Nunes: Democrats scared to debate bill because of involvement in FISA scandal
Trump urges House GOP to reject FISA renewal bill; California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes weighs in.
House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told “America’s Newsroom” Wednesday that Democrats had not involved Republicans in making changes to legislation reauthorizing surveillance powers used by the FBI.
“It’s an unworkable bill, along with the fact that we still have a real need for transparency so the American people know what happened back in 2016,” Nunes said.
Earlier Wednesday, the Justice Department urged President Trump to veto legislation to reauthorize and reform national security authorities in the USA Freedom Act hours before a scheduled vote in the House.
“You have the press, who’s denying this, and then you have Twitter, what I call the tech oligarchs ... that are bringing new wrinkles to this because they’re essentially editing and censoring what the American people get to see,” Nunes said, referencing a fact check attached by Twitter to a tweet from President Trump on Tuesday.
TRUMP URGES GOP TO OPPOSE FISA BILL
“So we have a lot of serious problems here and it starts with Democrats needing to be here to work,” he continued.
The legislation was already in jeopardy when Trump tweeted Tuesday night that he's urging all Republicans to vote no "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's warning referred to his longstanding belief that the intelligence community improperly used FISA authorities to surveil his presidential campaign for political reasons.
On Wednesday, Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd said, “The [Justice] Department worked closely with House leaders on both sides of the aisle to draft legislation ... the Senate thereafter made significant changes that the Department opposed because they would unacceptably impair our ability to pursue terrorists and spies ... the House is now poised to further amend the legislation … if passed, the Attorney General would recommend that the President veto the legislation.”
Nunes explained that lawmakers had reached an agreedment earlier this year with Attorney General Bill Barr to “actually go back and rewrite that law so that we would have access to ... all the things that were done in this conspiracy by dirty cops and the Clinton campaign and likely people within the Obama administration, so some of those changes were made.”
“It went to the Senate, it was changed,” he continued.
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Nunes added that the fact that many Democrats are not in Washington, D.C. presents a key problem with the process.
“They made these changes, I’m guessing they had conference calls amongst Democratic members of Congress," Nunes said. "They didn’t involve the Republicans and the attorney general has said these aren’t even workable changes at this point."
Fox News’ Marisa Schultz contributed to this report.
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