Cspan. Org coronavirus. The washington times. He covers the Justice Department. Guest thanks for having me back. Host in the senate this week, the senate will look at pfizer. Fisa. Can you explain what the senate is about to take up . Guest it is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and it gives the fbi a broadway just powers a broad range of powers to spy on Foreign Nationals they believe might be a threat to the u. S. But it has come under fire because a lot of allies have been arguing that the fisa process has been abused to fulfill some political agendas by the Obama Administration to target members of the Trump Campaign. For example, carter page, Michael Flynn. They have joined in with some civil libertarian groups on the left to try and push for stronger reforms and definitely tighter restrictions on how this can be used to spy on americans. Host walk us through what the senate will take up and what changes could happen if it passes. Guest the senate is expected to take this up today. Ometimes things run longer it is likely we will see debate and get a vote today. They are debating a house bill that makes some changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Is stricterhings penalties for people caught lying or withholding evidence from the fisa court which was an issue in the carter page wiretap. They want a neutral thirdparty to argue against reasons why the fbi says they need the wiretap. Right now the fbi can go into the fisa court and tell the fisa because need a wiretap we believe this person is involved in various acts and there is nobody there to challenge them. This goes against our Constitutional Rights of innocent until proven guilty. That is another thing they went and put in. And privacyarians groups on the right and left say that does not go far enough. They want to see a more stringent advocate. They want to see that if you are going to get a wiretap on an american, you need to go to a traditional court, not the fisa court which is secret but a regular u. S. Court where this information can be unsealed. If you are wiretapping a Foreign National and they are talking to an american and there is evidence that may come up about the american, they want more stringent controls on how that information is used. That is an issue that came up in the Michael Flynn case because weve got wiretaps in and Michael Flynn is talking to the Russian Ambassador and we caught Michael Flynns conversation with the ambassador and that led to the whole fbi investigation. Host when it comes to the larger issues, i suppose one of the issues is about this idea of transparency and what goes on. By the senate passed, will people have a better idea of what happens in this court . Guest yes because one of the things the privacy hawks are advocating for is that we have, at some point, these fisa forms become unsealed. Right now we dont know what is in any of these forms. We literally know nothing about what goes on in the fisa court because it is so secret. That is where the privacy hawks object because you have the fbi going in, unchallenged, asking the court to grant them a warrant to spy on an american and there is nobody there to counter what the fbi is saying, nobody there to challenge. People could be spied on and they dont even know about it which is raising alarms. That has been so concerning. It has brought together conservative groups like freedom works, leftleaning groups like the aclu, conservative senators like mike lee and rand paul but liberal senators like patrick lakey. Instrange bedfellows here pushing for reform for the senate. Host our guest is with us if you want to ask questions,. 202 7488000 for democrats. Republicans, 202 7488001. Independents, 202 7488002. Voteu look at the house that took place on march the democrats and 126 republicans. Of those voting no, 75 democrats, six republicans. How bipartisanws support the house bill had. The house bill was endorsed by adam schiff and bill barr. We will rarely find them agreeing on anything else. That shows one of the things that i thought was interesting was back in march, i was on the hill and matt gaetz and congressman powell were having a conversation and they were both complement each other on their ideas for fisa which goes back fisa reform which goes back the further right in left where this is the only issue they can agree on, they object to the spying of americans. Host do you think this will get safe passage in the senate . Guest i think it is going to be highly contentious because you have leadership coming out and supporting the house bill. Mitch mcconnell has offered support for the house bill. But you have mike lee, patrick lakey, rand paul, all of them want stronger reform and all of them are willing to go to bat for strong reform. When the extend this, it is going to be for a couple years. Extension is over an that was last fought in 2015. They really only have one bite of the apple to try to get this right and get the reforms in that they want to get in. I do expect them to go to the mat and try to make sure they can get as many reforms implemented as possible. Host jeff mordock, a viewer tweets us this morning, asking what are the penalties for fisa abuse for those who have abused it to the