Rep. Matt Gaetz's plan to introduce legislation next week to scrap the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is a good move because Section 702 of the act is often misused by those who have access to it, FBI whistleblower Stephen Friend said Friday on Newsmax.
"It's intended to surveil foreign actors," Friend said on "John Bachman Now." "However, when you're going through that information, you will come across American citizens."
With the investigative nature of many FBI employees leading to times when the authority will be misused, "that has led to all of these illegal and improper searches that we've seen," Friend said.
"It's very similar to the 'Ring of Power' in the 'Lord of the Rings.' We just need to cast it into the fire and do away with it," he said.
Gaetz grilled FBI Director Christopher Wray about abuses of FISA during Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee hearing, but Friend said Wray was "very coy with his terms" when it came to answering how often the bureau's agents had misused FISA.
"When he talked about not opening up investigations on parents at school boards, well, the FBI had assessments and for the layperson, an assessment is an investigation that opens up the toolbox for FBI agents to eventually bring a preliminary or full investigation later on where they can have more tools at their disposal," Friend said.
And, Friend added, it's "just human nature" for someone who is an "investigator by nature to do what they can to get information, and you're going to use the tools at your disposal to do it."
Meaning, he said, the tools can be used against Americans and not only foreign suspects.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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