[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 77 (Tuesday, June 4, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3921-S3922]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CULTURE OF INTIMIDATION

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the events of the last few weeks have 
thrown a spotlight on a culture in Washington which threatens the very 
fabric of what I just spoke about and that Senator Lautenberg fought 
for and contributed to, one that would hopefully instill confidence in 
the American people that what is happening here is in their best 
interest; that people realize we are the employees of the American 
people, here to serve their interests. That should be our primary 
focus.
  Unfortunately, we have learned a culture of intimidation has arisen 
in Washington, and, unfortunately, it has become all too pervasive and 
threatens to become a cancer that cannot only destroy the public 
confidence in their Federal Government but also destroy the nature of 
our democracy itself.
  We have learned that IRS agents--we don't know how many yet, but we 
do know that some--were deliberately targeting different political 
groups because of their political activities. Remember, this is 
activity protected by the First Amendment of the United States 
Constitution. If it weren't for the political activity of the American 
people, we wouldn't have this great democracy which is the envy of the 
world. But we have learned the Internal Revenue Service was asking 
different groups inappropriate questions about their donors, their 
positions on various issues of the day, and the political affiliations 
of its officers and directors. We have learned these abuses went far 
beyond two rogue employees in the Cincinnati field office; that the IRS 
headquarters in Washington was involved as well.
  Of course, the initial story that this was confined to a couple of 
self-starters and free agents in Cincinnati was laughable. We all know 
enough about bureaucracies to know that no one, particularly at a lower 
level to midlevel, instigates any sort of initiative as bold and as 
toxic as this without some sort of approval from on high, whether it is 
implicit or explicit.
  We have now learned senior officials in the IRS knew about these 
abuses at least 2 years ago, yet failed to notify Congress or the 
public. We have learned that one conservative activist from Houston, 
TX, one of my constituents, Catherine Engelbrecht, was targeted by 
multiple Federal agencies, including the IRS, the FBI, the Bureau of 
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and OSHA.
  We have also learned the Environmental Protection Agency is yet 
another agency that has discriminated

[[Page S3922]]

against political organizations they do not happen to agree with. And 
we have learned the Obama administration, in the form of the Justice 
Department, has treated a reporter as if he were a criminal simply for 
doing his job.
  I have seen the explanation of the apologists at the Justice 
Department. They said just because they identified James Rosen as a 
potential criminal coconspirator, they never intended to prosecute him. 
This is part of an affidavit designed to get at certain records that 
Mr. Rosen and his family maintained, invading their privacy. It makes 
no sense they would claim in this affidavit, in order to get this 
search warrant, that he was a potential criminal coconspirator and at 
the same time they never intended to prosecute him. Those are simply 
incompatible and inconsistent statements.
  We have also learned the Department of Justice has conducted a 
disturbingly intrusive and broad investigation into the phone records 
of journalists who worked for the Associated Press.
  At the Department of Health and Human Services we have learned that 
Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has 
literally been raising money from private companies she is responsible 
for regulating in order to fund ObamaCare. That is a conflict of 
interest, and that is the most charitable thing one can say about it.
  We have further learned this culture of intimidation has also given 
way to a culture of coverups and misinformation. We have learned more 
about the Obama administration's dishonest portrayal of the September 
2012 terrorist attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. We 
have learned the Obama State Department punished U.S. diplomats, 
whistleblowers, for cooperating with congressional investigators.
  Sadly, these abuses are part of a larger pattern that goes back 
several years. For example, in 2010, when we were considering the 
matter of ObamaCare, various health insurance companies began alerting 
their customers about what they believed the impact of ObamaCare would 
be on them, and that specifically, if passed, it would force them to 
raise premiums on their own customers. Secretary Sebelius, at the time, 
threatened to punish these companies and bar them from participating in 
the ObamaCare exchanges if they followed through in communicating with 
their own customers about what the impact of this legislation would be 
on them.
  By the way, the same IRS official who led the division to target 
political speech is now in charge of administering large portions of 
ObamaCare, which depends upon the Internal Revenue Service to implement 
so much of it. At a time when the Internal Revenue Service has lost 
credibility with the American people, it has no business administering 
a law that will affect one-sixth of our national economy.
  The same culture of intimidation we have seen at Health and Human 
Services and at the Internal Revenue Service has also been prevalent at 
the Justice Department. That should be the bastion of justice and equal 
treatment under the law, but, sadly, it is not. The case of Fox News 
reporter James Rosen is only the latest example.
  In recent days we have learned DOJ officials tracked Rosen's 
movements, got a search warrant to examine his private e-mails, and 
even obtained his parents' phone records. They treated him like a 
criminal, which is quite remarkable because, as I said, he was simply 
doing his job.
  As the Washington correspondent for the New Yorker magazine noted:

       It is unprecedented for the government, in an official 
     court document, to accuse a reporter of breaking the law for 
     conducting routine business of reporting on government 
     secrets.

  I believe national security leaks should be investigated. But what 
about going after the leaker? We recognize when reporters are targeted, 
it becomes especially sensitive, given the role of reporting the news 
and the freedom of the press guaranteed by the Constitution and the 
need of our society to maintain the kind of openness that only comes 
with a free and robust press.
  In addition to an overbearing surveillance of individual journalists, 
the Obama Justice Department also targeted whistleblowers in the 
notorious Fast and Furious investigation. This is where guns were 
purchased in bulk in the United States and allowed to walk into the 
hands of the drug cartels in Mexico.
  One Department of Justice official, a U.S. attorney in Arizona, tried 
to smear a whistleblower by leaking a private document. The Department 
of Justice inspector general called this behavior ``inappropriate for a 
department employee and wholly unbefitting a United States attorney.'' 
Meanwhile, a separate Justice Department official was forced to resign 
her position when she was caught collaborating with leftwing bloggers 
to slander both whistleblowers and journalists.
  As you can see, my conclusion there has been created a culture of 
intimidation is not the result of just one incident but a number of 
incidents and data points that, when connected, I think clearly paint 
that very sad and troubling picture. This culture of intimidation has 
become entrenched at Federal agencies and departments all across the 
Obama administration.
  This culture of intimidation was troubling before the IRS scandal 
broke, and it is even more troubling given all we have learned in the 
past few weeks. So I hope Congress will do its job on a bipartisan 
basis--as the Finance Committee, under the leadership of Senators Max 
Baucus and Orrin Hatch, have already done on the IRS matter--to 
investigate this in a bipartisan way to get to the bottom of this 
matter, recognizing this kind of abuse of power on the part of the 
Internal Revenue Service can be turned not just against conservative 
political speech but also against people on the political left or 
anybody in between. This should not and cannot be tolerated.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.

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