[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 95 (Wednesday, June 18, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H5487-H5492]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 2015
AMNESTY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I want to express my appreciation to the
Appropriations Committee for the appropriations process. I think we are
all better when we have open amendments and have a chance to have
everybody have input. It is a nasty process, but it is a good way to do
it.
Input is important, because when you don't listen to proper input,
you can end up having a judgment, as did the Pelletier case where a
juvenile court judge in Massachusetts took away custody from her
parents, and finally a victory yesterday as the court, Judge Joseph
Johnston, wrote in his ruling:
Effective Wednesday, June 18, 2014, this care and
protection petition is dismissed and custody of Justina is
returned to her parents, Lou and Linda Pelletier.
His first statement there is:
I find that the parties have shown credible evidence that
circumstances have changed since the adjudication on December
20, 2013, that Justina is a child in care and protection
pursuant to G.L. c. 199, 24-26.
Clearly, the only thing that had changed was not credible evidence.
It was a judge who finally did his job, which was not to take parents'
kids away from them.
It reminded me of comments made by a daycare director in the Soviet
Union back when I was an exchange student during college days. The
daycare director was bragging that the children belonged to the state,
that parents are only temporary caregivers that serve at the whim of--
she didn't say ``whim''--but basically at the discretion of the
government.
Back then, in the Soviet Union, if you ever told your child anything
negative about the Soviet Union--the Soviet Government, Soviet
leaders--and they found out, they would whisk in, take your child away,
and as the director said, give them to more deserving parents.
It appears that is really what happened in the Pelletier case. Some
bureaucrats refused to consider all of the evidence as they should have
and decided that they would play God for a while and give custody of
this poor child to the State instead of her parents who gave every
indication of loving her and caring about her, trying to do the right
thing for her. Instead, the State caused great damage. Unfortunately,
that happens too often in many
[[Page H5488]]
different areas when the State thinks they know better than the people
personally involved.
What gets even worse is when you have a Federal administration that
believes they know better than the law, that they don't have to follow
the law because they are better than the law, which would make them
right on par with Chavez in Venezuela or pick out the dictator. They
are right there, because they know so much better than anybody else in
the country. That is why they are called dictators.
One of the most shocking things about the lawlessness of this
administration is that they could have spokespeople with straight faces
come out and say: We really don't know what is causing this wave of
humanitarian crises on the border. We just really don't understand why
this wave is coming now.
Well, all they have to do is review some of the reports from Border
Patrolmen, ICE agents--particularly the Border Patrolmen who have been
interviewing these kids, especially the older ones, 15, 16, 17: Why did
you come to the United States illegally now? And the Border Patrol
reports so many of the children just say basically the same thing: It
is because of your new law that is going to let us come and stay
legally. It is the new law that we get amnesty, that all we have to do
is come.
It is incredible the humanitarian crisis that this administration has
caused. There is some blame to go around for Republicans as well, that
have entered into this discussion about providing amnesty, providing
legal status when, if they would simply listen to the people in the
field on the border and understand the trauma that they have been going
through trying to protect this country, they would find out, as Chris
Crane has said before, he said again yesterday, when people in
Washington talk about amnesty or legal status, we see a massive influx
of people coming because they want to get here for the legal status,
the amnesty. That is why it is so critical that we not talk about any
kind of legal status or amnesty being awarded to anyone, that we wait
until we have a President, hopefully a change in this President's heart
so he will start enforcing the law and start faithfully executing the
laws of the country.
It is unconstitutional for anyone in the United States, including the
President, to say: I don't like the law the way it is. Congress hasn't
changed it, so here's the new law.
One rather shocking thing is when the President said, you know, that
Congress hadn't fixed it so here is the new law on who is going to be
allowed to stay and be given legal status that we are not going to
throw out. Here is the new law; here are the new requirements.
I couldn't believe conservative news media, liberal news media, they
are all reporting the same thing. Gee, here is the new law. Here are
the new requirements that the President just pronounced into law.
Fortunately, there are many levelheaded folks that understand that we
are supposed to act within a Constitution, who pointed out you can't
just stand up and say, ``Here's the new law.'' You actually have to
have it pass through Congress. Yeah, it is a tough thing to do, and
that is exactly what the Founders intended, because they knew the
easier it was to pass laws, the quicker Americans would lose their
liberty.
