Pulte Demonstrates Senator Warner’s Spying Efforts Are A Threat to Democracy; Congress Must Not Extend Warrantless FISA Spying Powers
Washington, D.C. — On Tuesday, President Donald Trump named Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence. Pulte has no previous national security experience and was the architect of criminal investigations into Trump’s political enemies, including Fed Chair Jerome Powell, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA)—efforts that appear to have involved misusing his access to sensitive information about Americans. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) is the top Intelligence Democrat in the Senate, and is currently attempting to engineer Democratic support for a Trump-approved extension of warrantless domestic spying under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). As Director of National Intelligence, Pulte would be tasked with overseeing the government’s use of that warrantless spying power, and would even have the power to declassify classified information.
The following is a statement from Demand Progress Executive Director Sean Vitka:
“Congress must not sign away unchecked spying powers to the government when Donald Trump’s top spy is a man whose primary qualification is his willingness to weaponize sensitive information held by the government against the president’s political enemies. By supporting a FISA extension without any independent checks like warrant protections, Sen. Warner is putting the entire country at serious risk and enabling perhaps the greatest threat to American democracy we have seen in modern history.”
A robust set of resources on the need for privacy reforms for FISA are available here and here, and additional background, context, polling, reform demands, resources and other information is available here.