detriment and destruction of innocent people . Guest right now, if you can prove there was a fraud put on the court, the penalty is five years in jail. Under the house bill that will go up to eight years. Host i suspect that since you brought it up, this largely intersects with what has been going on with Michael Flynn. Talk about those intersections and where we are at this point. Guest it is interesting. It very strongly intersects with the Michael Flynn case. Mike lee and rand paul have been going out to the media and making speeches in the senate, saying that the Michael Flynn case is exactly why we need fisa reform. One of the crowns of fisa reform is it sort of operates under the belief that the fbis going to take care of everything. The fbi has got this, they will do everything aboveboard. Theyre going to push for a probable cause warrant. They must have probable cause. What we are shooting to see with Michael Flynn and we saw with carter page and two very stunning reports which are very , the fbi, there are a lot of questions about their credibility and whether or not they can be trusted to act independently without political bias or even without making simple mistakes. Reports that came out, since back in march when the senate decided to kick the can of the fisa debate to may, since reportso very damming came out. An average of 20 errors were found in 29 fisa applications, including four where the socalled procedures and evidence that prove there is probable cause for a warrant, they were completely missing and the fbi didnt know where they were and there is another report that came up by the Justice Department and in that report, the Justice Department said they looked at two separate fisa applications from 2017 and they found that with material errors, they were riddled with errors and material letters serial errors mean they could have tipped the scale in probable cause. Because we dont know anything about the fisa court, we dont know what they are approving, we cant say with we cant say with certainty. Host a couple calls lined up for you. Lets start in kentucky with brad. Our guest is jeff mordock of the washington times. Think we havet any business extending the powers or tenure of a secret court. I dont think anyone agrees with that. Everyone would be aware that does not agree with the american idea. A secret, and not only do we have one but it operates very badly. If you are a powerful political fbi person, you can flout it for an extended time. Talk about undermining the rule of law, that is pretty egregious. Stain and i dont know how we can a gnocchi we can unyoke ourselves. Guest to his point about the fisa Court Operating badly. Is theory is that the fisa just accepting whatever the fbi submits to it as fact. They issued two very scathing orders demanding more transparency from the fbi, but this court has been operating since 1977 and now we are in 2020 and they are finally demanding more transparency and more accountability from the fbi which makes you wonder what has been going on for the past 40 years. Host chris in virginia, you are next. Caller hi. Is a hardcorey conservative person but it was they wentt act that along with and now it is fisa. , it has toi does it be approved by the doj when it goes to the court. The judge is going to ask but people make mistakes. , youer, in an open court have to reveal the source. If you suspect a terrorist of , this personattack this person will flee. We dont spy on americans, we spy on foreign agents, people must people make mistakes but we do things to protect this country. It cannot be left in open court. Guest a couple points on that. Onut is not spying americans, carter page was spied on with the fisa warrant that was renewed four times. To his other point about bringing it into open court and you will start having to reveal sources and documents being made public, that is what the fbi and the Justice Department, that is the concern they have raised, that these tools and this fisa process is critical to stopping terror attacks and it is critical to tracking terrorists and they say they have used it to foil terror attacks because of the benefits of the fisa and that is why attorney general bill barr has been strongly advocating for it to be renewed. Host the caller use the phrase people make mistakes. Does that apply at all to what you are reporting on . Flynn it is hard to know what happened here because we dont have all the answers just yet. We know that documents were not turned over. His attorney has argued that was prosecutorial misconduct and they deliberately miss withheld information and she is arguing that is on par with the ted stevens case from a decade ago when prosecutors withheld information. We dont have answers from the Justice Department yet on why this information was not turned or turned over almost two and a half years after the case was brought and we are still kind of waiting for what the Justice Departments answer is. A u. S. Rr had tapped state attorney to review the case and i dont know if he is going to issue a report or not. It doesnt look like it but i think some things will start to come out on why we have not seen this information that was favorable to flynn until almost two years after his