.
The timing has sharpened the pressure. A bipartisan coalition of civil liberties supporters in Congress has been blocking a long-term reauthorization of Section 702 since Congress passed a short-term, 45-day extension of the program in April.
In recent weeks. Warner helped craft what was billed as a compromise proposal aimed at winning over enough critics to allow a long-term renewal. That plan unraveled after Trump said on June 3 that he would appoint Pulte to serve as temporary director of national intelligence. to replace departing chief Tulsi Gabbard.
The announcement immediately soured centrist Democrats’ efforts to secure passage of a FISA extension.
Pulte is a private equity firm founder with a net worth of at least $190 million. He became a minor internet celebrity for giving away money on Twitter. Trump last year also appointed him as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chair of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
In those roles, Pulte helped launch housing fraud probes of Trump’s political opponents, including Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James. The Government Accountability Office is investigating Pulte for allegedly misusing confidential government databases for information on the president’s foes.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., described the politics playing out as negotiations were moving.
“There were already sensitive negotiations that were ongoing,” Jeffries told PBS NewsHour on Tuesday. “And then Donald Trump chose to elevate this partisan political hack. Bill Pulte. into this position of great sensitivity. effectively tossing a hand grenade in the midst of these negotiations as we approach the deadline to potentially renew surveillance authority.”.
The compromise legislation drafted around Warner had also failed to satisfy many privacy advocates even before Pulte entered the picture. Elizabeth Goitein. senior director of the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice. said the changes to the law mostly added layers of internal oversight that would not stop a determined abuser of the spying powers.
“The members who drafted this legislation, basically Trump allies plus Sen. Warner — all longtime opponents of 702 reform who are in complete alignment with each other on the fundamental points of debate — they were the members who drafted the legislation. ” Goitein said on a conference call Tuesday. “Members who support reform were shut out.”.
The Democratic dispute has not only been legal—it has been personal, and now, procedural. While Warner and other Democratic supporters of Section 702 voted against putting its renewal on the Senate agenda last week. the opposition boiled down to a repudiation of Pulte rather than a sudden change of heart on the program.
Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, put the divide in blunt terms. “Pulte is the major stumbling block for people like myself and Mark Warner. who are generally supportive because of the importance of the program. ” King told The Intercept on Tuesday. “But we can’t in good conscience hand the keys to the country’s most significant car to a teenager.”.
Republicans have offered their own split-screen view. Sen. James Lankford. R-Okla. who serves on the Intelligence Committee. dismissed the significance of Pulte’s appointment. saying. “He’s an interim guy. he’ll be there for weeks to a couple months. so I don’t understand why it’s a big issue anyway.”.
At the same time, a faction of Republican members with libertarian tendencies supports adding a warrant requirement.
Privacy advocates remain wary of the appointment itself, but they are looking at expiration dates as leverage. They were heartened on Tuesday when Jeffries pressed his argument for overhauling the law.
“Donald Trump needs to withdraw his decision to elevate Bill Pulte,” Jeffries said on PBS. “That’s a starting point, not an ending point. And then we can see if we can responsibly get to a place where there are enough reforms built into the law to provide guardrails and protect the American people.”
The reform proposals Wyden wants are sweeping. Wyden wants a warrant requirement not only for searches of NSA data, but also for searches of sensitive information available on the open market, such as location tracking from commercial data brokers.
Wyden said he senses a rare opening for those changes, pointing to support from Republicans including Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. “Both of us have bipartisan bills with almost all of the provisions we’re talking about,” Wyden said.
The immediate deadline makes the stakes feel close and personal—especially as the Senate weighs whether to move forward with renewing surveillance that reaches communications collected abroad. With Trump setting Pulte’s effective start date for June 19 and the program set to expire Friday. the politics of trust—who is trusted to handle these powers—has become inseparable from the legal fight over what those powers should allow.
Bill Pulte Office of the Director of National Intelligence ODNI Section 702 FISA NSA Mark Warner Ron Wyden Hakeem Jeffries Tulsi Gabbard Angus King Mike Lee James Lankford privacy advocates warrant requirement