Trump DOUBLES DOWN on Spying Powers as He SPIRALS

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Donald Trump wants to extend a loophole that allows him to spy on American citizens without a warrant. And now you have 20 Republicans that have embarrassed Trump by going against that and asking for reforms when it comes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and and the information that can be gathered under it. And we're covering that today. We're covering section 702 of FISA, the surveillance tool that the intelligence community says is indispensable and critics say is a fourth amendment workaround hiding in plain sight. We're talking about the reforms that are needed, including reforms that are being pushed by Republicans and Donald Trump's attempts to just keep that loophole open and extend it for for 18 months and maybe beyond. I'm Sean Krenik and I'm joined by my law partner and co-host here on another installment of Civil Action on the Legal AF network where we're talking about the FISA warrants and and the FISA act. Um, and if you want to support us, if you like the content that we do or the other great lawyers on the Legal AF team, hit that follow button so you can keep up to date with us. Share with us any feedback you have in the comments here. Brian, um, you you want to give some context here about FISA and section 702? I think the best place to start, Sean, is with the fourth amendment. And you know, obviously the fourth amendment was incredibly important to the founders. And equally obvious was there was no cell phones, there was no internet, there was no telephones, there was nothing like that at the time. But the fourth amendment says you cannot have warrantless searches and seizures in its simplest form. And there are exceptions that have developed over time, and we're not going to talk about those. But what happened with the Foreign Intelligence Services Act, FISA, let's just call it He's hacked. Yeah, we're going.

[00:01:39]>> Thank you. The the Thank you for correcting me. The um the the the law itself has evolved to um allow certain things to take place and we're at a crossroads now given who's the president of the United States where I think a healthy number of people in America just simply don't trust the president or his administration.

[00:01:58]>> Well, including Republicans because what the what the what the what FISA does, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, it was enacted in 1978. So, it's nothing new, but it's certainly newer than the Fourth Amendment. Um, and it was expanded after 9/11. And, and what section 702 specifically does is is it allows the government to collect communications of non US persons located abroad without a warrant. This doesn't violate the fourth amendment because fourth amendment applies to people within the United States. This is specifically limited to non- US persons located abroad. So, in that sense, it doesn't violate it. But the but but critics say and a key reality is that Americans communications regularly get swept up sort of incidentally when they're interacting with those foreign targets that that are targets of the 702 um uh collection efforts or surveillance. a whole shot is they're trying that the intelligence committee is trying to find links between foreign nationals who may want to do harm to the United States and uh US citizens or people residing inside the United States cuz the constitution applies even if you're not a citizen and that's the whole point and you know on its surface I could see people going well that's good we're protecting America but in the wrong hands it starts to become an abuse of power >> absolutely absolutely because that information by the way gets gathered and as the law currently stands, it can be later searched by federal law enforcement um and the American communications that were the communications of or with Americans that were collected without a warrant become available. And part of the reform here that we're going to talk about that's being proposed, bipartisan reform by the way, uh is to close those types of loopholes and prevent that from happening and require a warrant when Americans are subject to this type of surveillance or records.

[00:03:48]>> Um Right.

[00:03:49]>> Yeah. So, so what happened in terms of the the the law and extending the statute, etc.?

[00:03:55]>> Well, it was set to expire a few days ago.

[00:03:57]>> Yeah.

[00:03:58]>> And Trump, of course, wanted an 18-month extension, which seems to be the normal way that this has been, you know, reenacted every 18 months. And at this point, the Democrats and a few Republicans, but enough to matter, have said, "Wait a minute. You know, we're this is this is going too far. We're going a little too far with this. it's out of control. We just keep rubber stamping it. And we need to start thinking of alternative um uh plans here. And so instead of simply rubber stamping it, enacting it for another 18 months, the best that they could do was get a 10-day extension to April 30th.

[00:04:36]>> That's right. So, and come up again very soon. You have an unusual alliance here.

[00:04:42]You have 20 Republicans. Um they're mostly sort of libertarian Republicans that are uh concerned about government overreach and government surveillance, which I think everyone should be concerned about, but especially Republicans. They're the party of small government and get the government out of my business, you know, and and they don't all seem to have a problem here.

[00:05:00]But you do have uh a pretty strong contingent of of them who are upset by this and they're aligned with progressive Democrats and the common ground they have here is government surveillance concern, plain and simple.

[00:05:12]Um, and the reason why until now it hasn't been that much of a concern is I think it's twofold. Number one, it's because the Trump administration is in power. And I don't think that's lost upon even the Republicans. Um, but number two, you have the prevalence of data just being collected by companies.