guilty plea. Host the Justice Department dropped the case against mr. Flynn. Does that mean this is over . Guest no it is not because the judge has to approve the decision. He is the judge overseeing the case and has to approve the decision to drop the charges. Late yesterday, he filed an opinion inviting inviting third parties to comment on the flynn case which is interesting because it is unusual to see a judge do that in a criminal case. Usually third parties only way in on civil cases because the harm in a criminal case is the alleged perpetrator and the alleged victim and usually nobody else is impacted so civil cases where they are more widespread, you may see third i es way in weight weigh in. It lets him hold on a little bit longer. Int lets hear from tyrone new york, democrats line. Caller thanks for taking michael. The flynn case is another corruption of our legal system. If we sacrifice our rights for security, we deserve neither and this is what has happened to this country. We knew that this fisa situation was a problem when we first introduced it as the patriot act and now we are realizing which was complained about from the beginning, that this was giving too much power to people that dont know how to handle it. We are investigating people, we are using this as a scapegoat to call people that are not terrorists terrorists. We continue to corrode our Justice System and tear our country apart and we are going to get what we bargained for. Mr. mr. Moore dock mordock. Guest to his point, we see 70 mistakes with these fisa applications and they are riddled with errors. It does make you wonder what is going on, if it is just wrongdoing. If you could not find any evidence of political bias, but we also couldnt prove it wasnt the reason for those mistakes and that is a real concern. We are seeing so many mistakes by semi people who shouldnt be making those mistakes. It raises questions of it is of if it is sloppiness or if it is Something Else but the fbi should not be making the mistakes that they are making and then that is costing people there civil liberties. Look at carter page. His life was torn apart. He spent most of his money on Legal Defense and at the end of the day he was not charged with anything. Host a viewer off of twitter. When it comes to attorney unmaskedike flynn, who his name . What does that mean and as far as the question, go ahead and expand on that. St we may not know who unmasking means to sort of reveal if you have some of the working in intelligence in secret, the unmasking means you would reveal that and kind of bring their name in public and talk about what they are doing with other intelligence agencies and in terms of who is doing that, we dont know. The acting director of National Intelligence is looking into d classifying, unmasking the Justice Department because it will expose confidential Justice Department sources and part of how the justice depalma and operates we may not ever know the answer. Host john is up next in North Carolina on our republican line. Caller i have a novel idea. Lets start prosecuting these people who abuse the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act s abuse people who abuse the fisa. They all abused the system. Lets put these people in jail. That is what we need to do. That is all i have. Host is prosecution possible under those terms . Atst especially if you look of 20nt about the average , even in 29 applications, the biggest deep dive into why there were so many mistakes did not reveal any deliberate wrongdoing. Say that it was a possibility but he didnt find any wrongdoing either. His investigation was limited. It would take a deeper investigation. The republicans are on the fbi director, chris wray to launch his own invective investigation and they have been pretty aggressive about prodding him to do something. Lindsey graham has been calling for hearings but he has also been calling for hearings for about a year and a half and hasnt had any yet. Where i think we are going to going torosecution is come from the john durham investigation that we havent heard any evidence that john durham has uncovered any wrongdoing. We hear he is talking to bill barr. Totripped down to washington keep his investigation on track amid the coronavirus pandemic but we are not hearing that he has uncovered a specific crime or set to bring charges. Evidence there is no he has charges he is ready to file. Host jeff mordock you will see the phrase obamagate. Guest that is President Trumps push to investigate president obama and members of his administration. That has gained steam since we have learned things about the Michael Flynn case. We had bombshell Court Filings two weeks ago where they revealed a lot of things that really cast doubt on mike flynns guilt. Ce then, President Trump especially it goes back to the fbi because one of the things that was interesting was when s came out, at that time, the former acting Deputy Attorney general was unaware of the fbi wiretapping Michael Flynn. That points to the fbi being out there on their own. Something like that should have been approved by the justice and the fbi under jim comey was practically acting rogue, on their own. Host is there anything else to suggest a direct line from