[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 173 (Thursday, October 26, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H8262-H8267]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1215
                           ISSUES OF THE WEEK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting, when I am watching the 
news or looking at a newspaper, I can see what kind of pictures are 
there in the news story, and having been at press conferences where 
print media that is extremely slanted will come up, the photographer 
from such media source will come up and get right in front and then 
start taking pictures and have their camera on nonstop, just click, 
click, click, second after second. So you know they have got 100, 200 
pictures.
  It is easy to know what they are doing. They are taking as many 
pictures as fast as they can. And you know that they are going to go 
through and they are going to take the picture in which your mouth is 
in the most contorted position, or where it looks like you are saying a 
word that would be inappropriate for an elected official to say. You 
know that is the picture they are going to put up, trying to make you 
look as stupid as possible before you ever read the article.
  For some of us, it is not difficult to make us look stupid. We can't 
help our looks. But you just know before you ever read the article, 
when you look at the picture, whether it is going to be a fair and 
objective article, or whether it is going to be totally skewed and 
totally subjective.
  I notice that, too, sometimes when friends across the aisle come with 
blown-up pictures. I can look at the pictures and tell whether it is 
going to be a fair and objective dissertation I am going to hear from 
my fellow Representatives across the aisle. But it is true of 
Republicans as well. I just don't see those type of skewed pictures 
very often at all, if at all, from the Republicans. But, anyway, it 
seems to be a good rule of thumb. You look at the pictures and you can 
tell whether it is going to be fair or it is going to be a total hit 
piece.
  I have been very interested, though, to watch during the course of 
this last 9, 10 months as we come through 2017, the story nonstop from 
Representatives across the aisle has been about Russia, Russia, Russia. 
It sounds a bit like Sean Hannity, Russia, Russia, Russia, yes, but I 
don't mind sounding like somebody I greatly admire.
  But isn't it interesting that in the revelations that have been 
coming out in the last few days, our friends across the aisle have not 
been as anxious to run down and talk about Russia?
  But somebody needs to talk about it. I have been talking about it for 
quite some time, and for most of this year I have been pointing out 
that we actually need a special prosecutor, a special counsel to 
investigate former FBI Director Comey and to investigate the Clinton 
ties to Russia and the over $100 million in contributions that came 
from stakeholders, apparently, of Uranium One. It is just absolutely 
incredible.
  What is amazing, though, there are bound to be so many fingers going 
out emanating from that deal that we have not seen or heard of. We 
didn't know what was going on, and now we know that the FBI headed by 
Director Robert Mueller, at the same time that he was purging the FBI 
training materials of anything that offended radical Islamists that 
want to kill us, at the same time he was not investigating properly 
tips about the older Tsarnaev being radicalized that he was going to 
kill people. Let's face it, when we get a tip that somebody has been 
radicalized as an Islamist, it means they are likely going to commit a 
terrorist act and try to take innocent lives, as Tsarnaev and his 
brother did.
  The FBI didn't properly investigate. They didn't know what to ask. 
They didn't know how to investigate whether or not somebody had been 
radicalized because Robert Mueller had purged the training materials so 
they couldn't know what to ask, how to know if somebody has been 
radicalized, or they are a peace-loving Muslim, or they are radical 
Islamist.
  Mueller prevented that from happening because he was so taken up with 
the idea of being friendly and neighborly, he called it his outreach 
program. He even testified before our Judiciary Committee years ago 
after I was there about--he kept wanting to make the point that the 
Muslim community is exactly like every other community. Again, the 
Muslim community is just like every other community.
  He kept making that point over and over as Democrats asked him 
questions. And then he talked about his lovely outreach program with 
CAIR--the Council on American-Islamic Relations--that has ties that 
were named as codefendants supporting terrorism with those who were 
actually convicted of supporting terrorism.
  Yet, even though the FBI had the evidence that convicted these 
supporting terrorists, and even though there was plenty of evidence 
that the people who he was trying to be friends with had radical 
terrorist ties, he continued his so-called outreach program

