Republican members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are blowing the whistle on the Biden administration for seeking to utilize foreign surveillance authorities and tradecraft for domestic surveillance activities, in violation of federal law.
A March 18 letter led by Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) accuses Joe Biden of illegally utilizing a federal intelligence agency focused on foreign counterterrorism activities to spy on Americans at home, the Washington Times reports.
The paper adds:
The letter went to Avril Haines, the new Director of National Intelligence. Her office released a report, “Domestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2021.”
Signed by all 10 committee Republicans, the letter calls the four-page DNI report “misleading” with a “deceptive nature” and says the very reason for the report is unclear. They find the entire DNI exercise inconsistent with federal law.
“It is our view that your office, and the elements of the IC for which you are responsible under the auspices of the National Security Act and National Intelligence Program, are subject to longstanding prohibitions against domestic activities,” the letter states.
The GOP has grown increasingly suspicious of the Biden regime and Democrats as they focus on so-called ‘domestic extremism’ following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot which they have falsely claimed was an “insurrection” egged on by former President Trump.
Biden has already ordered the Defense Department to hold a “stand down” for 60 days so that all service members could be subjected to the BS narrative that there are ‘growing numbers’ of their fellow brothers and sisters in arms who are developing into violence extremists.
In fact, some Democrats in the House have referred to their GOP colleagues as enemies.
“We are alarmed by the lack of explanation provided by the authors to justify the ODNI’s production of such a report,” the Nunes-led letter states, the Times reported.
A statement from the DNI said that the intel report was drafted by the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC), which is supposed to focus only on foreign terrorist threats such as al Qaeda and ISIS. The agency’s focus on domestic activities is a direct violation of federal law.
“Based on the scope contained in the report, declared IC [intelligence community] involvement, classification markings, and ultimately the content itself, we are concerned that IC elements and personnel acted beyond their legal authority in its production,” the Republicans said in their letter.
“For example, the explicit statement that this report was ‘prepared under the auspices of the DNI’ and ‘drafted’ by the NCTC appears to contravene the express statutory limitation on NCTC’s authorities on intelligence pertaining exclusively to domestic terrorism. Under current law, the NCTC is authorized only to ‘receive… retain and disseminate such intelligence,’” the letter added.
The DNI said that the CIA and the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency were also involved in the drafting of the intelligence report — and both of those agencies are also supposed to remain focused on foreign terrorist and other threats.
“While we acknowledge the seriousness of the domestic violence extremist threat and the need for a coordinated federal response, the involvement of the Intelligence Community in this circumstance should be limited to an examination of potential foreign ties, such as foreign influence, direction or funding of DVEs,” the GOP letter, first reported by investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, states.
“There are numerous federal agencies with the requisite authority and subject matter expertise to produce a report on this topic, with appropriate support from the IC,” it adds.