Ever since the 17th Amendment was ratified, the States lost their
check and balance over the Federal Government not usurping the power
reserved to them in the 10th Amendment. Some have incorrectly reported
that I want to repeal the 17th Amendment, go back to selecting Senators
by State legislatures making the selection. There were some abuses
there. Some legislators figured out how to game the system through the
Senators they selected. All you would have to do is say: All right. We
are going to select you to be our Senator, but here is our laundry list
of things that we want.
So it was susceptible to being abused as well, but the point should
not be lost that there has to be a way for States to regain the check
and balance over the Federal Government usurpation of rights of the
various States, the powers of the State.
If the States still had the check and balance over the Federal
Government, you wouldn't see a report like John Roberts of FoxNews
reported this week. ``Wave of humanity,'' he reports: ``Border Patrol
overwhelmed by flow of illegal immigrants.'' He says:
At daybreak in this border town, two women from Guatemala--
one with a small child strapped to her back--wait patiently
on the levy overlooking the Rio Grande.
They have been instructed by the ``coyote'' who ferried
them across the river for an exorbitant fee--as much as
$1,000--to simply wait for the Border Patrol to pick them up.
After processing, they will likely be given a notice to
appear before an immigration judge and a bus ticket to
wherever in America they may have friends or relatives.
That's the way it goes, day in and day out, in what has
become ground zero of the latest immigration crisis.
Thousands upon thousands of people from Central America
exploiting the porous border of the Rio Grande Valley to
enter the United States.
To quote:
``If we don't send the message that they can't just come in
and stay here, it's gonna continue, this wave of humanity,''
said Texas Representative Henry Cuellar. Cuellar is a
Democrat, but an outspoken critic of how President Obama has
handled this crisis.
Another story from Brandon Darby from Breitbart reports:
Vice President Moran invoked the case of Robert Rosas, a
Border Patrol agent who was ambushed by illegal immigrants in
2009 in southern California. In that instance, Agent Rosas
was dispatched alone to check on a sensor activation.
Breitbart News has covered that issue extensively and
revealed that one of the men involved had been on supervised
release from U.S. authorities. The illegal immigrants wanted
Agent Rosas's night-vision equipment, so they lured, trapped,
and murdered him, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.
``A repeat occurrence of an incident like this is what we
fear, especially now without full staffing in the field,''
said Vice President Moran.
Shawn Moran is vice president of the National Border Patrol Council,
the NBPC. He stated:
``The administration was already putting budgets before
securing the border. Our jobs are immensely dangerous as we
interrupt cartel activity on U.S. soil. Their border security
policy failures have already reduced the number of agents
securing the border, and now they have fewer agents out there
to back each other up. The lives of Border Patrol agents
should not be pawns in the political games of Washington,
D.C., and this administration is literally risking our
lives.''
The loss of Agent Rosas is an example of what happens when an
administration is lawless. It breeds more lawlessness, and that is
exactly what we have now on our United States border in the south. The
story says:
Though Border Patrol are often heavily grouped in urban
areas along the U.S.-Mexican border, they are often alone in
desolate rural areas--and most of the U.S.-Mexico border is
desolate.
It is really tragic what is happening, and this administration wrings
its hands--well, some do. Some play golf. Some wring their hands. Some
make sure they have got a good grip on their 7 iron, but others wring
their hands about the losses of life and the tragedies occurring on our
U.S.-Mexico border.
A story from the LA Times, Molly Hennessy-Fisk:
The call went out on Border Patrol radios just before
sundown one day this week: 31 immigrants spotted illegally
crossing the Rio Grande on a raft.
No sooner had the migrants been found hiding in the
mesquite brush then another report came in: a woman and boy
were walking up riverbank.
The Rio Grande Valley has become ground zero for an
unprecedented surge in families and unaccompanied children
flooding across the Southwest border, creating what the Obama
administration is calling a humanitarian crisis as border
officials struggle to accommodate new detainees.
{time} 2030
Largely from Central America, they are now arriving at a
rate of 35,000 a month. Anzalduas Park, a 96-acre expanse of
close-cropped fields and woodland that sits on a southern
bend of the river, has turned from an idyllic family
recreation area into a high-traffic zone for illegal
migration. The number of children and teenagers traveling
alone from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador is expected
to reach up to 90,000 across the southwest border by the end
of the year.
