President Donald Trump’s administration hasn’t released a secretive court opinion on warrantless surveillance that was supposed to be made public last month, according to two Democratic senators. The opinion “details serious abuses of Americans’ rights under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA),” according to the senators.
Section 702 allows the collection of communications from foreign sources without a warrant but is criticized for sweeping up a ton of communications from Americans in the process.
Sen. Ron Wyden from Oregon and Sen. Adam Schiff from California released a letter Monday addressed to the Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and Attorney General Todd Blanche calling for the release of the court opinion, which was created in March. By law, a declassified version should have been released in 180 days on Sept. 13, something the Trump Administration hasn’t yet done.
At the heart of the issue, as far as Wyden and Schiff is concerned, is whether Section 702 should be extended. Congress held a vote in June to reauthorize Section 702 but it failed 218-198, with 19 Republicans joining many Democrats to vote against it. Despite the fact that Congress didn’t reauthorize it, the administration has been allowed to use it until March 2027.
According to the letter: “This is because the March 17, 2026 FISC opinion that detailed abuses of the program also permitted the administration to continue this surveillance for another year. As such, Congress will doubtlessly debate whether to revive Section 702 in the coming months.”
The letter also notes that Attorney General Blanche has testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he expected the court opinion to be released before the deadline in September. “Nevertheless, it is now a month past the statutory deadline and the opinion has still not been released,” the letter explains.
Sen. Wyden, the longest serving member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has long been one of the most vocal opponents of mass surveillance abuses and often raises the alarm when he’s aware of classified information that he believes the U.S. public has a right to know. In this case, he’s not even asking for something special to be released, the senator simply wants a declassified report to be put out like it’s legally required to be.
“As Congress continues to debate the fate of this authority, lawmakers must be able to discuss these abuses openly,” Wyden and Schiff wrote in a statement shared with Gizmodo. “Otherwise, the American people will rightly question whether a government that so flagrantly violates basic legal requirements, like the statute requiring declassification, can ever be trusted to not abuse a powerful surveillance tool like Section 702.”
The letter asks for the opinion to be released as soon as possible and for a response by Nov. 6, 2026. The senators have asked for an explanation on what’s caused the hold up and for the identity of officials that have withheld the report from being released.
Todd Blanche is President Trump’s former personal attorney and has lately been much more explicit in saying that he doesn’t work for the American people and instead works for Trump. On a podcast last week, Blanche told the New York Post‘s Miranda Devine that historically there’s been a “misperception” that the Attorney General is supposed to be independent from the White House.
“So there was this misperception that there’s this separation and independence between the Department of Justice and the White House, and everybody likes to champion that, and they accuse me of not suffering from independence,” said Blanche. “I don’t. I work for President Trump.”