[[Page H8263]]

as people were plotting to kill Americans among those that he was 
trying to have meals with and be friendly with.
  But I asked him the question: You keep saying that the Muslim 
community here in America is just like every other community, and you 
keep bragging about your outreach program with the Muslim community. So 
I would like to ask you, Director Mueller, how was your outreach 
program going with Jews, Catholics, Baptists, and other religious 
groups? How is that outreach going? How is your outreach going with the 
Buddhists and the Confucianists?
  Anyway, that was the basic question I asked. Of course, he was taken 
aback and he couldn't explain because eventually we got the truth. 
There is no outreach program like that that the FBI had with any other 
religious group.
  So it is kind of disingenuous, if not to say dishonest, to say that a 
group that requires special attention and coddling is somehow exactly 
like every other group in America. No, they require special attention, 
at least that is what Robert Mueller thought.
  I don't think any religious group that believes in our Constitution 
and supports our Constitution requires any such special attention, as 
Robert Mueller was giving the outreach partner CAIR that has done so 
much damage to America and continues to undermine evidence to find, 
arrest, and convict radical Islamists.

  It is normally like clockwork. As soon as a radical Islamist has 
committed a terrorist act, it really is like clockwork. You can count 
on CAIR--C-A-I-R; not the kind that actually helps people around the 
world, but CAIR--to be out there with the news conference saying: This 
guy was not one of us.
  But at some point, I hope that people who are Muslims will quit 
listening to CAIR and will listen to the words of a much wiser 
individual, President el-Sisi in Egypt, who stood in a room with imams 
and told them: We have got to get our religion back away from the 
radicals, or they are going to destroy it.
  That is a courageous man, and I don't find that kind of courage among 
the people who have these press conferences to deflect instead of 
helping us find and capture the radical Islamists before they kill too 
many people. They are out there trying to make it appear that they are 
not really radical Islamists; that they are something else. No, they 
are radical Islamists. They clearly are.
  I was kind of saddened that General Kelly ended up being the chief of 
staff for President Trump because I thought he was starting out to do a 
superb job as Secretary of Homeland Security.
  It turns out, as some of us had warned, that during the Obama 
administration, all of this blather about countering violent extremism, 
CVE, that found its way into legislation that this body passed: Oh, 
let's don't call it ``fighting radical Islamists.'' Call it, 
``countering violent extremism.''
  Well, some of us had figured out the game, and Michele Bachmann was 
one of those people. Yes, it is not countering violent extremism. It is 
fighting radical Islam. Thank God President Trump is now occupying the 
Oval Office. He understood that ISIS was not just a JV team. They are 
people who are radical Islamists and they would love to kill as many 
Americans as possible. They didn't need to have their groups 
denigrated. They needed to have their groups destroyed.
  These were not people who were going to be rehabilitated. They were 
radical extremists that actually believe with all of their heart that 
they win a place in paradise by killing innocent people.
  If you really want to go back to why there is an English translation 
copy of the Koran in the Library of Congress that was purchased, owned 
by Thomas Jefferson, it was because he was negotiating with the radical 
Islamists, the Barbary pirates in North Africa. He was so well-
educated, so well-read, he couldn't understand why the Barbary pirates, 
who were radical Islamists, kept attacking American ships.
  As he indicated: We are not a threat to you. We don't even have a 
Navy to speak of. We are not your enemy. We don't understand why you 
keep attacking American ships.
  And he was told that, under their belief system, those Islamists 
believed they went to paradise if they died killing what we would 
consider innocent people and they consider people worthy of death; they 
would go to paradise.
  Jefferson, as well-read as he was, he couldn't believe that there was 
any religion anywhere in the world that believed you could go to Heaven 
or paradise if you are killed while you are killing innocent, 
unsuspecting people who are not military. They are not a threat to the 
radical Islamists's life, yet they thought they were going to go to 
paradise and have 70-some-odd virgins or so waiting for them. He 
couldn't believe it. So that is when he got his own copy of the Koran, 
because he just couldn't believe there was a religion that believed you 
could go to paradise if you are killing innocent people.
  Hopefully that will set the record straight with some folks who 
thought it showed how open-minded Thomas Jefferson was. Actually, he 
was quite open-minded. Some have tried to denigrate him because he had 
slaves. The man made plenty of mistakes, and one of them was an 
egregious wrong he did upon John Adams.