This story was written June 13. We have information that that number
hit 60,000 by May, and originally 60,000 was expected to be the top. So
I think it would be a good estimate to expect if we got more than
60,000 and they are coming faster and faster, and that 60,000 was hit
by early May or the 1st of May, I think you can pretty well count
[[Page H5489]]
on more than 90,000, perhaps more than 120,000, and that is this year.
As these teenagers and others are given legal status, then their
parents, they will be able to be anchors to bring other family members
in with them. So you are talking about just in 1 year adding maybe 1
million people when you start looking at all the other ways people are
coming in.
We bring in over 1 million people with visas legally every year. No
other country in the world does that. Countries a number of times our
size don't allow that many visas. We do because we are an open country.
But we understand there is an obligation. You have to maintain some
kind of semblance of order.
At a time when you have got tens of thousands and hundreds of
thousands of people coming in illegally, and you don't know who they
are, you have got drug cartels that are taking advantage of that, as
ICE and Border Patrol are pointing out. They are taking advantage of
it, they are moving more drugs than ever. As some have said this week,
we--Border Patrol, ICE agents--were changing diapers while they are
stepping up the number of drugs they are bringing in.
So how is this all happening? It comes back to the administration. If
you have an administration that is lawless and refuses to enforce the
law, as this administration has, you are going to reap the whirlwind.
There is another story from U.S. News, from Hidalgo County, ``Migrant
Surge Jams Border'':
Sergeant Dan Broyles once had to battle through the spiky
thicket of border vegetation here to find an immigrant
illegally sneaking into the country.
But all he had to do on a recent day was to wait in plain
sight along a dirt road, as a group of Salvadoran migrants,
including a 7-year-old girl with a pink Hello Kitty backpack,
deliberately walked up and surrendered to him a mile north of
the Rio Grande.
``They're all giving up,'' said Sergeant Broyles, 51-years-
old, a Hidalgo County Constable's official whose main
responsibility is supposed to be serving court papers. As he
waited for Border Patrol agents to pick up the migrants,
another group was coming up behind them.
And on and on and on it goes.
It is what happens when an administration refuses to enforce the law,
refuses to follow the law themselves. When you have an Attorney General
that obfuscates and is complicit in the hiding of evidence and keeping
evidence secret of what happened with a couple of thousand guns being
forced by the government to be sold to people that never should have
gotten them in the operation called ``Fast and Furious.'' We have known
about it for a number of years, but we have always felt like even in
the John Mitchell Department of Justice, even when there was illegality
somewhere, even at the top with the Attorney General, that there would
be good people in the Department of Justice that would stand up and
say: This is wrong, you are going to destroy our country because we are
supposed to be the department that ensures justice across the country.
It seems like what we are doing here in the DOJ is going after
political enemies of the administration instead of being fair across
the board. The rest of the world notices these things, and they notice
that we are not being fair and just and righteous, as we once were. All
the time this humanitarian crisis, illegal immigrants flooding into the
country from our south, and the administration saying: We don't know
why this is happening; why are they rushing here?
Well, then here is a story this week:
The White House to honor young illegal immigrants. The
White House will honor 10 young adults on Tuesday who came
into the United States illegally and qualified for the
President's program to defer deportation actions.
I might remind, Mr. Speaker, that this is the President's program
where he decided to change the law unilaterally, without Congress, to
say he didn't like the existing law, so he pronounced new law into
existence.
The story from Rebecca Shabad says:
Each person has qualified for the government's Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which delays removal
proceedings against them as long as they meet certain
guidelines.
They were honored as ``Champions of Change.''
So the White House is glorifying people that came in illegally and
then is shocked that more people want to come in and be glorified for
coming in illegally.
There is another story from Reuters of New York:
A New York lawmaker wants to grant many of the rights of
citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants and noncitizen
residents, including the right to vote in local and State
elections, under a bill introduced on Monday.
