Drone Espionage Act

— 546 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise the story into the 2016 election through strategic media leaks, falsified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications, and lied to Congress.6 l Personnel within the FBI engaged in a campaign to convince social media companies and the media generally that the story about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop was the result of a Russian misinformation campaign—while the FBI had possession of the laptop the entire time and could have clarified the authenticity of the source.7 l The DOJ engaged in conduct to chill the free speech rights of parents across the United States in response to supposed “threats” against school boards,8 yet it failed to engage in any concerted campaign to protect the rights of Americans who actually were terrorized by acts of violence like those perpetrated against pregnancy care centers.9 l The FBI tasked agents with monitoring social media and flagging content they deemed to be “misinformation” or “disinformation” (not associated with any plausible criminal conspiracy to deprive anyone of any rights) for platforms to remove.10 l The FBI engaged in a domestic influence operation to pressure social media companies to report more “foreign influence” than the FBI was actually seeing and stop the dissemination of and censor true information directly related to the 2020 presidential election.11 l The department has devoted unprecedented resources to prosecuting American citizens for misdemeanor trespassing offenses or violations of the FACE Act12 while dismissing prosecutions against radical agents of the Left like Antifa.13 l The department has consistently threatened that any conduct not aligning with the liberal agenda “could” violate federal law—without actually taking a position that the conduct in question is illegal—using the prospect of protracted litigation and federal sanctions to chill disfavored behavior such as with state efforts to restrict abortion14 or prevent genital mutilation of children.15 l The department has sued multiple states regarding their efforts to enhance election integrity.16 — 547 — Department of Justice l The department has failed to do its part to stop the flood of fentanyl and other deadly drugs that are flowing across our borders and decimating families and communities across the United States.17 l The department has abdicated its responsibility to assist in the enforcement of our immigration laws and has engaged in wholescale abandonment of its duty to adjudicate cases in the immigration court system. These actions stand in stark contrast to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s assertion before taking office that “there [must] not be one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, one rule for friends and another for foes.”18 While it is true, as it is with other federal departments and agencies, that there are committed career personnel across the department who perform their duties faithfully and with the best intentions, this small sampling of scandals illustrates that the DOJ has become a bloated bureaucracy with a critical core of person- nel who are infatuated with the perpetuation of a radical liberal agenda and the defeat of perceived political enemies. It has become a Cabinet-level department whose leadership appears to care more about how they are perceived in the next Politico or Washington Post article, or their stature with any number of radical leftist organizations, than they do about justice and advancing the interests of the American people. It is essential that the next conservative Administration place a high priority on reforming the DOJ and its culture to align the department with its core purposes and advance the national interest. Critically, this must include the FBI. Anything other than a top-to-bottom overhaul will only further erode the trust of significant portions of the American people and harm the very fabric that holds together our constitutional republic. At a practical level, not reforming the Department of Jus- tice will also guarantee the failure of that conservative Administration’s agenda in countless other ways. Successful reform will require more than minor peripheral adjustments. It will require a holistic, energetic, leadership-driven effort to remedy the damage that has been done and advance the national interest. Additionally, some needed reforms will not be possible without legislative changes from Congress. While it is true that certain offices and components—like the FBI or the Civil Rights Division—will require more attention than others, committed direction from the department’s political leadership can restore the department’s focus on its two core functions: protecting public safety and defending the rule of law. This chapter features prominently the things the department must do to restore its focus on these functions. Of course, there are other important reforms that do not necessarily fit within either of those core functions, so this chapter includes an additional section to address those areas.