                              {time}  1230

  They had been friends for years. It was Adams who asked him to do the 
first draft of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was wise 
enough that, when he did the first draft of the Declaration of 
Independence, if you look at the different grievances that he set out 
as to why they should be independent from England, the longest 
paragraph of the grievance was about how King George allowed slavery to 
ever start in America.
  At the time, Virginia had a law making it illegal to free your own 
slaves, so he was law-abiding. But he believed that one of the worst 
things that ever happened to America was King George's allowing slavery 
to start and exist in this country and that it was going to cause 
massive problems that would be very difficult to cure. He was exactly 
right on all fronts.
  There are some even claiming that George Washington should have his 
name removed from schools or public places when the fact is there would 
be no free America without George Washington having lived at the time 
he did. I believe with all my heart that George Washington was the man 
for such a time as that. There has never been a man in all of history 
who led a military in a revolution, won the revolution, and then 
tendered his resignation, as we see down the Hall, his outreached hand. 
I think it is the most important scene in all of the Capitol. It is a 
massive mural. He is handing in his resignation. He sought no further 
power.
  He could have been king of America or an emperor. There were a couple 
of coups they tried to involve him in. He stopped them. Anybody else in 
the world we know from history would not have done what he did. He was 
reluctant to take any power, yet because of his humility and his focus 
on creating a free and independent land, we have a free and independent 
land.
  Yes, he had slaves, but he was dealing with a Virginia where there 
was a law against freeing the slaves. But even so, he put in his will 
that their slaves would be free upon the death of his wife. Certainly, 
there are better ways to have done that. He was trying to abide by the 
law.
  We have such an incredible history with people like Washington. Some 
of us were attending an address by an author who had researched and 
done a biography on Benjamin Franklin, over at the Library of Congress, 
we were hearing. Someone asked him: Is there anybody you can think of 
in modern America who reminds you of Ben Franklin? He said: Actually, 
we have got many people who are witty, clever, and very inventive. Yes, 
Ben Franklin was an absolutely incredible man.
  Of course, I am paraphrasing. But he said: It wasn't like he was 
George Washington. There was only one of those, just only one of those.
  We had the director of The Society of the Cincinnati speak at the 
Library of Congress on one occasion. He was asked--since most 
biographers, the more they dig into the background of an individual, 
and he had studied Washington every year of his adult life--did he come 
to a point where he had less respect for Washington because of all of 
the details he discerned about Washington's life.

[[Page H8264]]