So let's give benefits, let's give a place to stay, let's give food,
let's give legal counsel, as this administration is doing all, and
let's give them incentives. Let's give them the right to vote so that
they can vote for more people to come in illegally. Because once you
give the right to vote to people who have not respected the law, and
you give them that right to vote before they can be educated on the
importance and the responsibility of maintaining a republic--madam, if
you can keep it--you are going to lose that republic, you are going to
lose the ability to have a government of the people, by the people, and
for the people. It becomes lawless. Might makes right.
A story from Breitbart this week:
Pro-Bono Lawyers: Most Unaccompanied Border Children Eligible for
Amnesty.
A story by Sylvia Longmire:
Under the authority of the Homeland Security Act, the
federal government transfers custody of illegal immigrant
children who are apprehended alone at our borders to the
Department of Health and Human Service's Office of Refugee
Resettlement. Their primary goal is to reunite them with a
family member or legal guardian already here in the U.S.
So, as U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen has said, now we are engaging
in human trafficking.
This is a good lesson in how you lose a great nation because you
refuse to enforce your laws. This country has never had perfect laws,
never will have perfect laws. They are made by man. But the thing we
are supposed to internally perpetually strive for is making them better
and better.
You don't have to study all that much history to understand that no
nation ever lasts forever. They never have, they never will, not in
this life.
So the question is: How long are you able to sustain a great nation?
Some have gone for hundreds and hundreds of years. The United States
has never been, will never be, an empire like the Greek or Roman empire
or the British empire because the United States has never been
imperialistic.
When we go in and fight for freedom, Americans die for freedom,
people still speak their same language, still have their same currency.
We help them to set up a government. Well, it is time we quit nation-
building.
Now Iraq. So many of us warned about this, and after my last visit to
Iraq, Dana Rohrabacher and I pointed out problems to Prime Minister al-
Maliki, and he didn't like it. We each pointed out promises that were
made and had been broken, and he didn't like it. Even 3 or 4 years ago,
it was very clear to us that Maliki was either going to totally sell
out to the Iranians, who had been killing Americans who were there, or
he would get knocked off, just like in Afghanistan. President Karzai is
either going to have to sell out to the Taliban or he is going to be
killed, or he can take money that people say he has not actually
embezzled that maybe some of his family has, take off with the money
and try to live on that somewhere outside of Afghanistan.
We don't have to nation-build. We should just make it clear to a
country: Look, you can pick whatever government you want, but when you
are a threat to us and you announce you want to destroy us as the great
Satan, destroy Israel as the little Satan, and you are working on the
bomb that will do that, then we need to take your government out. We
need to take out all of your areas where you are working on nuclear
weapons and keep bombing until we have satisfactorily done that, and
then let the nation pick whatever government they want. But if it is
one that wants to come after us again, as the Khomeini administration
has, then we need to take them out too.
The problem is this administration has been floating ideas of working
with Iran, which had been killing American soldiers the entire time
that U.S. soldiers were in Iraq, providing IEDs, providing weapons,
providing the means
[[Page H5490]]
and people to help kill Americans, and which has made clear they want
to wipe our country off the map, wipe Israel off the map, and this
administration has people who say: Let's work with Iran to control
Iraq.
That is sheer insanity. Who is thinking of these things? Allies of
the United States all over the world are asking: Are we the next ally
to be thrown away as the United States continues to embrace its enemies
and throw away its friends?
Take your pick of the way nations have been lost over time, great
nations have lost what freedom they had, what self-control they had.
Look at the way they have been lost. Some have lost it internally. They
spent too much money on themselves, overspent, they lost the country,
became a bankrupt nation. Or sometimes they let their defense down and
people came in and overwhelmed the nation. Or sometimes they were
attacked by armies who destroyed their power, their government.
Everywhere you turn, it appears we are taking the steps--this
administration and Congress is not doing enough yet to stop them--but
it appears the administration repeatedly is taking all of those roads
that lead to destruction.
{time} 2045
You cannot keep punishing your friends, rewarding your enemies. You
cannot keep encouraging your enemies and allowing them to develop
weapons that will destroy you. You cannot leave your borders open when
people have made clear: We are bringing drugs in, and we are coming in
with weapons now. We are taking over gangs in your cities. We are going
to destroy you from within.
You can't keep doing that. Then, all that time, we are cutting
spending on our defense to keep evil out. We are still overspending.
