Senator Thomas Massie exposes that Secret Laws are being used by the Intelligence Agencies and the FISA Court

On X, April 26, 2026

Comments: Rep. Thomas Massie says the FBI and Intelligence Agencies operate using their own secret laws that Americans aren’t allowed to know about. The FBI is using interpretations of the law that are so secret that no one is allowed to even talk about them. This is being used as a secret loophole for spying on Americans under the FISA Act. The FBI’s interpretation of FISA is classified (red/white “Top Secret” cover). Even members of Congress cannot publicly describe how the law is being interpreted. They are also using secret interpretations to hide what they are doing. A 106-page classified FISC opinion reveals another interpretation of the law that allegedly allows the FBI to under-report abuses of the FISA program. Rep. Massie says this is against the Constitution. No constitutional basis exists for secret laws or secret interpretations of public statutes.

Transcript of Senator Thomas Massie FISA Court Video

Apr 28, 2026, 7:35 PM
Senator Thomas Massie FISA Court
06:15

And I took one of my colleagues, Victoria Sparks, in a skiff. I said, there's a document nobody's looking at. We need to go read. And so we go in the skiff.

It was a letter from Senator Ron Wyden. And I don't know how he has, the senators, particularly those on the Intelligence Committee, they get access to things. When a bill says that they have to notify Congress of something, what they really mean is they have to notify the Intelligence Committee. And then the Intelligence Committee just doesn't say anything, or they don't even bother to look at it.

And so Ron Wyden in the Senate, he's a Democrat. He's on the Intelligence Committee over there. He discovered an innovative loophole they're using to spy on Americans in a way I can't even tell you here, because the FBI's interpretation of the law is top secret. Literally, there's a red and white cover on top of Ron Wyden's letter that says top secret. And Victoria Sparks and I went in there, and we read it. It's very troubling. It's an interpretation, a secret interpretation of the FISA law, and it can't even tell you how they're interpreting. Now, when you have secret laws, that's when you know your country has gone too far. How do you know you're not breaking secret laws? How do you know what your government's doing?

Anyways, I show Victoria Sparks this document, and we look at it, and she said, well, there's something even worse over in this other skiff across the hallway that you need to see. So we already had our phones locked up. The debt badge was locked up in a little locker. I said, all right, well, I'll go across the hall and see your other document.

It's an opinion from the FISC, which is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. And these are the folks that, it's a court in the sense that there are judges, but they're on loan from the federal courts, and it's a separate court, and there's no adversarial presentation of the fact in a FISA court. I think there should be. I think there should be at least in a friend of liberty in that courtroom. That's one of the amendments to the FISA reauthorization that we've suggested.

Anyways, the FISA court has said, and there's a hundred plus page document over there. By the way, when Victoria Sparks got it, I heard some of my colleagues saying, well, the one I saw was only 50 pages. When Victoria got it, she got to the page 50 and realized there were more pages that were missing. She said, what is this paragraph end here? There's no, where's the conclusion? Where's the end of this? And they went and found like 50 more pages to show her. So anyways, when I went over there, I got to see the entire- I'm sure it was an accidental misplacement. And it's another secret interpretation of the law that the FBI is using in a novel way that allows them, I believe, to under-report abuses of the FISA program.

So if you hear in the news that, oh, under Biden, we had 5,000 abuses of FISA by the FBI, self-reported, and under Trump, we've only got a hundred. And so we don't need to reform this program. Well, if you go in the SCIF and read the top secret documents, opinions of the FISA court judges, it says, well, here's what they're doing that allows them to do things that your law prevents them, should prevent them from doing. Okay.

So now I've read two top secret documents in the SCIF, and it's really helpful. I tell you that I was in there with Representative Victoria Sparks, because when you go in a SCIF, you leave your smartphone outside and your staff can't be in there. So it really is. You might think like a stupid congressman, it's just, it's just voting and getting elected and raising money and, and working for team red or team blue. So you don't really have to have a very good IQ to do this job. The reality is when you go in a SCIF, that's all you've got. You don't have a smartphone. So you can't be smart. You can't AI, you can't Google, and you can't even ask your staff questions. And when you get out of the SCIF, you can't tell them what you saw.

And so Victoria is one of the smartest people I know in Congress. So when you're in there and you can have somebody check your homework and say, hey, did you see what they're doing right here? And you're like, Oh, I missed that. It's very helpful to go in the SCIF in pairs. Remind me, I'm not the constitutional scholar that you are, but I don't remember the section where it allows for secret legal interpretations of secret laws, not to be conveyed to Congress, and certainly not the public. Which, which one was that? I won't find it in the Constitution, but I think you'll find it in history. Like, I think the Romans came up with this, they eventually had secret laws, like you'll find where some... Henry VIII maybe did some of this.

Yeah, where some decent governments went off track when they decided that law, some of the laws should be secret. And that's a problem. But so no, secret laws, there's no authorization for it in the Constitution. It's a total construct. And I think our founders would be aghast. And what the two, the nature of the two documents I saw were secret interpretations of the law.

And you should, you should be allowed to know how the executive branch is interpreting the law. Otherwise, how could, for instance, the Supreme Court rule? Or how could you vote for a representative that's going to vote for you if you don't, if you don't know what they're voting on, and they don't know what they're voting on?”

https://x.com/i/status/2048394164878917674?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email