[Congressional Bills 115th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 907 Introduced in House (IH)]
<DOC>
115th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. RES. 907
Expressing the sense of Congress that the Attorney General of the
United States should appoint a Special Counsel to investigate
misconduct at the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of
Investigation, including an investigation of abuse of the FISA warrant
process, how and why the Hillary Clinton probe ended, and how and why
the Donald Trump-Russia probe began.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
May 22, 2018
Mr. Zeldin (for himself, Mr. Gosar, Mr. Gaetz, Mr. Perry, Mr. DeSantis,
Mr. Mooney of West Virginia, Mr. DesJarlais, Ms. Tenney, Mr. Meadows,
Mr. Jody B. Hice of Georgia, Mr. Gohmert, Mr. Rothfus, Mr. Jordan, Mr.
Budd, Mr. Rouzer, Mr. Yoho, Mr. Brat, Mr. Rokita, Mr. Biggs, Mr. Poe of
Texas, Mr. Williams, Mr. Duncan of South Carolina, Mr. Gibbs, Mrs.
Black, and Mr. Issa) submitted the following resolution; which was
referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of Congress that the Attorney General of the
United States should appoint a Special Counsel to investigate
misconduct at the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of
Investigation, including an investigation of abuse of the FISA warrant
process, how and why the Hillary Clinton probe ended, and how and why
the Donald Trump-Russia probe began.
Whereas there is an urgent need for the appointment of a second Special Counsel
in light of evidence that raises critical concerns about decisions,
activities, and inherent bias displayed at the highest levels of the
Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
regarding FISA abuse, how and why the Hillary Clinton email probe ended,
and how and why the Donald Trump-Russia probe began;
Whereas the concerns of the American people are serious and the issues requiring
an immediate, unbiased, independent, and thorough investigation are
broad;
Whereas misconduct during the 2016 presidential election by high-ranking
individuals within the FBI and DOJ may have led to the premature
conclusion of the FBI's 2016 probe into then-presidential candidate and
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton;
Whereas during her tenure as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton violated
Federal law, and Department of State rules, regulations, and protocol,
by using a private email server in her Chappaqua, New York, home;
Whereas official communications were transmitted on an unsecured server and
included emails that contained classified information when they were
sent, in addition to additional emails which were retroactively deemed
classified by the Department of State;
Whereas FBI Director James Comey acknowledged that 65 of these illicit emails
were classified as ``Secret'' and 22 were classified as ``Top Secret'';
Whereas there is significant evidence that the use of this private server by
Secretary Clinton was meant to avoid compliance with the Freedom of
Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552) and done to obstruct justice by not
having to turn over incriminating emails in the case of a subpoena;
Whereas various sensitive emails subject to grand jury and congressional
subpoenas were destroyed on Secretary Clinton's private server through
the use of ``BleachBit'' software and the destruction of hardware before
they could be obtained by investigators in March 2015;
Whereas in a September 2015 meeting between then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch
and then-Director Comey, the Attorney General instructed Director Comey
to refer to the Clinton email investigation as a ``matter'', thus
watering down the severity of the investigation and aligning the FBI's
rhetoric with the messaging of the Clinton campaign;
Whereas Cheryl Mills, who served as Counselor and Chief of Staff to Hillary
Clinton during her entire tenure as United States Secretary of State,
was offered immunity from prosecution by the FBI during this
investigation in exchange for access to her laptop that contained many
of the questionable emails;
Whereas according to transcripts obtained by the Senate Judiciary Committee,
former Director Comey was prepared to exonerate Hillary Clinton as early
as April or May of 2016 when he began to draft a statement announcing
the end of his investigation, before up to 17 key witnesses, including
former Secretary Clinton and several of her closest aides, were
interviewed;
Whereas former Director Comey contradicted these transcripts when he stated
during sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on September
28, 2016, that he made the decision not to recommend criminal charges
for Secretary Clinton ``after'' she was interviewed by the FBI on July
2, 2016;
Whereas Director Comey, in the final draft of his statement, allowed FBI Agent
Peter Strzok to replace ``grossly negligent'', which is legally
punishable under Federal law, with ``extremely careless'', which is not
legally punishable under Federal law;
Whereas Federal law states gross negligence in handling the Nation's
intelligence can be punished criminally with prison time or fines (18
U.S.C. 793, 798);
Whereas on June 27, 2016, Attorney General Lynch had a covert meeting with
former President Bill Clinton aboard her plane on the tarmac in Phoenix,
Arizona;
Whereas on July 5, 2016, Director Comey violated DOJ rules and unilaterally
exonerated then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a public
statement to the media;
Whereas one day later, on July 6, 2016, an announcement followed from Attorney
General Lynch that the DOJ investigation into then-presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton would be formally closed with no criminal
charges;
Whereas in September 2016, the FBI, during an examination of the personal laptop
of former Congressman Anthony Weiner as part of an unrelated
investigation into him sending sexually explicit messages to a teenage
girl, discovered previously unexamined Department of State classified
