House Speaker Mike Johnson will meet with former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Friday afternoon. The purpose of the meeting is a “major announcement on election integrity,” but no further details were available.
The meeting comes as Johnson is under pressure from the far right of the GOP House caucus, partly led by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Georgia congresswoman has threatened to call a vote to oust Johnson.
Johnson and Trump are seemingly at odds over Congress’ reauthorization of the post-Sept. 11 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Authority Act, also called FISA. Right-wing House Republicans on Wednesday blocked the legislation. It’s set to expire April 19, meaning time is running short for Congress to reauthorize the law. The sticking point lies in Section 702, which allows U.S. authorities to surveil communications of foreigners without a warrant.
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“KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!” Trump wrote on social media.
But on Wednesday, Johnson said the House will keep the law after revising it with key reforms.
“We’re going to do a big reform on the intelligence program,” he said. “We’re enacting sweeping changes, over 50 reforms, 56 to be exact.”
Those changes will stop what he claimed was abuse of the law with “politicized queries” and to prevent another “Russia hoax debacle,” Johnson said echoing Trump’s views. He said Congress was stepping in to “police” the FBI because the agency had not adequately regulated itself.
Nonetheless, Johnson said the law is too important to allow it to go away. The speaker said the law protects the United States from terrorist attacks, allows law enforcement to track chemicals used to create deadly fentanyl and safeguards against theft of U.S. intellectual property by China.
“That’s all the things empowered and allowed by this set of laws, this statute, and we can’t allow that to expire or elapse,” he said.
Johnson added that Trump himself used intelligence from the FISA provisions to “kill terrorists.”
Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