  He indicated that he could honestly say that, in addition to knowing 
more about Washington every year of his adult life, that he had more 
respect, admiration, and awe of George Washington with each passing 
year, with every bit of information he learned. That is the kind of 
incredible history we have, the kind of selflessness.
  People say, oh, yeah, but Washington, look at the big payoff he got. 
He didn't take a salary, but, boy, did he take a lot of money after the 
Revolution.
  Actually, he didn't take a salary. He didn't take a payoff. He was 
reimbursed some of his out-of-pocket expenses. He had been paying for 
spies to work for the country. He had paid so much out of his own 
pocket, and he was only seeking part of what had come out of pocket 
knowing that, if the Revolution failed, not only would he have been 
killed, but, obviously, his family would not have had all that money he 
spent.
  So I think that kind of puts in perspective, when we start looking at 
people who are willing to sell off America's national security for 
millions of dollars--well, you have to admire their appreciation for 
large amounts of money, but not at the price of selling our safety.
  So, for all this year, I have been saying that Robert Mueller should 
never have accepted the role of special counsel because we knew that 
James Comey was such a close and dear friend of his, and Comey was a 
witness central to this investigation. He could not be a fair arbiter, 
a fair investigator. If he had been properly morally inclined, he 
should have said: I can't be the special counsel because I am too 
close--especially to Comey--to these people.
  Comey, himself, testified that, before he testified up here at 
Congress, he talked to Mueller. There is a 2013 Washingtonian article 
that was just a long, glowing piece on Comey that, in effect, if the 
world were burning down, the one person Comey would know would be right 
there with him would be Robert Mueller standing with him. These guys 
were so close. He looked at Mueller as a mentor. They were really 
tight.
  The question in my mind, because of that tightness, since we know 
Comey leaked in order to, as he said, try to get a special counsel, 
that Mueller encouraged him to do that: Was Mueller behind this setup 
to get a special counsel so he could be appointed and start making 
massive amounts of money and hire all of these Republican-hating 
Democrats, contributors to Hillary Clinton, some of them?
  Wow, what a great setup for a guy who obviously held grudges against 
some Republicans. This is somebody who should not have been appointed, 
even though he was appointed to be Director of the FBI by George W. 
Bush.
  Obviously, George W. Bush was trying hard to pick the right people 
and taking other advice like his father's mistake in appointing David 
Souter. Wow, what a disaster that appointment turned out to be. He 
turned out to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, appearing to act as one 
thing when we saw his teeth as he went to the Supreme Court.
  Edith Jones and David Souter came under consideration. I have been 
told they were both sitting in the White House as President H.W. Bush 
tried to figure out which one to appoint. If he had appointed Edith 
Jones, history would be totally different, and we would not have either 
Justice Kagan or Justice Sotomayor because whom he appointed would 
never have resigned during President Obama's Presidency. So those kinds 
of mistakes have long-reaching effects.

  But President Bush appointed Mueller. And the more I find out, unlike 
the director of The Society of the Cincinnati finding out about 
Washington and growing in awe and admiration, the more I find out about 
Robert Mueller, the more concerned I am. The disclosures this week 
about what this man knew, what this man was involved in, and what he 
did--I thought he was accepting the role of special counsel because of 
