fill the seat, which had been vacant for more than 11 years. He has expressed pride at creating the longest federal court bench vacancy in U.S. history by blocking the appointment of a judge Obama nominated. Privacy and surveillance Some provisions of the Patriot Act, including those enabling the bulk collection of metadata for private telephone records by the National Security Agency, were scheduled to expire at the end of May 2015. As chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr proposed extending the provisions for two years, but his amendments were defeated. After the provisions expired, the Senate passed the USA Freedom Act, which instead allowed the NSA to subpoena the data from telephone companies. In 2016, following the FBI–Apple encryption dispute, Burr and Senator Dianne Feinstein circulated a draft bill (subsequently leaked) that would create a "backdoor" mandate, requiring technology companies to design encryption so as to provide law enforcement with user data in an "intelligible format" when required to do so by court order. President Trump Burr was a national security adviser to the Trump campaign. He stated that Trump "aligns perfectly" with the Republican Party. When asked on the campaign trail about Trump's offensive remarks about women, Burr said Trump should be forgiven a few mistakes and given time to change. In 2017, Burr said of Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, "I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order." As chair of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Burr led that chamber's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. In March 2017, Comey briefed congressional leaders and Intelligence Committee heads on the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the election. That briefing included "an identification of the principal U.S. subjects of the investigation." The Mueller report found that Burr had then corresponded with the Trump White House a week later about the Russia probes, with the White House Counsel's office, led by Don McGahn, apparently receiving "information about the status of the FBI investigation." In December 2019, amid an impeachment inquiry into Trump over the Trump-Ukraine scandal (Trump's request that Ukraine announce an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden), Burr pushed the debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election. Burr said, "There's no difference in the way Russia put their feet, early on, on the scale—being for one candidate and