Sure, we have given some and helped wonderful companies like Solyndra
and paid $600 million or so for a Web site for ObamaCare and friends of
the administration when we are told: gee, you could have done a better
Web site for $4 million.
Sure, we have spent it on all kinds of things like that, but the
spending of future generations' money has to stop because you can lose
the country just in that way as well.
Just when you think the lawlessness of the administration could not
get any worse--just when you think, wow, it is absolutely incredible--
it is very clear now that this administration's Internal Revenue
Service was using IRS laws to persecute political opponents of the
administration, so they could not be effective and do again in 2012
what they did in 2010.
Guess what? It worked. At first, we were told: No, they were going
after liberal groups and conservative groups the same way.
Well, now, we know that is not true. They were going after
conservative groups, and when any administration has IRS officials that
send out questions asking about the content of your prayers, it is time
to start firing people right and left.
Since that hasn't happened, it tells you that there is a disease
running through this administration, a cancer that needs to be stopped.
We know that the Attorney General himself is in contempt of Congress,
and we know that he sat there and told me that I was not to ever think
it was a big deal for him to be found in contempt, when he knew that a
year before he told ABC it wasn't a big deal to him because he didn't
have any respect for people in Congress that voted to hold him in
contempt. He couldn't even get his story right when he was testifying
before Congress.
He needs to go. Since the administration has refused to move out an
Attorney General who has repeatedly failed to do his job, has
repeatedly failed to do justice, has repeatedly allowed the law to be
used to go after political enemies while protecting political friends,
while they have refused to go after people who believe that this
country ought to be part of a great radical Islamist caliphate--and we
protect those people.
Not only do we protect them, according to Egyptian periodicals that
were controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, they bragged about the
people in this administration who were in positions of power,
amazingly--maybe it shouldn't be that amazing--but eventually, truth
does have a way of coming forward.
Yes, we have the IRS, at this point, losing emails. Of course, that
triggered ideas in my head because there are criminals laws about
obstructing Congress. There are criminal laws about obstructing
investigations. There are criminal laws about IRS agents abusing their
positions.
So anyone anywhere in the administration that is in any way assisted
or encouraged in any way the losing or the reported loss of emails--
this active coverup that is going on--they committed a crime, and it
isn't just a 6-month statute of limitations, and they should be
worried.
So the IRS, despite the laws regarding redundancy, despite the
requirements that they are to keep records, they haven't done so.
There was a great letter that was sent by an attorney for True the
Vote, one of the persecuted conservative groups. Cleta Mitchell, the
attorney, writes to the counsel for the IRS and says:
As you know, True the Vote filed its lawsuit in the above-
referenced matter on May 21, 2013. By the time True the Vote
filed its suit, the Internal Revenue Service and its
employees and officials were on notice of the commencement of
several congressional investigations.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the
House Committee on Ways and Means, and the Senate Finance
Committee have each provided notice to the IRS of their
ongoing investigations into the IRS and, specifically,
defendant Lois Lerner and her activities related to the
issues involved in the True the Vote litigation for over a
year now.
Late Friday, the IRS apparently advised the Ways and Means
Committee that the IRS has ``lost'' Lois Lerner's hard drive,
which includes thousands of Defendant Lerner's email records.
However, several statutes and regulations require that the
records be accessible by the committees and, in turn, must be
preserved and made available to True the Vote in the event of
discovery in the pending litigation.
Those statutes include the Federal Records Act, Internal
Revenue Manual section 1.15.6.6, IRS Document 12829, 36 CFR
1230, and 36 CFR 1222.12.
Under those records retention regulations and the Federal
Records Act generally, the IRS is required to preserve emails
or otherwise contemporaneously transmit records for
preservation.
Therefore, the failure for the IRS to preserve and provide
these records to the committees would evidence further
violations of numerous records retention statutes and
regulations or obstruction of Congress.
Federal courts have held, in the context of trial, that the
bad faith destruction of evidence relevant to proof of an
issue gives rise to an inference that production of the
evidence would have been unfavorable to the party responsible
for its destruction.
It then cites a Federal case. That is called the doctrine of
spoliation.
The fact that the IRS is statutorily required to preserve
these records, yet nevertheless publicly claimed that they
have been ``lost'' appears to be evidence of bad faith.