some possible revenge motive: he had a dislike for some Republicans, 
loved the idea of doing what Patrick Fitzgerald did, who happened to be 
not just a friend of James Comey; he was the godfather of a Comey 
child.
  Of course, we found out later that Comey recommended to Attorney 
General Ashcroft he should recuse himself so that he could appoint the 
godfather of his child, Patrick Fitzgerald, to be the special counsel. 
We found out this year, well, Comey leaked information--which may or 
may not have been a crime; it needs to be investigated--in order to get 
a special counsel appointed.
  So he is using the same type of manipulative behavior as he did to 
get the godfather of his child appointed special counsel in order to 
get the one guy who would be with him through thick and thin, no matter 
how bad things got, Robert Mueller, get him appointed special counsel.
  I had no idea that Robert Mueller had been involved and been Director 
of the FBI as they investigated Russia's efforts to corner the market 
on uranium and to spend millions and millions of dollars to acquire 
United States uranium. He is Director of the FBI. They are 
investigating this.
  Even knowing that, it appears that he and now-Deputy Attorney General 
Rosenstein actually covered up their investigation so that people would 
not get upset with Secretary Hillary Clinton for being an approver of 
the deal of selling America's uranium to an enemy of the United States.
  According to all the Democrats, for all this year, Russia, Russia, 
Russia is this big horrible enemy, and how dare anybody do business 
with them. It turns out that, actually, they were the ones who were 
involved in this terribly sordid business of selling our national 
security to the Russians.
  The FBI had investigated. They had all of this information, and they 
even had an FBI informant, as Mueller knew as Director of the FBI. The 
informant had been working with the Russians. It was an undercover 
operation, perhaps the most important one the FBI had going on at that 
time.
  They did have the operation going on under Director Mueller of 
creating a fictitious case against Senator Ted Stevens, Republican from 
Alaska, in which they created evidence. They conspired to hide evidence 
that completely didn't just exonerate Ted Stevens; it showed that he 
was law abiding. They hid that evidence, and they manufactured a case 
that would cost him his Senate seat.
  The loss of his Senate seat ended up putting him on a small plane 
that crashed, and he lost his life. As far as I know, there were no 
ties of the plane crash to Mueller, but Mueller was the FBI Director.
  Thank God that there was an FBI agent involved in that investigation 
and that, after Ted Stevens was convicted, he couldn't stand it. His 
conscience would not allow him to sit quietly by after the FBI and the 
U.S. Attorney--but this FBI lead agent, under Director Mueller as 
Director, just fabricated a case.
  It turns out not only did Ted Stevens not accept hundreds of 
thousands of dollars of improvements to his home without paying for 
them, he paid more, hundreds of thousands more, than the improvements 
were worth. Apparently, there was even evidence that they covered up 
where the contractor is saying: Look, Ted, you are paying more than we 
are charging you.
  Stevens would say: Look, I am constantly being watched. People don't 
like my political positions, so I have got to be so far above and 
beyond ethical and moral that I have got to pay more. Just accept the 
checks for overpayment.
  The guy is overpaying, and yet they came after him knowing that this 
was an innocent man. They prosecuted him and convicted him.
  So after the whistleblower FBI agent comes forward under Director 
Mueller's leadership, what happened? The informant was ordered to be 
kept from investigating any criminal cases, which meant he had no job 
at the FBI. He went ahead and did as he was being pushed to do.

