[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 55 (Wednesday, March 29, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H2550-H2557]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   QUESTIONING THE RUSSIAN CONNECTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members

[[Page H2551]]

have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and 
include extraneous materials on the subject of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Maryland?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, with my colleague Pramila Jayapal, from 
the State of Washington, on behalf of the Progressive Caucus, we are 
taking this Special Order hour to focus on the question of the Russian 
connection.
  This is a matter of utmost seriousness and urgency to the American 
people because it goes to the question of our national security and the 
political sovereignty of the American people to engage in democracy on 
our own without foreign interference, subversion, and sabotage.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Maxine 
Waters), the distinguished Congresswoman.
  Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Madam Speaker, I would like to thank 
Congressman Raskin for organizing this time, for helping to keep this 
Congress focused on this extraordinary chain of events that is taking 
place in our country, and for drawing attention to what should be a 
credible investigation about the ties between this President and 
Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.
  Why is this President so focused on complimenting Putin?
  Why has he wrapped his arms around him?
  Why has he said he is a great President?
  Why does he refuse to even talk about the fact that Putin has invaded 
Crimea?
  Why does he refuse to understand what is being said when Putin is 
charged to be a killer and all of the deaths that are taking place from 
opponents of his, from people who criticize him?
  Well, I think the more we learn about the connections that this 
President and his allies have, the more these questions are going to 
become very serious, and it is going to lead us to have to make some 
big decisions about whether or not this President is fit to lead the 
United States of America.
  I have been deeply concerned about these issues for months. President 
Trump, throughout his campaign and since his election, has chosen to 
surround himself with people who have close ties with Russia.
  When our intelligence agencies announced their conclusion that Russia 
interfered in our elections, I called for an investigation focusing on 
the possibility of collusion between Trump's ``Kremlin Klan,'' that I 
have dubbed them, and the Russian Government. I introduced H. Con. Res. 
15, urging Congress to investigate the possibility of collusion between 
Russia and the Trump campaign. Investigations should focus on the 
Kremlin Klan.
  Let's talk about some of those allies and folks who are aligned with 
Trump and with Russia:
  Michael Flynn, who was fired from the NSC after lying about 
discussing sanctions with Russian Ambassador Kislyak.
  Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, was a paid lobbyist 
for Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian politician in Ukraine who fled 
to Russia in 2014. AP reports Manafort signed a $10 million contract in 
2006, with Russian billionaire and Putin ally Oleg Deripaska, to 
advance Putin's interest in the United States. The New York Times also 
reports Manafort tried to hide $750,000 in payments from a pro-Russian 
party in Ukraine.
  Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser, is a consultant to and 
investor in the Kremlin state-run gas company, Gazprom, and has a 
direct financial interest in ending American sanctions against the 
company. He recently revealed that he met with Russian Ambassador 
Sergey Kislyak, during the 2016 RNC.
  And then there is Roger Stone, who has worked in Ukraine. Stone 
announced, in a speech last summer, that he had spoken to WikiLeaks 
founder Julian Assange. Stone also disclosed to the press that he had 
been exchanging messages with Guccifer 2.0, the Russian hacker that 
hacked the DNC last summer.
  And then-Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross was a business partner of 
Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian oligarch and Putin ally, in a major 
financial project involving the Bank of Cyprus.
  Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed a multibillion-dollar 
agreement with Russia in 2011, on behalf of Exxon, for an oil drilling 
project in the Arctic and is focused on lifting the sanctions.
  The New York Times reported that, prior to his resignation, Mike 
Flynn was delivered a proposal outlining a way for President Trump to 
lift the Russian sanctions and broker a deal between Russia and Ukraine 
that also included the public smearing of Ukraine's current President 
Poroshenko. The deal is being pushed by his opposition in Ukraine. 
Although Mike Flynn is gone, the proposal remains, along with those 
pushing it.
  Then there is Michael Cohen, the President's personal lawyer, who was 
involved in developing the document, and who delivered the document.
  Then there is Felix H. Sater, a business associate and a former 
criminal who served time, who reportedly had ties with the Mafia, who 
helped Mr. Trump scout deals in Russia.
  And then there is Andriy Artemenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker trying to 
rise in a political opposition movement, shaped in part by Mr. Trump's 
former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.
  And of course, there is our Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was 
forced to recuse himself from investigations related to the 2016 
Presidential campaign, after it was revealed that he met with Russian 
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on two separate occasions during the campaign 
cycle, information which he failed to disclose during his confirmation 
hearings. Kislyak is the same Ambassador with whom Mike Flynn discussed 
U.S. sanctions, and, by the way, he lied about it.

