Early last week House Minority Leader John Boehner appeared on Fox, telling Neil Cavuto that “we have a serious problem with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act” and vowing that “Republicans are not going to leave this week until this problem is addressed.” Indeed, congressional Republicans and the administration forced Democrats to act on FISA before members of Congress departed for the August recess and succeeded in passing legislation, signed by the president yesterday, that allows the NSA to conduct warrantless surveillance of foreign communications and people “reasonably believed to be outside the United States.”
During his Fox appearance, Boehner told Cavuto that a FISA court judge had issued a ruling “over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States.” By revealing the secret ruling, Boehner may have divulged classified information, a prosecutable offense. To this end, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington just filed a complaint with the Justice Department, requesting an investigation into whether Boehner broke the law by discussing the FISA court ruling publicly.
From CREW’s release:
Rep. Boehner apparently made his remarks to Mr. Cavuto in an effort to blame Democrats for failing to pass legislation overriding the court’s decision, stating: “The Democrats have known about this for months. We have had private conversations, we have had public conversations that this needs to be fixed. And Republicans are not going to leave this week until this problem is addressed.”
Notably, Minority Leader Boehner has previously expressed strong concerns over illegal leaks for political gain. In discussing a long-running court case regarding an illegally intercepted phone call that Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) released to the media, Rep. Boehner stated: “When you break the law in pursuit of a political opponent, you’ve gone too far. Members of Congress have a responsibility not only to obey the laws of the country and the rules of our institution, but also to defend the integrity of those laws and rules when they are violated.”