                              {time}  1245

  He went ahead and resigned. Thank God for a man with a conscience 
like that.
  His affidavit made clear that the lead agent had manufactured 
evidence and hid evidence from the defense counsel, because they had 
come in with warrants and taken everything: computer drives, thumb 
drives, documentary evidence, and gone to the bank and gotten his 
documents. He did not have any evidence to show you how innocent he 
was, because the FBI had taken it.

[[Page H8265]]

  I know FBI agents who are the most honest people I have ever met. We 
have thousands of them in this country. Thank God for them.
  But what happened under Director Mueller's leadership?
  Well, the whistleblower that exposed the fraudulent misconduct gets 
run out of the FBI, under Director Mueller.
  And what happened to the one who fabricated the evidence, fabricated 
the case, hid evidence that showed Ted Stevens' innocence?
  When Mueller is Director, that FBI agent continued to get accolades 
and be moved on to investigate some of the most important cases the FBI 
had. That was Director Mueller.
  He also had a policy he created called the 5-year up-or-out policy, 
which an article in The Wall Street Journal pointed out years ago. It 
ended up destroying or running off thousands and thousands of years of 
experience from the FBI, weakening this incredible investigative body 
that, until Mueller got there, was the best investigative body in all 
of America.
  But after running off thousands of thousands of years of experienced 
FBI agents so that he could have less experienced agents--agents who 
would not have the experience to say: But, Mr. Director, that would be 
a mistake, which was done in 1985 or 1992, and it didn't work out--no, 
he had people with no experience.
  I know from being a prosecutor that right out of law school you are 
ready to put the bad guys away. You are going to push the line to the 
limit. You are going to do your job, salute the flag, and it always 
helps to have experienced people around to say: Look, I know you mean 
well. That is not a good idea.
  Mueller liked to run those people off. He spent millions of dollars 
that some agents pointed out was being wasted on programs that were 
wasteful and ineffective.
  Now that we know what is coming out this week, I am surprised how 
naive I continue to be. I thought Mueller accepted the job of special 
counsel to investigate the Russia-Trump alleged relationship because it 
would be a great job and he could carry out vendettas that he might 
have. That was so naive.
  Now we know that he had an investigation of Russia. He had an 
undercover informant for years working on the case and that he covered 
up that investigation, along with Rod Rosenstein, so that Hillary 
Clinton could make this deal, approve the deal.
  And yes, there were other people who approved the deal. I believe 
that Attorney General Eric Holder also approved the deal and also 
helped covered up the investigation to show the investigation would 
show, from all the indications, that Russia was committing crimes in 
America to get ahold of our uranium.
  Knowing that, if that investigation were made public, there is no way 
Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder could have approved the deal that was 
selling off 20, 25 percent of America's uranium to Russia. She could 
never have done that.
  If she hadn't done that, there is not any doubt in some of our minds 
that the investors, the stockholders, ultimately, of Uranium One 
certainly would not have contributed over $100 million to the Clinton 
Foundation, and Russia would not have been paying half a million 
dollars for one short speech--remarkably, it is hard to believe from 
the State of the Union Addresses he gave, but he actually could give a 
short speech and get half a million dollars for one short speech.
  He didn't get paid that much for other speeches. What was so special? 
Could it be that Hillary Clinton was so critical in persuading others 
to sign onto allowing Uranium One to get so much of our uranium? Gee, 
perhaps that is why Russia was so emboldened?
  Then we find out there is more than that. The Democratic National 
Committee, we are told, were helping pay for this dossier that just 
created the most lurid, ridiculous allegations against Donald Trump as 
a candidate, trying to destroy his Presidency.
  Not only that, the DNC was involved, and the Clinton campaign may 
have been involved, and the FBI gets involved with that, and it appears 
they may have used the DNC to pay for manufactured evidence that was 
absolutely false and that could be used to get the FBI, under Mueller's 
control and the U.S. Attorney's Office, under Rosenstein's control, to 
go after the Trump campaign and possibly get wiretaps, based on the DNC 
Fusion GPS manufactured evidence.
  So going back to Mueller accepting the appointment as special counsel 
and Comey possibly committing a crime the way he went about leaking 
private information to The New York Times, it appears, if you look at 
his contacts and who reported what from The New York Times and what 
could have only been known by James Comey--it is possible he did it six 
other times--it is possible James Comey committed crimes in one or all 
of those six other leaking occasions, if he was the source, as it 
appears he may very well have been.
  Now, it becomes more clear in my naivety in thinking Mueller had 
personal motivation, including getting paid for a job he would love to 
do to go after people he didn't like in the Republican Party, including 
Donald Trump. But now it is becoming more clear. Comey needed Mueller 
to be a special counsel, and he admitted it in testimony here. He 
leaked information, which may have been a crime, in order to get a 
special counsel that he had to have known was going to be Robert 
Mueller, his friend joined at the hip, and that his other friend, 
Robert Rosenstein, would certainly appoint Mueller, because Rosenstein 
and Mueller were involved in covering up the FBI's investigation of 
Russia and their efforts to get uranium.