  It has now been revealed that Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak met 
with the following Trump associates: Carter Page, Jeff Sessions, Mike 
Flynn, and Jared Kushner, in December 2016, in Trump Tower, during the 
transition. None of these meetings were made public and were only 
discovered after the press released reports.
  Before the press reporting on the meetings above, the Trump 
administration had repeatedly denied its campaign had contact and 
communication with Russian officials. The press has noted that the 
meetings are not unusual but that public concern is heightened because 
they have all lied about or failed to disclose the meetings.
  Deutsche Bank was ordered to pay more than $600 million in fines, 
including a $425 million fine to New York's Department of Financial 
Services and a $204 million fine to the U.K.'s Financial Conduct 
Authority for failing to have adequate money laundering controls in 
place to prevent a group of corrupt traders from improperly and 
secretly transferring more than $10 billion out of Russia. Press 
reports indicate that the Department of Justice is investigating this 
matter. Deutsche Bank is Trump's largest lender, lending his companies 
an estimated $360 million.
  As to oil and gas, President Trump signed last month a bill striking 
section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act which required 
Big Oil companies to disclose the money they pay to foreign governments 
to drill on their lands. Striking section 1504 will allow Big Oil 
companies like ExxonMobil to conduct secretive dealings with corrupt 
parties, such as Vladimir Putin and Russia.
  The White House attempted to enlist the FBI, the CIA Director Pompeo, 
and top Republicans on the House and Senate intel committees to help 
push back against The New York Times reporting on Trump's ties to 
Russia.
  There is Devin Nunes--I don't need to talk about him. He issued a 
joint statement with Adam Schiff, a joint statement in January 
announcing that the scope of their investigation would include links 
between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns.
  FBI Director James Comey announced on March 20, during testimony 
before the House Intelligence Committee, that the FBI is investigating 
whether members of President Trump's campaign colluded with Russia to 
influence the 2016 election.
  Devin Nunes announced to the press that members of Trump's transition 
team were under incidental surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies

[[Page H2552]]

after the election and briefed President Trump on March 22. However, he 
did not brief Adam Schiff or other House Intelligence Committee 
members, and he never revealed his source. Devin Nunes has clearly 
compromised the investigation and can no longer be trusted to lead it.
  In conclusion, Congress must create a comprehensive, independent, 
bipartisan commission to expose the full truth of Trump's ties to 
Russia. I believe that, once we have fully investigated Trump's Kremlin 
Klan, we will find that there was collusion between President Trump and 
Russia to violate the integrity of our elections.
  At that point, the Republicans in Congress will have no choice but to 
put country ahead of party. I say impeach Donald Trump.
  I thank you so much, as we witness what attempts to be a coverup now 
about all of this.
  Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I want to thank Ms. Waters for her zealous 
work on behalf of her constituents and all Americans.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler), 
our distinguished colleague, who is a leading member of the House 
Judiciary Committee.
  Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, there is an obvious cancer at the heart of 
the credibility, perhaps even of the legitimacy, of the Trump 
administration. That cancer consists of questions pertaining to the 
relationship of this administration with Russia.
  We know that the Russians intervened in the last election with the 
goal of advantaging Trump's campaign over Hillary Clinton. We know that 
there were numerous Trump campaign transition team and administration 
officials in contact with the Russians--prior to, during, and after the 
campaign.
  We know that there is a pattern of these individuals at first denying 
such contacts but later, after being forced to come clean, admitting 
them.
  Examples to date include: former National Security Adviser Michael 
Flynn, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Roger Stone, who admitted 
that he was in contact with Guccifer 2.0, the hacker that the CIA says 
is a Russian front for military intelligence.
  We know that the Attorney General gave false testimony, deliberate or 
otherwise, to the Senate regarding meetings with Russian officials.
  We know that President Trump has financial ties with Russia. Although 
he denies it, we now know that there are large Russian investments in 
The Trump Organization. The President's son, Donald Trump, Jr., said a 
few years ago that money was ``flowing in'' from Russia. That obviously 
can have a major influence on the President and on the decisions of his 
administration.
  We know that there was a change in the Republican platform dealing 
with Ukraine to favor Russia, a change that was engineered by the Trump 
campaign.
  We even know who in the Trump campaign gave the instruction to make 
this change.
  We know that there is an ongoing criminal investigation by the FBI of 
possible collusion by the Trump campaign in the admitted Russian 
intervention in the attempt by Russia to subvert the 2016 Presidential 
campaign.
  Knowing all this, it is impossible to ignore or to dismiss questions 
concerning the credibility of the administration, and, certainly, we 
must ask questions regarding its legitimacy as well, if there is 
persuasive evidence that crimes were committed in colluding with Russia 
to subvert the election.