president obama . Guest one of the things that came out was president obama was aware of the wiretap and the monitoring and surveillance but the Deputy Director wasnt and that has raised a lot of questions. We have seen a lot of President Trumps allies point to that as as thoughoment president obama may have been in on it and may have been complicit but to what they are saying, we see democrats raising the point that it is a counterintelligence operation and a counterintelligence operation into the threat russia may pose to the United States and specifically if they helped the Trump Campaign to subvert the election of 2016. It would be weird if they didnt tell the president that they were doing a counterintelligence operation investigating a foreign powers influence. That is something that would automatically be kicked up to the president. When it comes down to rather than those two issues is what toldormer president obama about the purpose of the investigation . Why was it approved because it was a legitimate counterintelligence operation or was it a function of this political sabotage . Those of the questions we need to answer. Think president obama knowing that there was a counterintelligence operation going on really points to a aha moment. Host our next caller is in florida. Caller good morning. Thank you for cspan. I am no expert so allow me to stumble over some words. Comey and obama beingsical, decent human and not everyars sentence out of their mouth is alive. An investigator for insurance for over 40 years. I have taken thousands of statements on insurance matters. Investigation is the same. You have to be thorough. You have to stick to the facts. Dragnet, the facts maam. Idea of an investigator the facts is absurd. I will tell you from my years of wouldence, and i wish you give me a chance to respond to whatever comeback this gentleman will have. He does not have my work experience. Host we are running out of time. Cannot an investigator bend an investigation. You have to do the work. Facts,t start bending inventing facts. It doesnt work that way. Host thank you caller. Guest i have two points on that. One is, we know that this investigation, to his point, it would be hard to bend facts if you followed proper procedures but one of the things we have discovered is proper procedures were not followed and it seems talk onre was a long the seventh floor the fbi certainly if was not bending the rules, making mistakes. A whole slew of mistakes were found in the carter page fisa application. Got with mike flynn, you have things being held or concealed. Or makingngdoing mistakes, then it is extraordinarily sloppy, and maybe that is it, maybe these people just made some serious mistakes but i find it hard to believe this many mistakes could be made by this many professionals. It raises a lot of questions over who could who should be monitoring what. Host we solid the process was for Michael Flynn. Part of that is that he ultimately pleaded guilty to lying. How do you square what is going on with those two things . Guest that is a great point, that he did plead guilty to lying. As his attorneys argued, they didnt have access to all the information and at that point he sort of they have raised an element that this claim is unsubstantiated, that prosecutors with Robert Muellers team threatened to indict flynns son had he not pled guilty and that is part of the prosecutorial misconduct they are alleging, that they really put pressure on him and he was willing to plead guilty to protect his son. That is the story his attorneys have been offering as his reason. Host jeff mordock is the Justice Department reporter for the washington times. You can find his reporting including several on the senate and the cases involving Michael Flynn, available at washington journal prime time. A special edition on the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. A vanderbilte University School of medicine doctor on the latest on Critical Care for patients. Also joining, Kendra Mcmullen of the American Nurses association on the role of nursing care in the ongoing pandemic. Join the conversation. Watch washington journal primetime tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Q and a,ight on journalist Susanna Cahill and discusses her book the great 1970 threeabout a experiment testing the legitimacy of psychiatric hospitals. Because he wrote that he had a wide kind of influence on so much of what we contend with today, so much of the Mental Health crisis we see today, it was touched in some ways by this study and a lot of Public Opinion about psychiatry and its institutions were in part shaped this study. Wehink in questioning it, have to go back and question assumptions. I hope this gives us an opportunity to go back and reassess in a way to move forward, because you cant move forward on a rotten foundation. If the study wasnt up to snuff, if it wasnt legitimate, we have to rethink some of the conclusions it presented. Sunday night on 8 00 at 8 00 eastern. Cspan has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events, from the president ial primaries through the impeachment process, and now the federal response to the coronavirus. 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