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Republican lawmakers called it “insane” that the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court appointed to a key advisory panel a lawyer with past ties to the Biden administration’s controversial Disinformation Governance Board.
Judges on the FISC appointed Jennifer Daskal this month to serve as an amicus curiae, meaning Daskal is now among a small group of lawyers designated to advise the secretive court, which approves warrants for federal authorities to surveil targets for foreign intelligence purposes. The GOP lawmakers say Daskal’s history with the disinformation board raises worries about her ability to discern whether warrants are appropriate.
“The same person who helped to build a board to censor American speech now advises judges on how to protect American liberties,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Fox News Digital in a statement. “That’s ridiculous — and exactly why Congress must continue our oversight.”
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Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., echoed Jordan’s concerns, saying Daskal’s appointment was “insane” and calling for reforms to the FISC.
Schmitt shared a video of himself on X questioning Daskal during a hearing about what he called the Biden administration’s “censorship enterprise,” referencing Daskal’s role in aiming to dispel what the administration viewed as inaccurate information about COVID-19 masks and vaccines and information about election security.
FISC proceedings are classified and “ex parte,” meaning a judge reviews the federal government’s warrant application and the target of the warrant has no awareness of the proceedings. A judge reviewing the application can, however, turn to an amicus curiae to present counterpoints to the government’s application, meaning Daskal is among a handful of lawyers who could be tapped to argue against allowing the government to wiretap a person’s phones or otherwise surveil them.
Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the government has access to these powerful spy tools for foreign intelligence purposes, but it has sometimes, whether inadvertently or intentionally, improperly targeted U.S. citizens.
Building more guardrails into the legislation has long been a point of contention for privacy hawks. Republicans, in particular, became highly critical of the FISC after finding that the court approved the FBI’s warrant applications, which contained flimsy and inaccurate evidence, to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page beginning in 2016.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told the Washington Free Beacon, which first reported on Daskal’s appointment, that the “American people need to have confidence in the people tasked to serve as amici” before the FISC. Grassley pointed to a bill he introduced, the FISA Accountability Act, which would allow Congress to have a say in who is chosen as an amicus curiae.
Jordan and Grassley have been some of the most vocal proponents of reining in the federal government’s use of FISA after identifying instances in recent years of intelligence officials allegedly abusing their authority and infringing on U.S. citizens’ Fourth Amendment right to privacy. In the case of Page, DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz released a report in 2019 that identified more than a dozen “significant errors or omissions” across the FBI’s four warrant applications used to surveil the former Trump aide. Daskal, in her new role, could offer confidential, weighty legal arguments to a FISC judge that support or oppose intelligence officials’ requests to surveil someone.
Daskal served as a top lawyer in the Department of Homeland Security when she helped launch the Disinformation Governance Board. Conservatives heavily criticized it, describing the board as a “Ministry of Truth” that sought to censor their viewpoints in violation of the First Amendment.
Daskal chartered the board, while Nina Jankowicz was named its executive director, an appointment that fueled Republicans’ fury over it after finding Jankowicz’ past social media posts that they said revealed she was too partisan. Jankowicz, for instance, cast doubt on the New York Post’s bombshell story in 2020 about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which she said fit a pattern of Russian “information laundering.” Biden administration officials vehemently objected to the claims in the New York Post’s story about Joe Biden’s handling of Ukrainian foreign policy, though the authenticity of the laptop itself has been verified through court proceedings.
Republicans put so much pressure on DHS about the board — calling it an “abuse of taxpayer dollars” and raising alarm that it painted policy disagreements over COVID-19, election security and immigration as mis- or dis- information — that it disbanded just a few months after its launch.
In Daskal’s hearing exchange with Schmitt, Daskal said “it’s not appropriate for the government to censor any points of view.” Daskal did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
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