                              {time}  1730

  We have a duty to resolve this question, to get answers, to pursue 
the truth, and to remove any cancer that we may find.
  A few weeks ago, the Judiciary Committee considered a resolution of 
inquiry that I introduced dealing with a number of issues, including 
the President's conflicts of interests, his possible violations of the 
Constitution's Emoluments Clause, and any information about possible 
criminal or counterintelligence investigations related to the President 
and/or his associates. Yet, to date, the Republicans have opposed our 
amendments and voted down our resolutions of inquiry, in effect, 
abdicating their constitutional obligation to provide oversight and 
enforce the law.
  Now we have the spectacle of the chairman of the House Intelligence 
Committee conducting an obvious coverup, failing to share important 
information with members of the committee--information, I would add, 
that revealed President Trump's allegations against former President 
Obama as completely false--while inappropriately briefing people at the 
White House on the committee's investigation, the very same people who 
are the subjects of the investigation.
  This is so absurd, so inappropriate, and beyond belief that it is 
tough to accept the reality of the situation. Sadly, this isn't a 
television drama we can turn off or walk away from. The integrity of 
our democratic system of government is at stake.
  What we need is honesty. The American people must have faith in the 
integrity of our government, and it is our job to ensure it. It is time 
for answers.
  If there is no evidence of misconduct, then we should move on. But if 
the truth reveals a conspiracy, if there is proof of criminal conduct, 
Donald Trump must be held accountable, and the people around him must 
be held accountable, and we must act.
  There is no superior way to get at the truth and to fulfill our duty 
to the people of this country than to have an independent investigatory 
commission established beyond any partisan control. So I urge that that 
be done so that the people of this country can have confidence once 
again in their government.
  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague from Washington 
State (Ms. Jayapal), who is the co-convener of the Progressive Caucus 
Special Order along with me.
  Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, Mr. Raskin of 
Maryland, for his incredible leadership and for the opportunity to 
continue to lead the Special Order hour for the Progressive Caucus here 
every week. And every week we do try to pick a different topic.
  For those of you in the audience, we pick a different topic, and this 
evening that topic is the ties to Russia of this administration.
  Yesterday, Sean Spicer told veteran White House correspondent April 
Ryan that she was ``going to have to take `no' for an answer'' when she 
asked him about the President's collusion with Russia.
  Well, Mr. Spicer, we are here to tell you that we will not just take 
``no'' for an answer. We are not going to sit back and believe 
everything that is coming out from the White House when there is 
mounting evidence that President Trump's campaign may have colluded 
with Russia to tip the election in his favor.
  And for those of you who saw the Judiciary Committee today, we had a 
resolution of inquiry from Representative Hakeem Jeffries and Ted Lieu 
about this very issue in relation to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and 
his ties to Russia.
  Let's not forget that President Trump's former national security 
adviser and campaign adviser only lasted a record-setting 24 days in 
the role because he blatantly lied about meeting with Russia's 
Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, during the campaign.
  So what other ties to Russia have been confirmed?
  There are so many of these ties that I thought it might be helpful to 
have a diagram and to really show exactly what the connections have 
been between top Trump officials during the campaign who are now the 
same officials that are serving in the White House and are the 
President's close and personal confidants. The fact that a diagram is 
even necessary tells us something.
  Let's start at the top with the President himself.
  President Trump has a long history with Russia. His first trip to 
Moscow was actually 30 years ago. He went to explore potential real 
estate opportunities. His relationship with the country has clearly 
grown.
  In the late 1990s, Trump started banking with Deutsche Bank, which 
has since been investigated for funneling Russian money offshore.
  Soon after that, he linked up with a Russian company called the 
Bayrock Group, which has ties to the Mafia and to criminal interests in 
Russia. Their partnership was integral to helping to

[[Page H2553]]