18 USC 1505 makes it a Federal crime to obstruct
congressional proceedings and covers obstructive acts made
during the course of a congressional investigation, even
without official committee sanction.
It cites authority for that proposition.
Further, by letters dated September 17, 2013, True the Vote
provided notice to counsel for the individual IRS defendants
in this litigation. The individual defendants are: Steven
Grodnitzky, Lois Lerner, Steven Miller, Holly Paz, Michael
Seto, Douglas Shulman, Cindy Thomas, William Wilkins, Susan
Maloney, Ronald Bell, Janine L. Estes, and Faye Ng.
True the Vote's September 17, 2013, correspondence reminded
you and your clients of the individual defendants' obligation
``not to destroy, conceal, or alter any paper or electronic
files, other data generated by and/or stored on your clients'
computer systems and storage media, e.g., hard disks, floppy
disks, backup tapes, or any other electronic data, such as
voice mail.''
We identified the scope as encompassing both the personal
and professional or business capacity of your clients and
involving data ``generated or created on or after July 15,
2010.'' See attached letters to Ms. Benitez and Messrs.
Lamken and Shur.
As the D.C. District Court has found, ``a party has a duty
`to preserve potentially relevant evidence . . . '' once that
party anticipates litigation.'' ' ''
It cites the authority for that.
In fact, ``that obligation `runs first to counsel, who has
a duty to advise his client of the type of information
potentially relevant to the lawsuit and of the necessity of
preventing its destruction.' '' It ``also extends to the
managers of a corporate party, who `are responsible for
conveying to their employees the requirements for preserving
evidence.' ''
By letter dated September 25, Ms. Benitez acknowledged
receipt of our ``litigation
[[Page H5491]]
hold'' letter and vociferously objected to our having the
temerity to send such a letter, ``rejecting'' our
characterization of documents to be preserved.
Indeed, Ms. Benitez, you indicated that you took great
offense at having been put on notice to preserve and maintain
documents related to the issue of this litigation.
You further advised, however, that you would continue to
advise ``your clients as appropriate and, as always, will
abide by my legal and ethical obligations.''
The public reports released late on Friday, June 13, 2014,
stated the IRS now claims to have ``lost'' the emails of
defendant Lois Lerner.
I have got to inject. Ms. Benitez apparently wasn't being honest. She
apparently didn't know how to properly advise her clients and properly
abide by the legal and ethical obligations that she had.
This letter goes on:
These reports are particularly astonishing in light of your
representations, Ms. Benitez, that you would ``advise your
clients, as appropriate, and would abide by your legal and
ethical obligations.''
The ``lost'' emails, from press reports, appear to cover a
time period from January 2009 to April 2011.
We are deeply troubled by this news and are concerned about
the spoliation of information and documents pertaining to
this case and the apparent failure on your part to, a,
protect and preserve all potentially relevant information
and, b, to advise us of such failure and spoliation when you
first learned of it.
We are even more concerned after receiving your assurances
that you would ``abide by your legal and ethical
obligations.''
Accordingly, we hereby request that you advise us of the
following.
Then it goes on with demands. They are quite reasonable.
It says:
In addition to seeking responses to the questions in this
letter, we also seek your consent to immediately allow a
computer forensics expert selected by True the Vote to
examine the computers that is or are purportedly the source
of Ms. Lerner's ``lost'' emails, including cloning the hard
drives, and to attempt to restore what was supposedly
``lost'' and to seek to restore any and all ``lost'' evidence
pertinent to this litigation.
We also seek access to all computers, both official and
personal, used by any and all of the defendants from and
after July 1, 2010, in order to ensure preservation of the
documents of all defendants in this action.
We wish to resolve our concerns amicably; but, absent your
consent, we will file such motions as deemed necessary and
appropriately asking the court to require that you respond to
the questions contained in this letter and to permit such
forensic examination described herein and for such other
relief as may be appropriate for this egregious breach of
legal authority and professional ethics.
Anyway, the judge in that case needs to go ahead and order all kinds
of sanctions against the Internal Revenue Service. It needs to order
all kinds of sanctions against the attorneys and the employees involved
in that litigation who have failed to produce what was required.
The judge needs to make clear that justice, including from our own
so-called Justice Department, will not permit this kind of lawlessness.