— 549 — Department of Justice RESTORING THE FBI’S INTEGRITY The FBI was founded in 1908 to “tackle national crime and security issues” when “there was hardly any systematic way of enforcing the law across this now broad landscape of America.”25 It best serves the American people when it dedicates its resources and energies to attacking violent crime,26 criminal organizations,27 child predators,28 cyber-crime, and other uniquely federal interests.29 Revelations regarding the FBI’s role in the Russia hoax of 2016, Big Tech collu- sion, and suppression of Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020 strongly suggest that the FBI is completely out of control. To protect the Constitution, fight crime effectively, and protect the nation from foreign adversaries, the next conservative Adminis- tration should begin to restore the FBI’s domestic reputation and integrity and enhance its effectiveness in meeting actual foreign threats. To do so, the next con- servative Administration should: l Conduct an immediate, comprehensive review of all major active FBI investigations and activities and terminate any that are unlawful or contrary to the national interest.30 This is an enormous task, but it is necessary to re-earn the American people’s trust in the FBI and its work. To conduct this review, the department should detail attorney appointees with criminal, national security, or homeland security backgrounds to catalogue any questionable activities and elevate them to appropriate DOJ leadership consistent with the new chain of command (discussed below). The department should also consider issuing a public report of the findings from this review as appropriate. l Align the FBI’s placement within the department and the federal government with its law enforcement and national security purposes. DOJ veterans often opine that the FBI views itself as an independent agency—accountable to no one and on par with the Attorney General in terms of stature—but the fact remains that “[t]he Federal Bureau of Investigation is located in the Department of Justice.”31 It is not independent from the department (just as Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not independent from the Department of Homeland Security) and does not deserve to be treated as if it were. The next conservative Administration should direct the Attorney General to remove the FBI from the Deputy Attorney General’s direct supervision within the department’s organizational chart and instead place it under the general supervision of the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division and the supervision of the Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, as applicable.32 This can be accomplished — 550 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise through a simple internal departmental reorganization and does not need to be approved by Congress. Such a structure would allow the FBI to play an important role in advising the department’s leadership on emerging threats and updating notable investigations through daily briefings conducted with the Criminal Division and National Security Division leadership, but it would also place the FBI under a politically accountable leader with fewer things to manage than the Deputy Attorney General or the Attorney General have. All notifications and approvals that currently run to the Deputy Attorney General or the Attorney General should be evaluated and redirected in the first instance, where appropriate, to the relevant Assistant Attorney General. Such a move would better align the FBI with the mission of the divisions with which it most often interacts and emphasize the need for the areas on which it should focus. In general, however, under no circumstances should the FBI ever be able to go around the Attorney General or the department’s leadership on any matter within its area of responsibility. l Prohibit the FBI from engaging, in general, in activities related to combating the spread of so-called misinformation and disinformation by Americans who are not tied to any plausible criminal activity. The FBI, along with the rest of the government, needs a hard reset on the appropriate scope of its legitimate activities. It must not look to or rely on the past decade as precedent or legitimization for continued action in certain spaces. This is especially true with respect to activities that the FBI and the U.S. government writ large claim are efforts to combat “misinformation,” “disinformation,” or “malinformation.” The United States government and, by extension, the FBI have absolutely no business policing speech, whether in the public square, in print, or online. The First Amendment prohibits it. The United States is the world’s last best hope for self-government,33 and its survival relies on the ability of our people to have healthy debate free from government intervention and censorship. The government, through its officials, is certainly able to speak and provide information to the public. That is a healthy component of an informed society. But government must never manipulate the scales and censor information that is potentially harmful to it or its political leadership. This is the way of totalitarian dictatorships, not of free constitutional republics.

— 859 — Federal Communications Commission 21. Hal J. Singer and Ted Tatos, Subsidizing Universal Broadband Through a Digital Advertising Services Fee: An Alignment of Incentives, Econ One, September 2021, p. 1 (“[T]he current USF mechanism is unsustainable and will fail to meet the needs of its target consumer base within the next five years.”), https://www.econone.com/ wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Digital-Divide-HSinger-TTatos-2.pdf (accessed January 23, 2023). 22. FBI Director Christopher Wray, testimony in video of hearing, Worldwide Threats to the Homeland, Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives, November 15, 2022, at 02:27, https://democrats- homeland.house.gov/activities/hearings/11/04/2022/worldwide-threats-to-the-homeland (accessed January 23, 2023); John D. McKinnon, Arunav Viswanatha, and Stu Woo, “TikTok National-Security Deal Faces More Delays as Worry Grows Over Risks,” The Wall Street Journal, updated December 6, 2022, https://www.wsj. com/articles/tiktok-national-security-deal-faces-more-delays-as-worry-grows-over-risks-11670342800 (accessed January 23, 2023). 23. U.S. Federal Communications Commission, “List of Equipment and Services Covered by Section 2 of the Secure Networks Act,” updated September 20, 2022, https://www.fcc.gov/supplychain/coveredlist (accessed January 23, 2023). 24. H.R. 820, Foreign Adversary Communications Transparency Act, 118th Congress, introduced February 2, 2023, https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hr820/BILLS-118hr820ih.pdf (accessed March 6, 2023). 25. U.S. Department of State, “The Clean Network,” https://2017-2021.state.gov/the-clean-network/index.html (accessed January 23, 2023). 26. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Broadband: National Strategy Needed to Guide Federal Efforts to Reduce Digital Divide, GAO-22-104611, May 2022, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-22-104611.pdf (accessed January 23, 2023). 27. Document No. 144, “Federal Communications Commission: Message from the President of the United States Recommending that Congress Create a New Agency to be Known as the Federal Communications Commission,” U.S. Senate, 73rd Cong., 2nd Sess., February 26, 1934, https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/ DOC-298207A1.pdf (accessed January 23, 2023). 28. 47 U.S.C, Chapter 5, §§ 151 et seq., (accessed March 6, 2023). — 861 — 29 FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION Hans A. von Spakovsky MISSION/OVERVIEW The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is an independent federal agency that began operations in 1975 to enforce the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) passed by Congress in 1971 and amended in 1974.1 FECA governs the raising and spending of funds in all federal campaigns for Congress and the presidency. The FEC has no authority over the administration of federal elections, which is per- formed by state governments. While the FEC has exclusive civil enforcement authority over FECA,2 the U.S. Justice Department has criminal enforcement authority, which is defined as a knowing and willful violation of the law.3 Because the FEC is an independent agency and not a division or office directly within the executive branch, the author- ity of the President over the actions of the FEC is extremely limited. As former FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith has said, the FEC’s “[r]egulation of campaign finance deeply implicates First Amendment principles of free speech and association.”4 The FEC regulates in one of the most sensitive areas of the Bill of Rights: political speech and political activity by citizens, candidates, political par- ties, and the voluntary membership organizations that represent Americans who share common views on a huge range of important and vital public policy issues. NEEDED REFORMS Nomination Authority. The President’s most significant power is the appoint- ment of the six commissioners who govern the FEC, subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Commissioners may only serve a single term of six years but