expand The Trump Organization to new heights, with properties springing 
up across the country.
  His ties to Russia only grew deeper. In the late 2000s, several 
Russian businessmen bought properties from The Trump Organization, 
netting them hundreds of millions of dollars in profit.
  Now, let's fast-forward to 2016 when then-candidate Trump was 
building his team. He brought on Carter Page, who is now under 
investigation for communicating with Russian officials. And, in fact, 
it was the Trump campaign's former manager, Corey Lewandowski, who gave 
Carter Page the green light to visit Moscow just last July. A couple of 
weeks later, Mr. Page met with Sergey Kislyak, but he said that he will 
not reveal the details of that conversation to the public.
  This is a very important, consistent fact that we see. Our resolution 
of inquiry today that we debated in the Judiciary Committee was about 
the release of information so that we understand what is going on. 
Without any accusations, what we are trying to say is let us 
investigate what these ties are, what the conversations were, and let 
us determine, in an independent, bipartisan way, let us determine that 
there has not been collusion, and let us make sure that there is no 
foreign government that is affecting our democracy.
  So various members of Trump's team met with Russian officials during 
the campaign. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions didn't just meet with 
officials, he lied about meeting with officials during his confirmation 
hearing.
  And again, the top prosecutor in the United States of America lied 
under oath during a confirmation hearing. This cannot be ignored.
  Once again, we are not saying don't have conversations, but don't lie 
about them. Don't make us wonder what happened during those 
conversations. How do we trust the Attorney General of the United 
States of America to fairly and impartially preside if he has shown 
that he is willing to make false statements just to get the job?
  He is not the only high-level Trump official who has been blatantly 
dishonest with the American people. Michael Flynn, the former national 
security adviser, was put in place by President Trump and resigned due 
to the shady backdoor dealings that put him in the pocket of Russian 
officials. He was paid $45,000 to attend a state-sponsored gala dinner 
and sit at the table of Vladimir Putin.
  These connections are more than just mere coincidence.
  And in addition to Flynn, Page, and Sessions, there are several 
others who have been implicated: Trump's former campaign manager, Paul 
Manafort; former campaign adviser, Roger Stone; his personal lawyer--
all of these folks are up here--his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, are 
all under investigation for their connections to Russia. And now 
President Trump's son-in-law, who has become one of his top advisers, 
is under investigation as well for his actions during the campaign.
  Not only did Jared Kushner meet with Ambassador Kislyak, he met with 
the Russian bankers as well. And the White House has claimed that the 
meetings were ``diplomatic,'' but it is deeply troubling that one of 
the bankers that he met with was Sergey Gorkov.
  I want to be clear about who this person is. He is a graduate of the 
Russian Academy of the Federal Security Service, which is an academy 
that is tasked with training individuals to become members of Russia's 
security and intelligence forces. He is now the chairman of the 
Vnesheconombank, and he was appointed by Putin, himself. This is not a 
mom-and-pop bank. This is a state-owned corporation that has been under 
sanctions by the United States for the past 3 years. And that is a big 
deal.
  Jared Kushner, whose family is worth nearly $2 billion, has real 
estate interests around the world, sat down, allegedly under the 
auspices of his role with the President, to chat with this owner of the 
bank. A spokesperson for the Kremlin has alleged that this meeting was 
``absolutely the bank's prerogative'' and that the Russian Government 
was unaware of the meeting.
  We need more information to know what happened in that meeting 
because, otherwise, where there is smoke, we think there is fire. So we 
need to have the information so that we can actually determine what is 
happening with these connections because, if somebody from the Trump 
campaign and the Trump administration is meeting with Russian officials 
and they don't want to tell us why or what is discussed, then we have 
to start wondering whether the conversations are in the interest of the 
American people or in the interest of the Russian Government.
  We also have Rex Tillerson, President Trump's Secretary of State, who 
has strong business ties to Russia and was awarded the Order of 
Friendship from Vladimir Putin in 2013. This is the highest honor that 
Russia can bestow on noncitizens. Just 2 years prior, Tillerson had 
struck a massive $500 billion oil deal with the Russian Government.
  Now, we could go on and on with this, but what is important for the 
American people to understand is that we have expectations that the 
President of the United States and that his Cabinet are working in the 
interests of the American people.
  We have expectations that, if a deal is struck, it is not for the 
benefit of some other country or for the personal benefit of any 
individual in office, but that it is for the public's benefit. And if a 
deal is struck that takes benefit away from the public in order to give 
it to a foreign government or to an individual personal interest of our 
government, then that is an enormous disservice to our democracy, and, 
of course, there are constitutional ramifications for all of this.
  This administration has tried to tell us that the conversations 
between Trump's advisers and high-level Russian businessmen and 
officials were about diplomacy. Yet this shroud of secrecy that 
continues every time we try to get information, every time we try to 
make sure that there is an independent, bipartisan investigation, the 
shroud of secrecy continues, and it begs the question: If this is 
really about advocating for the interests of the American people and 
not the Russian Government or the pocketbooks of Cabinet members, 
then why the secrecy? What is there to hide?

  We don't understand that. If there is nothing to hide, then let us 
have the information. There have been plenty of requests to do that in 
a classified way in case there is some information that is classified.
  But why are the President's campaign advisers and officials denying 
under oath that they have communicated with Russia only then to be 
forced to walk back their statements or recuse themselves, as Jeff 
Sessions had to do, or to even resign?
  Foreign policy is key to American interests, but these backroom 
conversations and subsequent lies are doing nothing to make the 
American people feel confident in an administration that is supposed to 
represent them. It is clear that there is a strong tie here that was 
only strengthened during the campaign.
  But let's be very clear about what is the connective tissue in all of 
this, in all of these lines that go back and forth. What is the 
connective tissue that connects all of this? It is money.
  How did we get to this point?
  Of course, we remember the hacking of the election that occurred last 
year. It is in the process of being investigated, even though the 
chairman of the Intelligence Committee feels that his first duty is to 
the President and not to the members of the committee.
  But last year, President Trump defended Vladimir Putin by placing the 
blame on the Democratic National Committee to distract the American 
people; and then, in July, he outright urged Russia to hack Hillary 
Clinton's emails, saying: ``Russia, if you are listening, I hope you 
are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.''
  In December, a CIA assessment concluded that Russia was trying to 
help then-candidate Trump win the election. Why? Because they know that 
they have an ally in President Trump. They have someone who is willing 
to do business with them, even if it may not be in the best interests 
of the American people. They know that they are well connected at every 
level of his administration.
  And let's be clear about who we are talking about with Mr. Putin. 
This is a

[[Page H2554]]

dictator, a human rights abuser, somebody whom Republicans and 
Democrats, alike, have said we cannot be associated with.