It is outrageous. It is simply outrageous.
{time} 2100
Just when you think the ignoring of the safety of American citizens
couldn't get much worse by this administration, they brag that they are
bringing a known terrorist to New York City. Nobody on the left seems
to be terribly bothered by the fact that they say they are putting him
on a slow ship to the U.S. when they should have put him on a fast
plane to Guantanamo Bay. It is better kept than many prisons I have
been to that actually meet the requirements of the law, including the
requirements of liberal judges. It is better than so many prisons.
Yes, they get to play soccer, and when they continue to throw feces
or urine on our guards, then they do lose some of their movie time
watching. When I was down there a couple of times, somebody lost movie
privileges because he figured out a way to throw urine or feces on
guards. There actually was a guard who yelled back at the person who
threw feces on him, and he ended up being punished, I was told, by
Article 15 because you are not allowed to respond when a terrorist
throws feces or urine on you. They will take care of the adequate
punishment, and they think it is enough to take away some of their
movie watching time or television watching time or to maybe take away
some of the time they get to be outside, playing soccer.
They don't need to be in the United States if they have committed an
act of war against the United States, and the evidence seems to
indicate clearly that this defendant had. I am very pleased and I
applaud the administration for finally picking up this guy who was so
available to international media that they could get interviews with
him. Yet the administration didn't want to pick him up. If they had,
they could have gotten him at any time. I guess, last year, they picked
up this terrible terrorist in Libya, and when I was over there, the
Libyans said his address had been on the Internet for a year. The U.S.
could have gotten him any time they wanted to--they knew where he
lived--but the administration finally decided to do something about it,
so they did.
This is an article from CBS News: ``Benghazi Suspect Expected to Face
Criminal Charges in D.C. Federal Court.'' When Americans say someone
who commits an act of war against the United States should be brought
to a Federal district court because it is his constitutional right, it
tells you immediately they don't know the Constitution because, under
the Constitution, there isn't even a U.S. District Court created. How
can somebody have a right to a United States district court under our
Constitution when there is no U.S. district court created in our
Constitution?
As David Guinn used to say, who was my old constitutional law
professor, there is only one court created in the entire Constitution.
That is the Supreme Court. Every other Federal court in America owes
its existence and jurisdiction to the United States Congress. As Bill
Cosby said his father used to say, ``I brought you in this world, and I
can take you out.'' The Congress brought these courts into this world.
We can take them out of this world. Nobody has a constitutional right
to a U.S. district court. If you commit an act of war, you have got a
right to a tribunal if we so choose, and we have. You may have a right
to a military court.
I don't understand, Mr. Speaker, why in the world liberals in the
United States think that someone who commits an act of war against the
United States should have more constitutional rights than our United
States military, and this administration thinks one does. How do you
know? Look at what they are doing to our military. Go talk to some of
our military members who have been put in prison. They say: We believed
our lives were in jeopardy, that we were in immediate danger of death
or of serious bodily injury, so we defended ourselves.
You shouldn't have because you hit a civilian or you hit somebody
else or you hit somebody who was messing with an IED, but that didn't
mean that he actually planted it.
There are all kinds of people we have in prison now who are serving
our United States military, and they were not given near the rights
that this person--this radical Islamist who wants to destroy America--
is now being told he is going to get.
So they say they are questioning him, but the Federal Government said
that about the last suspect they arrested and put on a slow boat to the
U.S., and there were people here who were saying this is great, that
this may be the one guy they say they wouldn't mind having waterboarded
in order to get all of the information out of him they could.
Then we hear from an international arms dealer who says: Yes, I was
the one who negotiated the arms deal for the U.S. State Department.
They wanted to get arms to Libyan rebels, and I proposed just their
buying them, and then I would get them to the rebels. But they said:
No, no, no. We don't want it that direct. So he says he bought the
weapons for the State Department and got them to Qatar and then, from
Qatar, got them to the rebels who were infused with al Qaeda rebels.
Anyway, the international arms dealer sent me a statement saying he
wanted to testify before Congress because the people he worked with who
were representing the U.S. Government and others were either dead or
they were on a boat somewhere so that nobody could talk to them. He
figured, if he could get his story out before Congress, then maybe
there wouldn't be any need to kill him or to stick him on a boat
[[Page H5492]]
somewhere so he couldn't talk. That was what the statement of the
international arms dealer has been--the statement that was sent to me--
and yet they want to bring here someone they say they are certain
committed an act of war against the United States.
