Rep. Kiley: Wray Testimony 'Very Revealing' on Abuses

FBI Director Christopher Wray's testimony before members of the House Judiciary Committee was "very revealing" and covered so much because there are "so many different abuses going on right now," Rep. Kevin Kiley, a member of the committee, told Newsmax on Saturday.

The California Republican told Newsmax's "Saturday Report" that he chose to center his line of questioning on how the Biden administration "completely invented a pretext to mobilize federal law enforcement and counterterrorism powers against parents," which he called "one of the truly unprecedented and chilling abuses of power that we've seen in our country's history."

Kiley said that Wray wanted to blame the abuses on Attorney General Merrick Garland, "who was the one who authored the memo" for surveillance of parents speaking out at school board meetings.

"[Wray] agreed with the conclusion of our House Republican Judiciary Committee, which was that there was no law enforcement justification for what the Department of Justice and the FBI did," said Kiley.

"That is an incredibly important takeaway from that hearing, is that you had this unprecedented abuse of power and interference with the First Amendment rights of parents to participate in their government or to petition the government to have a say in their child's education."

Instead, the parents were treated as children after federal officials invoked the Patriot Act, "and there was no basis for it whatsoever," he added.

Meanwhile, there is a call among Republicans to end the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), specifically section 702 which has been used to spy on Americans, and Kiley told Newsmax that "millions of Americans have improperly been subjected to government surveillance."

The rule allows the government to spy on foreign citizens without having to go through a warrant process, but in the process of collecting information, the private communications of Americans have been gathered, too, said Kiley.

"All of that information just sits in a database and when not just the FBI, but other agencies have decided that they want to find something out about someone who happens to have information in there, they've gone and accessed it millions of times without any sort of warrant or without respecting any of the privacy protections that we have in our Constitution," said Kiley.

The provision will expire soon, he added, and "We're saying that if this is going to be reauthorized, we need to make sure that it's done in a way that Americans' privacy protections are protected and that they're not getting spied on going forward."

FISA was also abused during former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, said Kiley.

"That's an abuse, where you had a FISA application that was pieced together based on information provided by Democrat operatives," he said.

"This whole process has been rife with abuse, which is why those of us on the Judiciary Committee are calling for reform. We understand the importance of intelligence gathering. We understand the importance of giving folks that are working to gather intelligence and keep our country safe the tools they need to do so, But it is a bedrock principle of our Constitution and truly what it means to live in a free society. That you should be able to go about your life as a private citizen without the government being able to look over your shoulder and intercept communications in everything that you do."

This means that it will be "one of the most important things that happens this year, that we're going to fight to vindicate that foundational principle of our country and provide appropriate protections for going forward."

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