                              {time}  1745

  You have heard of ``The Manchurian Candidate.'' In the most recent 
election, we may have ended up with the Kremlin candidate, and the 
script truly writes itself.
  We were hoping to have a chance to get to the bottom of this, as I 
said. We were hoping to have a chance to get to the bottom of this in a 
hearing in the House Intelligence Committee, but we never got the 
chance.
  Last Tuesday, Representative Nunes went to the secret briefing in a 
National Security Council facility, and what he found apparently wasn't 
good for the President because he ran over there to tell the President. 
Instead of doing his duty and reporting the information to the House 
Intelligence Committee, he went straight to the White House with his 
findings. And he is supposed to be chairing an investigation into what 
happened, not being the runner for information to the President.
  After briefing President Trump, Representative Nunes canceled the 
hearing, denying Americans the opportunity to hear from former Acting 
Attorney General Sally Yates. And Ranking Member Jim Himes was right 
when he said that ``the Monday hearing last week was, I'm sure, not to 
the White House's liking.''
  He went on to say: ``Since Monday, I'm sorry to say, the chairman,'' 
Chairman Nunes, ``has ceased to be the chairman of an investigative 
committee and has been running interference for the Trump White 
House.''
  This is absolutely unacceptable. The fact that we are questioning 
whether or not several members of the President's Cabinet--not just 
one, not even just two, but several members of the President's Cabinet, 
including the President, himself--are guilty of collusion with a 
foreign government is a downright outrage.
  In my home district, the Seventh District of Washington State, I have 
been receiving numerous calls, hundreds of calls from constituents 
since day one, saying: How can this be happening in this democracy? How 
is this possible in America? How do we make sure that our government is 
representing us and not a foreign entity?
  Why is it that somebody would lie about whether or not they had a 
conversation with the Russian Government if there was nothing to hide?
  People are losing faith in the United States Government. It is a 
crisis of democracy when people can't trust that their government is 
actually trying to get to the bottom of what is going on and actually 
representing the interests of the American people.
  The White House may have a friend in Representative Nunes, but I want 
the American people to know that they have a friend in us. We won't 
back down on our demands. Representative Nunes should recuse himself 
from this investigation. There is no way we can expect a full and 
impartial investigation after what has just occurred.
  This should not be a partisan issue. Every Member of Congress, 
Republican and Democrat, should be demanding to know the facts. We are 
not making judgments. We want to know the facts. If there are facts 
that we don't know that say, no, there were very legitimate 
conversations, there was no collusion, then we are done. Why tie up the 
airwaves with this?
  So tonight, as we think about where we are in this debate and we 
think about the fact that, for 3 months, this administration has been 
under the shadow of secrecy, under the shadow of mistrust from the 
American people, there is a very easy way to clear all of the names of 
the people who are on this list, including the President of the United 
States, and that is to ensure that we have an independent 
investigation; to ensure that Representative Nunes recuses himself and 
steps down as the chair of the Intelligence Committee, given what has 
happened; and to ensure that, at the end of the day, we remember that 
the Government of the United States of America, the President of the 
United States of America, the Congress of the United States of America, 
our one duty is to represent the people of the United States of 
America.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin) for his 
leadership.
  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Jayapal for her 
fantastic leadership for the people of Washington in the city of 
Washington and her zealous advocacy for all of the American people.
  Mr. Speaker, let me try to recap some of the themes that we have 
brought up this evening and talk about what is really at stake here. 
But I want to start with some good news, because there was really some 
great news out of Russia on Sunday, where more than 75,000 people 
across the country braved the tyranny and despotism of their government 
to go out into the streets to express their commitment to democracy, 
human rights, and against corruption.
  They were focused very specifically on some of the oligarchs who 
surround Vladimir Putin. One of them, Prime Minister Medvedev, it has 
just been learned, has amassed more than $1 billion, as a public 
servant, in mansions, in vineyards in Italy, in fancy cars, in 
jewelry--$1 billion. And the people of Russia are up in arms about the 
corruption, the kleptocracy, the stealing from the Russian people, 
which is increasingly impoverished by the imperial designs and the 
corrupt practices of Putin and his team.
  So tens of thousands of people went into the streets to protest. 
These are brave people, because you are talking about an authoritarian 
government there, a dictator, a despot, someone who orders out for the 
assassination of his political enemies. Many of them were arrested. 
Hundreds of them were arrested in Moscow, and some of them are still in 
jail right now.
  Mr. Speaker, we should be on the side of the protesters in Russia. 
That is who we are as America. We are a nation conceived in 
revolutionary insurgency against corruption, against monarchy, against 
dictators and autocrats and theocrats and kleptocrats who steal from 
the people. That is who we are.
  We should be meeting with them. We should be meeting with the human 
rights activists. We should be meeting with the anticorruption marchers 
who are putting themselves on the front lines of history. We should be 
meeting with the dissenters and the critics of Vladimir Putin and the 
oligarchs and big business kleptocrats who surround him. But, instead, 
our government has aligned with Putin himself, with the insiders in 
Russia. That is totally antithetical to the design of America, when you 
think about it.