I heard on the news today that, gee, they have had evidence of this
al-Shabaab involvement since the event happened. Since the event
happened? That would mean all of the time that Secretary Clinton was
out there--saying it was the video and looking family members of the
deceased of Benghazi in the eye and saying: We are going to get the guy
who did the video--she knew that the evidence was nothing of the sort,
that the video had nothing to do with the loss of these four American
lives.
There is no right of someone who commits an act of war against the
United States to get an immediate trial. He is not entitled under our
Constitution to get a speedy trial. He is not under our Constitution
entitled to get a trial before a U.S. district court. He is entitled
under the current law to go to Guantanamo Bay--where no one has ever
been waterboarded by the way--and have a trial in that courtroom. I
went through it, and I was impressed at how well equipped it was for
trying terrorists, even to the extent of having bulletproof glass for
the gallery.
There could be all kinds of horrible scenarios to arise out of this
administration's insistence on bringing an enemy combatant--a warrior
against the United States--who should be considered either an enemy
combatant or a prisoner of war. He shouldn't be brought. There are too
many bad things that can happen. New York has suffered enough.
I do want to finish with this one article, published this week by
Breitbart and written by Kerry Picket. I have talked for some time
about a Texan named Mohamed Elibiary. I questioned our Secretary of
Homeland Security about her giving him a secret security clearance when
he clearly should not have met any of the requirements to get such a
clearance. We knew that he had downloaded two documents from using his
secret classification. According to reporter Patrick Poole, not only
did he download them, but he offered them to national media for
publication.
Mr. Elibiary has gotten so cocky now because I have been talking
about this for a number of years. The administration has not bothered
to revoke his secret classification, and he continues to be one of the
top advisers to Homeland Security. It is our homeland security for
heaven's sake, and he sends out this tweet on June 13 that says:
Kind of comical watching pundits on some U.S. TV channels
freak out about an ISIS caliphate. Easy, folks. Take deep
breaths and relax.
Kerry Picket reports:
Mohamed Elibiary, a member on the Obama administration's
Homeland Security Advisory Council, is at the center of a
controversy involving allegations that former DHS Secretary
Janet Napolitano gave him secret clearance, which led to his
downloading classified information. According to
Representative Louie Gohmert, Elibiary later shopped that
classified material around to a reporter.
Elibiary, a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, who
regularly goes after the Sisi-led Egyptian Government, is
also an active participant on Twitter, and mocked the ``freak
out'' by U.S. talking heads discussing the terrorist
activities relating to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,
ISIS.
So Elibiary says that. He thinks it is comical watching pundits freak
out over the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria's caliphate.
He goes on in another tweet in response to a tweet back that says:
So no need to be outraged?
He says:
As I've said before, inevitable that caliphate returns.
Choice only whether we support an EU-like Muslim Union vision
or not.
So Mr. Elibiary, who is a top adviser in the United States of America
Homeland Security Department, is saying it is inevitable that we have
an Islamic caliphate over the United States. It is just whether or not
we are going to embrace a European Union-style caliphate that is coming
or something else.
Even when he is questioned again by another tweet, in talking about
an Islamic caliphate, he says:
The U.S. is heading in the direction. Bush created the
OIC--Organization of Islamic Council--Special Envoy.
So that took us a little bit down the road to being part of the
caliphate. Then he says:
Obama removed the discriminatory engagement policy toward
the Muslim Brotherhood.
That is the purging of documents I have been talking about for years.
This administration, according to their Homeland Security adviser here,
has been moving toward being part of a caliphate for years. Get used to
it. He finds it comical that pundits are even worried about it.
With the lawlessness that is occurring in the United States and
inside our Justice Department and in this administration in numerous
places--in the IRS, on our border--it is time for Americans to wake up,
and it is time for Americans to let their Congressmen and Senators know
we have had enough lawlessness. You guys have got to hold the Attorney
General and the President accountable. Once enough people wake up and
demand it, they will get it because the adage remains true: democracy
ensures a people get a government no better than they deserve.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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