The FBI used a fake dossier to spy on Trump's campaign.
The same machine is now searching your texts and emails 500 times a day.
Congress has 46 days to shut it down – and one Republican just forced every member to go on record.
The FBI Used FISA Warrants Built on a Fake Dossier to Spy on Trump's Campaign
The story starts in 2016. The FBI wanted to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. They didn't have enough evidence. So they used a dossier – later confirmed as unverified, filled with baseless lies – to convince a secret court to issue not one but four surveillance warrants.
Two of those warrants were later declared invalid by the Justice Department itself.
The FBI lawyer who doctored evidence to keep the surveillance going pleaded guilty to making a false statement.
The Inspector General found 17 separate errors and omissions in the warrant applications – any one of which should have stopped the entire operation cold.
Page was never charged with a crime.
That is what FISA abuse looks like in practice. The government decided it wanted to spy on a Trump campaign official. It built a legal case out of fabricated intelligence. It lied to a secret court. It ran a wiretapping operation against an American citizen for years.
They got away with it.
The FBI Is Running 500 Warrantless Surveillance Searches on Americans Every Single Day
Section 702 of FISA works like this: intelligence agencies collect the communications of foreign targets overseas. When those foreigners talk to Americans – your emails, your texts, your calls – that data gets swept up too.
Then the FBI searches it. No warrant. No probable cause. No notification – ever.
In a single year, the FBI ran more than 200,000 warrantless searches of Americans' private communications – more than 500 every single day. They searched the communications of 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, sitting members of Congress, journalists. Jim Jordan confirmed the total hits three million U.S. person searches in a single year.
Your name could be in that database right now and you'd never know it.
This is not counterterrorism. This is the same Deep State apparatus that went after Trump – running around the clock, without a judge's signature, pointed at the people who voted for him.
Mike Lee's SAFE Act Gives Congress 46 Days to End Warrantless FBI Spying
Section 702 expires April 20.
Senator Mike Lee introduced the Security and Freedom Enhancement Act this week. The bill does two things the surveillance state has been fighting for years.
First, it requires a warrant before the government can read the content of an American's communications swept up under Section 702. Second, it closes the data broker loophole – the trick intelligence agencies use to purchase Americans' location history and private data from commercial brokers, cutting around the Fourth Amendment.
Lee made it plain: "The many documented abuses under FISA should provoke outrage from anyone who values the Fourth Amendment. From warrantless searches targeting journalists, political commentators, and campaign donors to monitoring sitting members of Congress, these infringements reveal a blatant disregard for individual liberties."
Trump previously said: "KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!"
He was right. And Republicans in Congress are about to prove it – or prove they never believed it.
The Intel Community Is Lobbying to Keep Warrantless Surveillance Alive
Here is the trap Republicans are walking into.
The Intel community is pushing hard for a clean extension – meaning no warrant requirement, no reforms, no accountability. Hand the same people who spied on Trump's campaign another two years of unchecked surveillance power and hope voters don't notice.
Trump has now weighed in – and the answer is not what conservatives were hoping for. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton confirmed it publicly: "President Trump has requested a simple, clean extension."
The President is most likely motivated by concerns over terrorism after the United States and Israel attacked Iran.
No warrant requirement. No reforms. No accountability for the same FBI that spied on his campaign. The same FBI that lied to a secret court to wiretap Carter Page is now privately warning congressional staffers that it's very concerned about Section 702 lapsing.
Of course they are. Losing this tool means losing the ability to read your emails without asking a judge first.
A federal court already ruled last year that warrantless searches of Americans' Section 702 data violate the Fourth Amendment. Mike Lee's bill forces every member to take a public vote on it.
No more hiding behind classified briefings and national security talking points. Either you vote to require a warrant before the government reads Americans' private communications – or you vote to hand the Deep State another blank check.
Every Republican who votes for a clean extension is voting to keep the same spy machine that targeted Trump's campaign aimed at the people in the pews, the people at the rallies, and the people who put Republicans in power in the first place.
Forty-seven days. Vote on the record or go home.
Sources:
- Sean Moran, "Mike Lee Introduces Bipartisan Bill to Protect Americans Against Warrantless Spying," Breitbart, February 24, 2026.
- "Lee, Durbin Introduce Bipartisan Protections Against Warrantless Data Searches," Senator Mike Lee Official Press Release, February 2026.
- "Warrants to Spy on Trump Campaign Lacked Probable Cause, DOJ Admits," The Heritage Foundation.
- "IG's Report Reveals 4 Spurious Allegations as Basis for FBI Spying on Trump Campaign Aide," The Heritage Foundation.
- Chuck Grassley, "Justice Dept. Admitted it Lacked Probable Cause in Carter Page FISAs," U.S. Senate Press Release.
- "Senators to Revive Reform Effort for Controversial Spying Law," Nextgov/FCW, February 2026.