  Mr. Speaker, we have the great good fortune to go to work every day 
surrounded by portraits of people who built this country, like George 
Washington, who is right over there. We have got portraits of Thomas 
Jefferson. We have got portraits of Frederick Douglass. We have got 
portraits of Abraham Lincoln, who actually served in this body and, 
when he was here, spent a lot of his time railing about a war that was 
concocted with lies by President James Polk, the Mexican War.
  But Lincoln knew how delicate and precious and precarious an 
enterprise democracy is. In the Gettysburg Address, he posed the 
question of how long government of the people, by the people, and for 
the people can last. Will it perish from the Earth? And he put the 
question to the people because, he said, it is up to us.
  Democracy is a rarity in human history. Democracy is not the norm. 
That is why America is a miraculous experiment on Earth. If you don't 
do anything, you are going to end up with dictators and despots and 
kleptocrats who steal from their own people, like Vladimir Putin.
  But America started a different way. The first three words of our 
Constitution are ``We, the people.'' We, the people; we flipped the 
whole design. Before that, the whole theory was that the king had the 
power, and the king got power directly from God; and everybody was a 
subject of the king, and everybody served the king.
  Our Founders had the vision, in that outburst of enlightenment and 
enthusiasm, to say, no, we are going to try something different:
  We are going to start a government based on we, the people, and we 
are going to separate church and state; and we are not going to dictate 
to people their religious worship, and we are not

[[Page H2555]]

going to dictate to people their political beliefs. There is going to 
be freedom of thought and freedom of speech.
  We don't trust the collapse of all powers into one, which Madison 
said was the very definition of tyranny. We are going to separate 
powers. The legislature, Congress, will come first, Article I. It will 
represent the people. But then we are going to have someone else 
execute the laws of the people, faithfully execute the laws of the 
people. That will be the President. And when there are disputes, they 
will be adjudicated in a third branch of government, by the Supreme 
Court, to figure it out.
  But we are going to separate the powers, because when one guy has got 
all the power, it endangers the freedoms and the liberties of everybody 
else. We even said, even though our President is limited by the 
separation of powers, we are going to make sure that the President and 
also the Members of Congress will have an undivided, zealous loyalty 
only to the American people.
  Article I, section 9 says we cannot accept presents, emoluments, 
which are any kind of payments, offices, or titles from foreign 
princes, foreign kings, or foreign states, period. We can't accept them 
without the approval of Congress. It doesn't go.
  There were all kinds of powers that were sending spies and saboteurs 
to Washington, when the country first began, to try to pay off elected 
officials, but our Founders had the vision to say: No, we are not going 
to accept that. We are not going to allow payments and bribes and fancy 
presents being given to our elected officials.
  So one government, separated powers, based on public integrity, 
honesty, and devotion to the people. That is the model here.
  Now, we should be on the side of democratic movements all over the 
Earth, like the people who assembled in Moscow on Sunday, who assembled 
in Siberia on Sunday. There were marchers even there. It was like our 
Women's March. It took place all over the country. Those are our 
people. We should be on the side of the people who are trying to 
overthrow the despotism in Russia.
  But look what is happening. Tyranny and authoritarianism are on the 
march all over the world. Russia is the headquarters of it, but you can 
find it everywhere you look:
  Philippines, a madman dictator who thinks he has the power to send 
his agents out to go and shoot people on the street because they look 
like they are a drug dealer and brags about it, Duterte;
  Hungary, another favorite of Vladimir Putin, Mr. Orban, who is 
cracking down on press freedom, on human rights in his country;
  Iran, authoritarian, theocratic state; people being thrown in jail 
for blasphemy, for heresy, for apostasy, for religious offenses;
  Saudi Arabia, fomenting racist, anti-Semitic propaganda and sending 
it out, oppressing people based on religion, not even allowing women to 
drive in their society.
  Everywhere you turn, tyranny, despotism on the march.
  And Mr. Putin has a plan. How do we know it? Do we know it from the 
Democratic Caucus or the Republican Conference? No. We know it from our 
intelligence agencies, from the FBI, the CIA, the National Security 
Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency.
  Seventeen of America's intelligence agencies came back with a report, 
and they said Vladimir Putin has a plan to continue to destabilize and 
undermine liberal democracy all over the world.
  Brexit was part of it. The intervention in our election was part of 
it. They are going after France, where they want the rightwing, ultra 
nationalist, anti-immigrant campaign of Marine Le Pen to triumph in 
France. They are trying to do it in Germany, which is now the strongest 
outpost of liberal democracy left on Earth, as of yet, uncontaminated 
by the penetration of Russian intelligence and Putin's agents.
  But what did they do to us? What is this all about?
  Well, we had an election in 2016. The sovereign people of America had 
an election. Now, unfortunately, we are still using the electoral 
college, which is antiquated and obsolescent. There is a movement to 
change it afoot to the national popular vote. But be that as it may, 
that is our system. We haven't reformed it yet. It is our system. It is 
our elections here in America. But the electoral college makes it more 
vulnerable because you just have to intervene in a handful of States in 
order to sway the vote.

