President Donald Trump's pressuring Capitol Hill to try to force passage of an anti-voting rights law is starting to degrade the capabilities of America's intelligence network, reported Fox News' Chad Pergram on Wednesday.
Pergram dubbed his analysis, "The Hitchhiker’s Guide To What The Jay Clayton Confirmation Hearing Has To Do With The SAVE America Act and FISA."
Clayton, Trump's U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, is headed to Washington for his confirmation hearing to serve as Director of National Intelligence — a nomination that itself has been delayed due to Trump's interference.
"Senators hoped to confirm Clayton as DNI weeks ago," noted Pergram, but Trump's protest over the failure to pass the SAVE America Act, which would put heavy new restrictions on voting, delayed it. And it's not the only thing that was delayed, said Pergram. "The spy program has now lacked authorization for about five weeks."
All of this, he wrote, has "forced residual impacts on the intelligence community’s top anti-terrorism [tool], FISA Section 702."
"Congressional Democrats and Republicans engineered a fragile, bipartisan agreement to renew FISA Section 702. But Democrats withdrew their support after the President installed Bill Pulte as acting DNI," he wrote.
As long as Pulte is running the show, Democrats are not willing to provide votes for a long term Section 702 reauthorization, Pergram argued.
As consequence, said Pergram, "the Senate is back to where it was a few weeks ago. There’s hope that today’s hearing goes as planned without additional hiccups. Then the Senate could try to confirm Clayton in the coming days or next week. If that happens, the thought is that Democratic votes to reauthorize FISA will materialize as well."
House lawmakers, meanwhile, are trying to attach the SAVE America Act to the defense bill — but, Pergram noted, the Senate is expected to reject this.