[00:05:29]You know, all the tech companies out there, the social media companies, they collect data. That's the new sort of currency uh in our economy. And um right now this law allows for the government to purchase um that data from uh from data brokers without a warrant or anything like that and be able to get information about individuals, information that would otherwise be held confidentially. Uh so it allows the government to access that. So that's there's a shifting landscape here in terms of data and information and uh surveillance. That's part of the reason why this came up as a concern. And the two camps here are, you know, you have the national security camp that says, you know, you need this for counterterrorism, you need it for cyber threats, you need foreign intelligence.

[00:06:11]Um, you know, just renew it. You rubber stamp it basically. And that's what the Trump administration says. But then you have the reform camp of people like Mike Lee, a senator from Utah, and Dick Durban, Ron White. You have you have a lot of people that are pushing a bipartisan reform of basically warrantless backdoor searches on Americans, which should be shocking and appalling to everyone. And then you have the Trump administration, of course, that's like, no, they're in the first camp. They they they want this just to be rubber stamped. And that terrifies me. Can you imagine how dangerous it is to have the surveillance of Americans to be in the hands of this government, this vindictive administration that eats their own? Imagine what they would do to people that aren't aligned with them.

[00:06:50]So, no.

[00:06:51]>> Yeah. And the the reforms they're asking for are minimal. They're not, you know, they're not wild. It's like just go get a warrant. Go to the FISA court. There is a FISA.

[00:06:59]>> You want the communications that were with Americans, go get the warrant to get those. That's pretty simple. Fourth Amendment.

[00:07:04]>> Warrants, these warrants are secret. You know, it doesn't become public information. But Sean, you had a pretty astounding statistic that we were talking about when we were doing research for this.

[00:07:14]>> Oh, yeah. I mean, the reason why this should be so concerning is you kind of look back at the history of it since 1979. I mean, yeah, the easiest place to see place to see this is on the the FISA Wikipedia page and there's a count of it and you know, you have thousands of requests submitted and almost zero denials of these requests. So, I'm not saying the the FISA court, by the way, there's a special court that looks at these warrants. I'm not saying they rubber stamp them, but I'm just saying it's very rare. Uh the first time we started seeing more and more denials was like in 2016 2017, which is the last year uh until which those statistics are available. you just started seeing rubber you know these these being I don't want to say rubber stamp but you denials are very rare uh so problem because the these you know these kind of go through every time >> let me add to the discussion Sean um two letters AI >> imagine what AI will be able to do if given unfettered access to data to cell phone tower locations to your personal data to purchasing it from these companies to warless uh searches. Imagine what they'll be able to do is they could type in there, you know, Sean Carian anti-Trump conversations and start, you know, popping up everything that every conversation you've had, where you've been when you had them, who you were talking to, and they could probably do it in a matter of seconds.

[00:08:39]>> Yeah, that's right. And not to mention the individual. Yes. that angle of how AI can be used to um better surveil people um and you know in a more intrusive manner and number two the fact that people now use AI that those records sort of become available and subject to these warrants or there's the risk of those types of records and what you're searching and what you're what you're thinking and what you're doing.

[00:09:05]So it it it's pretty kind of scary and intrusive stuff. And for it to be uh for there to be a way to circumvent the Fourth Amendment to get that is just, you know, it's anti-American. I think it's anti-democratic. It's anti-American and it violates the Constitution. So these reform reforms are necessary and not surprising to see this Trump administration be opposed to it because he is a wannabe dictator. this administration is a wannabe dictatorship and um it obviously they're obviously going to be resistant to things like this. So, we'll keep watching this. This is this is something that's very important and I think it should be very important uh and alarming to to all Americans that value their freedom and value the constitution and value our democracy. So stay tuned. We'll keep covering this on more installments of civil action on the legal AF network.

[00:09:54]I'm Sean Kernikin. That's been Brian Kabet over there, my law partner and co-host. We're a couple of lawyers based out of Los Angeles, California at a firm called Kabetch LLP. You want to look us up online, you can find us at kbkawyers.com.

[00:10:06]We love hearing from you whether it's about these things or it's about cases or other things you want to talk about.

[00:10:11]If you're a lawyer and you want to talk shop or run ideas by us or collaborate on cases, you know, feel free to reach out. You can find us online or on social media platforms or just shoot us an email. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time.

[00:10:23]>> Can't get your fill of legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hottake, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do called, wait for it, Morning AF. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad free versions of the podcast and hot takes where legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.