  What did Putin do? Again, we know this. I am not making this up. We 
know this from our intelligence agencies. If you don't believe me, you 
go to your computer and you just look up the intelligence agency report 
on Russian interference and espionage and sabotage in our 2016 
election.
  And what did they do?
  They spied on different Democratic institutions, like the Democratic 
National Committee, and they spied on particular people.
  They engaged in not just cyber espionage, but cyber sabotage.
  They orchestrated a series of leaks which dominated election coverage 
in the United States for several weeks.
  They orchestrated a campaign of fake news and propaganda in order to 
undermine Hillary Clinton, who was reviled--and is reviled, 
presumably--by Vladimir Putin because she challenged him, and she 
challenged the human rights situation in Russia and the involvement of 
Russia with various dictators in other parts of the world. So they 
interfered in our election.
  When I first got to Congress, that was still being disputed. When we 
tried to talk about this, it was being said, well, there is no evidence 
that Russia did this. Well, guess what? The evidence is replete. It is 
decisive. It is determinative.

                              {time}  1800

  Now we are not hearing from our friends on the other side: Well, 
Russia didn't do this.
  Now they are saying something different: Well, Russia may have done 
that. It may have been this massive, orchestrated campaign to undermine 
and subvert our elections, but there is no proof that that was actual 
collusion by the Trump campaign.
  About that, I want to say two things. Number one, it shouldn't make 
any difference. Let's say nobody in the Trump campaign knew anybody in 
Russia and never heard of Vladimir Putin. It would make no difference 
because we should still view this as a radical threat to the political 
sovereignty of the American people.
  But the second answer is even more important. As all of my colleagues 
were pointing out before, every day we get more evidence not just of 
contacts and connections, but actual collaboration and cooperation 
between people in the Trump campaign, the Trump family, and the Trump 
universe with Vladimir Putin and his closest agents and assets 
throughout Russia and around the world.
  Let's just recap a few of those: former national security adviser 
Michael Flynn was forced to resign, or I guess he was fired by 
President Trump after he failed to disclose the scope of his contacts 
with Russians, including Ambassador Kislyak. He was paid more than 
$33,000 in 2015 by Russian-funded propaganda media, and the full extent 
of his relationship to the Russians is still being investigated.
  Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced to recuse himself from this 
whole matter because he met several times with Ambassador Kislyak, who 
has been described as Russia's top spy in America during the 2016 
election. Then--I will speak charitably here--he misled his own 
colleagues in the Senate about it at his Senate confirmation hearing 
raising the issue and then denying that he had had any contact with the 
Russians at all.
  Senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner met with the Russian 
Ambassador at Trump Tower a few months ago in December of 2016. We have 
got former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, who has 
admitted that he met with the Russian Ambassador and other Russians in 
Cleveland at the Republican National Convention and met with managers 
from Rosneft, the Russian-owned oil company. He himself owns shares of 
a Russian energy company called Gazprom.
  Roger Stone, Trump's longtime buddy and political adviser, was 
working with WikiLeaks, which published documents during the election 
based on information divulged because of Russian interference and 
espionage that

[[Page H2556]]

tilted the scales again in favor of Trump in the campaign, and he 
hosted a series on the Russian propaganda network.
  Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager for 6 months, was an adviser 
to Ukrainian oligarchs who got sweetheart business deals from Putin's 
associates. He was also a business partner of Russian oligarchs close 
to Putin. He resigned in August of last year after reports surfaced 
that suggested that he had received $12.7 million from Ukraine's pro-
Russia former president Viktor Yanukovych. He was on the payroll for 
$10 million, it has just come out, in order to promote the Russian 
perspective and Putin's propaganda in Washington, D.C., and throughout 
the United States in order to change the course of U.S. politics.
  Now, I am sorry to put these out there as a bunch of clues. I wish we 
had a coherent story to tell. We don't, because what we need is a 
comprehensive 9/11-style independent investigation to figure out what 
precisely happened. In America you are presumed innocent until proven 
guilty. Nobody is putting any of these people in jail, but it has come 
out, despite their best efforts in some cases, that they are up to 
their necks in the Russian connection.
  What does that mean for American democracy?
  What we know is there was a massive independent expenditure in 2006. 
That is what we call it under our FEC law when you go out and spend 
money to try to destroy one candidate and help another. There was a 
massive foreign independent expenditure orchestrated by Vladimir Putin.
  The question is: Was it, in FEC terms, a coordinated expenditure? 
That is, did the Trump team actively work with them?
  As we are saying, there are lots of clues that suggest it is so. I am 
not willing to say that they were definitely in cahoots with them. I am 
not willing to say that they were necessarily collaborating the 
election. But the evidence accumulates every single day that points in 
that direction.
  Now every day in Washington, D.C., what we are doing is running 
around because there is a coverup that has been unfolding. Today, of 
course, we are dealing with a resolution in the House Judiciary 
Committee to try to get to the bottom of what Chairman Nunes of the 
House Intelligence Committee actually did when he ran over to the White 
House with some information that he had about Trump apparently being 
picked up incidentally in conversations that were being tapped by the 
American intelligence community with foreign operatives. Again, it is 
shadowy because we don't know the whole thing. But what we do know is 
that Chairman Nunes went to the White House to tell President Trump or 
his deputies before he told anybody here in Congress.
  Now, we have been saying from the beginning we want an independent, 
objective 9/11-style commission--no Democratic politicians, no 
Republican politicians, and no elected officials. Let's agree on gifted 
statesmen and stateswomen who can really get to the bottom of this if 
we care about the truth. Their answer has been: No, we have got the 
Intelligence Committee to do it instead.
  But now what we have got is the Intelligence Committee chair 
traveling back and forth to the White House, spilling the beans, which 
undermines everybody's confidence in the integrity of the investigation 
that is taking place into the Russian connection and what actually 
happened in the 2016 election.
  Mr. Speaker, in the American system of government, elected officials 
have to have undivided loyalty to the American people. That is why we 
have got the Emoluments Clause: no presents, no emoluments, no offices, 
and no titles from foreign governments. That is why we swear an oath to 
the Constitution of the United States of America. Each one of us who 
has the great honor and privilege of coming to Washington, D.C., to 
represent the people swear an oath to our Constitution and to our 
people.