emails belonging to his spouse, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin;
Whereas FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's wife, Dr. Jill McCabe, was running
for Virginia State Senate at the time and, as of October 26th, had
received $675,000 in donations from the Virginia Democratic Party and
Common Good VA, the Leadership PAC controlled by Democratic Virginia
Governor Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton associate;
Whereas an investigation conducted by the Office of the DOJ Inspector General
noted that on October 27, 2016, Director Comey required that Deputy
Director McCabe remove himself from a conference call regarding the
Clinton emails discovered on Anthony Weiner's laptop to avoid the
appearance of a conflict of interest after media reports surfaced noting
these questionable political donations;
Whereas it took until October 28, 2016, for Director Comey to announce via a
letter to the chairs of the relevant congressional committees that he
was reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton, an additional,
egregious delay after the FBI failed to even examine the illicit emails
after the FBI discovered them on Anthony Weiner's computer;
Whereas further investigation into whether then-FBI Deputy Director McCabe and
other FBI officials sought to purposely delay the release of these
illicit emails for politically motivated purposes is warranted;
Whereas throughout the Obama Administration, the DOJ failed to fully investigate
serious concerns surrounding former President Clinton, then-Secretary of
State Clinton, and the Clinton Foundation's connection to Russian
company Uranium One, which received Department of State approval to
purchase U.S. uranium mines in 2010;
Whereas throughout Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, a family
foundation controlled by the Chairman of Uranium One made $2,350,000 in
contributions to the Clinton Foundation which were not publicly
disclosed in violation of an agreement Secretary Clinton had with the
Obama White House to publicly identify all donors;
Whereas in 2010, while Russian State interests were working to both acquire a
majority stake in Uranium One and to purchase American mines, Bill
Clinton was paid $500,000 for a speech in Moscow by a Kremlin-linked
Russian investment bank that was underwriting Uranium One stock;
Whereas a confidential informant who worked with the FBI to uncover bribery and
other corruption related to the Uranium One matter was threatened with
reprisal by the Justice Department under Attorney General Lynch when he
tried to come forward in 2016;
Whereas the Senate Judiciary Committee launched a probe in October 2017 to
investigate the Uranium One matter, including whether Federal
departments and agencies such as the Department of State knew the FBI
was looking into possible corruption before the deal was approved;
Whereas an investigation conducted by the Office of the DOJ Inspector General
noted that a multi-State investigation into the questionable dealings of
the Clinton Foundation with corrupt donors was shut down in August 2016,
when pressure was asserted on the FBI by senior officials within the
Obama Justice Department;
Whereas the same Inspector General's report also noted that shutting down this
investigation into Clinton Foundation impropriety and influence peddling
was connected to high ranking officials in the DOJ and FBI, including
Attorney General Lynch, Director Comey, and Deputy Director McCabe;
Whereas the same Inspector General's report also found that Deputy Director
McCabe, after consenting to the political pressure to shut down the
Clinton Foundation multi-State investigation, attempted to later use
unauthorized leaks to the press to create a false narrative that he was
opposed to the closure of the investigation and that he did this in an
attempt to salvage his reputation following revelations of questionable
Clinton-connected money being donated to his wife's Virginia State
Senate campaign;
Whereas in October 2016, the FBI and DOJ used politically biased, unverified
sources to obtain warrants issued by the United States Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISA Court) that aided in the
surveillance of U.S. citizens, including Carter Page;
Whereas these warrants grant U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies
sweeping power to collect bulk information and conduct ``about
collection'', which results in surveillance of a broad array of private
communications from the past, present, and future, including those of
U.S. citizens not specifically targeted in the FISA authorized warrant;
Whereas to obtain these warrants, FBI and DOJ officials submitted an unverified
dossier prepared by Christopher Steele to the FISA Court, failing to
disclose that Christopher Steele was hired by the firm Fusion GPS, which
was hired by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton
campaign to prepare this dossier and that the source was unreliable and
was soon thereafter going to be terminated as a source;
Whereas the FISA Court was not informed that Christopher Steele was actively
opposed to the election of Donald Trump, that he was the unnamed source
cited in the media reports that the FBI used to corroborate his dossier,
and that Fusion GPS had been hired to perform previous anti-Trump
research efforts in 2015;
Whereas the Woods Procedures, which are the FBI's mandatory vetting process
required for all FISA warrant applications instituted to ensure that all
the facts contained in an application are accurate and verified to
clearly support probable cause for a warrant, were not followed;
Whereas former Director Comey admitted in sworn testimony to the Senate
Judiciary Committee on June 8, 2017, that material contained in the
Steele dossier was known to be both ``salacious'' and ``unverified'';
Whereas since FISA warrant applications are rarely turned down, are almost never
subject to appeal, and are presented in closed court with no public
