Nearly 20,000 Illegal Queries of Campaign Donors by Intel Agencies Draws Bipartisan Anger

The Justice Department building on a foggy morning in Washington, DC., on Dec. 9, 2019. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

U.S. intelligence agencies used an expansive foreign surveillance tool to spy on 19,000 campaign donors, among whom only eight had suspected foreign ties that qualified for the use of the authority, prompting condemnation from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) during a June 13 hearing.

Limited authority to gather foreign intelligence information is granted by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a post-9/11 surveillance tool that gives U.S. intelligence the power to target “(i) non-U.S. persons (ii) who are reasonably believed to be outside of the United States (iii) to acquire foreign intelligence information.”

However, this power can grant an expanding circle of possible searches to the FBI and other intel agencies, who can use the same power against American citizens who had any interaction with targeted foreigners.

Report after report has revealed abuses of the program, most prominently by the FBI. The most significant violations came in 2021, when it was revealed that the agency had used the foreign intelligence tool 3.3 million times against American citizens without a warrant or court approval.

After that report, the FBI vowed to make changes—a vow the agency has reiterated after an April 2023 report revealed that the agency had made 278,000 additional illegal queries of American citizens (pdf).

FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks during a congressional hearing in Washington in a Nov. 15, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

That report reveals that among those 278,000 queries, 19,000 were made against congressional campaign donors. But analysis of those 19,000 queries found that only eight were approved under the guidelines of Section 702.

It showed that an intelligence agency “conducted a batch query for over 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign. The analyst who ran the query advised that the campaign was a target of foreign influence, but NSD determined that only eight identifiers used in the query had sufficient ties to foreign influence activities to comply with the querying standard.”

It’s unclear which congressional campaign was targeted.

However, the 2021 report also revealed that the tool had been used against a member of Congress. After review of the report and other information, Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.), who is currently chairing a working group to reform FISA in the House, said he believed the person targeted was him.

During a June 13 hearing, Durbin said that the findings again raise questions about intelligence agencies’ ability to use the tool within the confines laid out in statute.

”Since the last reauthorization of Section 702, many violations of the constitutional, statutory, and court-imposed restrictions on 702 have come to light,” Durbin said, referencing the narrow reauthorization of the program in 2017 under President Donald Trump.

“These searches have affected all manner of Americans, such as individuals listed in police homicide reports, including victims, next of kin, and witnesses,” Durbin said.

Witnesses from U.S. intelligence agencies, however, downplayed the abuses, instead emphasizing its value as an intel-gathering tool.

One witness called it “an elegant program.” George Barnes, deputy director and senior civilian leader of the National Security Agency, called the program “agile and specific.”

Matthew Olsen, assistant attorney general, emphasized the importance of the  tool, which he called “irreplaceable and invaluable” to presidential daily briefings. He said that around 59 percent of the president’s daily briefing materials came from Section 702, and said that practically 100 percent was derived at some point from Section 702 data.

Used Against Domestic Protestors

The most recent report ordered by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the FISA watchdog, revealed that the intel-gathering mechanism had also been used against domestic protestors, including Jan. 6 and Black Lives Matter protestors.

“One hundred thirty-three people were [queried] during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protest when, as the Justice Department itself concluded, quote, ‘There was no specific factual basis to think the searches would turn up the foreign intelligence,’” Durbin said.

In addition, the report found that intelligence agencies had “conducted 360 queries in connection with domestic drug and gang violence, domestic terrorism investigations, and the Capitol breach.”

The report revealed how the apparatus had been used against Jan. 6 protestors, who were the subject of the largest DOJ manhunt in history following the events of Jan. 6.

“An analyst  ran 13 queries of individuals suspected of involvement in the January 6, 2021 Capitol breach,” the report reads. “The analyst said she ran the queries to determine whether these individuals had foreign ties, and indicated she had run ‘thousands of names within FBI systems in relation to the Capitol breach investigation’ and did not remember why she ran these 13 queries on raw FISA information.”

People gathered at the U.S. Capitol in Washington for the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally on Jan. 6, 2021. (Courtesy of Michael Hamilton)

Another finding in the report revealed that an “officer ran two queries for a person under investigation for assaulting a federal officer in connection with the Capitol breach. The officer could not recall why he queried raw FISA information, but FBI field office personnel participating in the query audit stated that the FBI viewed ‘the situation in general’ at the time of the queries as a threat to national security.”

It was concluded that “the queries were not reasonably likely to retrieve foreign intelligence information or evidence of crime. Notice of compliance incident regarding the FBI’s querying of raw FISA-acquired information, including information acquired pursuant to Section 702 of FISA.”

Members of both parties have been critical of these abuses, but Democrats have in general shown more anxiety about renewing the program than their GOP counterparts.

If the program is not renewed by the House and approved by the Senate, it will lapse on Dec. 31, 2023.