  We are not a country, like so many, that are defined by one religion. 
We are not defined by one race. We are not defined by one ethnicity. We 
are not defined by one political party. We are not defined by one 
political ideology. We are defined by one Constitution. That is what 
unifies us as Americans. We must be constitutional patriots here and 
insist upon our constitutional values and the rule of law for democracy 
to be meaningful in the 21st century.
  There is a new model of tyrannical government traveling all over the 
world, and all the bullies and despots have found each other. They are 
in league together. They want government as a moneymaking operation. 
They want government as a moneymaking operation for private elites in 
their country, whether it is in Russia or the Philippines or Saudi 
Arabia. Sad to say, we are starting to see the development of that 
right here in the United States of America.
  So we have the opportunity and we have the responsibility to exercise 
our rights as citizens under the First Amendment and to exercise our 
privileges as Members of Congress under the speech or debate clause to 
speak up against the march of tyranny all over the Earth. We have got 
an obligation to resist the corruption--the same corruption that the 
people in Russia were marching against on Sunday. We must demand real 
answers about what took place in our Presidential election in 2016. The 
intelligence agencies warned us that what happened in 2016 was a dress 
rehearsal for what is going to happen the next time and the time after 
that.
  I want to say something about the geopolitics of this. Think about it 
for a second:
  Who has got the strongest economy on Earth?
  We do, the freest, the original democracy. We have got the strongest 
economy.
  Who has got the strongest military?
  We do.
  Russia can't come close. But the way I understand what happened in 
2016 was that Vladimir Putin--who is not an honest man, but he is a 
clever man--decided that this was a moment of opportunity for Russia. 
He is the former chief of the KGB. Let's not forget that. He is the guy 
who said that the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century was the 
collapse of the Soviet Union. He is an irredentist imperialist who 
wants to go back and reconstruct the Russian empire.
  But what he saw was an opportunity, which is that today the whole 
world is linked, and it is linked by the internet. He created something 
that I think of as a Manhattan Project for military conquest and defeat 
of the liberal democracies in the 21st century.
  He set about to figure out this question: How can we undermine and 
subvert the liberal democracies?
  These are open societies. America is an open society. We pride 
ourselves on the First Amendment, on freedom of speech, and on free 
dialogue and discussion.
  So he said to himself: How can I subvert and undermine that?
  The answer became very clear: to create--really on the cheap, because 
compared to military might, this is pennies on the dollar--he was going 
to create an internet army, in effect, to try to undermine and subvert 
our democracy with fake news, with propaganda, and with paid trolls to 
get information out to try to destroy the reputations of opposition 
politicians and to try to promote the parties that he viewed as 
``within his camp.''
  Guess what?
  It still is going on today. It is still happening. We are not talking 
about ancient history. We are talking about an ongoing project. That is 
why I am proud to be a member of the minority caucus here, the 
Democratic Party caucus, which is insisting that we create an 
independent, objective, neutral, 9/11-style commission to investigate 
the Russian connection and what happened with the attack on American 
democracy in 2016.
  We have got to get to the bottom of it. Two-thirds of the American 
people in public opinion polls say that they support such a commission. 
There is nobody who would oppose it except for somebody who has got 
something to hide. But for the rest of us, we have every reason to get 
to the bottom of this plot to destroy our election in 2016, and we have 
every reason to defend this great constitutional democracy with 
everything we have got.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Arrington). Members are reminded to

[[Page H2557]]

refrain from engaging in personalities toward the President.

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