record where the Government is not challenged by any defense, it is
imperative that the Government take extra care to validate the
information being utilized to build their case before they take the
extraordinary step of waiving rights of a U.S. citizen without his or
her knowledge or the opportunity to present a defense;
Whereas at the FISA Court, the Government has a responsibility not only to
provide its best evidence in support of its case, but also to provide
the best evidence against its case;
Whereas these deeply flawed and questionable FISA warrant applications utilizing
illicit sources and politically biased intelligence were approved by DOJ
and FBI officials at the highest levels before being submitted to the
FISA Court;
Whereas it was further not disclosed to the FISA court that the wife of fourth-
ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr worked for Fusion GPS and that
Christopher Steele directly transmitted the dossier and other
information through Bruce Ohr for submission to the FISA court;
Whereas to this day there does not appear to be any evidence that President
Trump colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election;
Whereas the initial FBI probe into the Trump Campaign and alleged collusion with
Russia was launched in July 2016, based on questionable and insufficient
intelligence and biased motivations;
Whereas former Director Comey prepared a series of seven memoranda containing
classified information, including notes on his conversations with
President Trump;
Whereas former Director Comey admitted in sworn testimony to the Senate
Committee on Intelligence on June 8, 2017, that he had leaked this
content to a personal friend and encouraged that friend to share the
material with the press in order to trigger a Special Counsel
investigation;
Whereas an investigation conducted by the Senate Judiciary Committee later
revealed that the personal friend of Director Comey was Professor Daniel
Richman of Columbia Law School and that Director Comey provided him with
four of the seven memoranda;
Whereas Director Comey's actions are a clear violation of non-disclosure
agreements he signed as a condition of his appointment and a clear
violation of FBI protocols regarding the dissemination of sensitive
information outside of the Bureau which are based on provisions of the
Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. 552a);
Whereas text messages exchanged between FBI Agent Strzok and FBI Counsel Lisa
Page, during the period of August 16, 2015, to May 17, 2017, contain
serious evidence of political bias and the improper handling of
investigations within the agency;
Whereas the texts contain egregious evidence of bias against President Trump,
including Lisa Page stating ``Trump should go f himself'' and Peter
Strzok stating ``F TRUMP'';
Whereas those text messages were not stored within the FBI archive system, an
egregious oversight blamed on a technical glitch, and even after these
messages were partially recovered by the Bureau's Inspector General in
January 2018, many unanswered questions remain regarding impropriety and
bias;
Whereas in March 2018, former FBI Deputy Director McCabe was fired by Attorney
General Jeff Sessions who noted that Deputy Director McCabe ``lacked
candor--including under oath--on multiple occasions'' and had partaken
in ``unauthorized disclosure to the news media'', among other violations
noted in a report issued by the Office of the DOJ Inspector General
after a wide-reaching investigation into Deputy Director McCabe's
conduct;
Whereas a myriad of DOJ and FBI personnel have been fired or demoted, or have
resigned, including FBI Director Comey, Deputy Director McCabe, Chief of
Staff to the Director James Rybicki, FBI General Counsel James Baker,
FBI Agent Strzok, FBI Counsel Page, FBI Special Agent Josh Campbell, DOJ
Senior Official Ohr, FBI Assistant Director Michael Kortan, and
Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik;
Whereas evidence has come to light that raises serious concerns about egregious
misconduct within the DOJ and FBI rooted in political bias;
Whereas the DOJ, FBI, or both appear to have planted at least one person into
Donald Trump's Presidential campaign to infiltrate and surveil the
campaign;
Whereas the DOJ has failed to timely comply with several related document
requests by Congress;
Whereas providing Members of Congress with heavily redacted versions of some but
not all of the documents demanded and offering Members limited in-person
viewing of these documents is an inadequate response to repeated
requests after months of delay by the DOJ;
Whereas the mission of the Office of the DOJ Inspector General is limited to
detecting and deterring waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct in DOJ
programs and personnel and promoting economy and efficiency in those
programs, and a fully independent Special Counsel has greater autonomy
than an Inspector General or Federal prosecutors to run a non-biased
investigation and if necessary bring forth criminal charges; and
Whereas the DOJ and FBI cannot be expected to fully investigate themselves
regarding this matter: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of Congress that--
(1) DOJ, FBI, and all Federal law enforcement agencies have
a sacred duty to uphold our Constitution and to protect our
country without any partisan or ideological inclination
affecting their important work;
(2) Congress acknowledges with gratitude that the vast
majority of the men and women who serve within these critical
agencies do so with the utmost integrity, independence,
patriotism, and commitment to the rule of law;
(3) misconduct regarding FISA abuse, how and why the
Hillary Clinton probe ended, and how and why the Trump-Russia
probe began should immediately be investigated by a Special
Counsel who can act independently; and
(4) the Attorney General of the United States should
immediately appoint a Special Counsel to conduct a thorough and
independent investigation of these grave concerns.
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