  If Mueller and Rosenstein hadn't covered up that and helped seal that 
information and gotten the informant to agree to a nondisclosure 
agreement, then Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation would be 
short megamillions that they received as a result--it certainly 
appears--of the uranium transfer from the U.S. to Russia.
  So, Mueller and Rosenstein and Comey all needed Mueller to be 
appointed, and Mueller needed to accept appointment as special counsel, 
because he had to cover up the cover-up that he and Rosenstein had been 
involved in years earlier in order to facilitate the deal that was made 
to sell off our national security.
  President Trump had this great plank in his platform as he ran for 
President that we need to bring in money that Americans have earned 
overseas back into the United States. Well, it has never been here, but 
bring it into the United States.
  But these American citizens and American companies have had to leave 
it in foreign banks and in foreign businesses in foreign countries 
because, in some countries, they pay 50, 60, 70 percent tax on it. If 
they bring it into the United States, they will be required to pay 
probably 40 percent, plus penalty and interest. So 35, 39 percent, plus 
penalty and interest. They can't afford to do that or they would be 
paying more tax than the money they earned. So they had to leave it in 
foreign countries and in foreign banks.
  Former FDIC Chairman Isaacs came to the Hill back when this doofus 
named Henry Paulson was telling us we had to give him $700 billion so 
he could buy mortgage-backed securities and save our economy.
  In our private conference call--I will never forget--he said: I have 
got to have $700 billion to buy these mortgage-backed securities 
because nobody knows what they are worth and only the government has 
the wherewithal to buy those. Hold them until they get value back, and 
that will save all these banks and keep them from going under, which 
would destroy the United States economy and take us back to a day worse 
than September of 1929. So you have got to give me $700 billion to buy 
these mortgage-backed securities.
  When we were allowed to punch in and ask a question, somebody in my 
party beat me to the question, and it was this: Secretary Paulson, if 
nobody knows what these mortgage-backed securities are worth, how do 
you know you need $700 billion to buy them?
  I will never forget his answer: ``We just needed a really big 
number.''
  When I heard that, I knew that this bozo did not need $700 billion. 
We shouldn't have trusted him as Secretary of Treasury. But he got his 
$700 billion. Between him and Geithner, they bailed out their friends, 
they bailed out the big banks while the community banks were being 
punished. They had to borrow money at regular

[[Page H8266]]

rate, and they made sure that their friends, the investment banks that 
brought us to the brink of ruin, got money for nothing. In fact, they 
got big bailouts. That was a bad day in American history.
  Isaacs had the idea that you don't need to take taxpayer money. If 
you will just say the United States Congress should pass a bill that 
says anything we declare to be a troubled company or a troubled asset, 
if that is invested in by American companies, American individuals who 
have earned money overseas, never brought it into the country, if they 
will bring that money from those foreign countries and invest it in 
what Congress labels as troubled, they will pay no tax on bringing that 
money into the country. Then we will probably have a trillion dollars 
come in. You won't need the $700 billion in taxpayer money or borrowed 
money from China to bail out the banks. You will have Americans who 
will invest in those with money they earned overseas. You don't need 
TARP. It won't be the government getting into bed with the big banks 
and the terrible precedent that will set. That was a great idea.
  But Paulson was so determined to let his enemies like Lehman Brothers 
go bankrupt without help and to allow his company Goldman Sachs to be 
the big dog, that he didn't want to do Isaacs' idea, and he convinced 
enough Members of the House, both Republican and Democrat, to give him 
$700 billion, because he needed a really big number.
  Well, President Trump had that similar idea: let's allow American 
money to come into America that is earned overseas, and that will get 
our economy going. Americans will bring this money in, and it will be 
great for the economy. That is what we need to get the economy going.
  Well, little did we know that, years before, candidate Donald Trump 
had the idea of bringing in American-earned money from foreign 
countries to get our economy going. Yet Hillary Clinton had the idea of 
selling off our national security to get megamillions to go to the 
Clinton Foundation, her and her husband's bank account, to get the 
economy going in America.

                              {time}  1300

  Wow, that was a great idea, wasn't it?
  We sell off some of our national security to bring in foreign money, 
specifically, Russian money to get our economy going. And if she had 
been elected President, then the cover up that Mueller and Rosenstein 
did of the original investigation into Russia's efforts to corruptly 
buy American uranium and corner the market, that would continue to be 
covered up.
  Wow, what a great deal. Even though Hillary Clinton did not win the 
election, Donald Trump did. And they got Donald Trump's Attorney 
General to recuse himself so that Rosenstein, a guy that participated 
in covering up the original FBI investigation, could appoint someone 
else who helped cover up that original uranium investigation with the 
Russians and make him special counsel so that not only would he make a 
lot of money and get to work with lots of people he liked that hated 
Trump and loved Hillary, but he could also cover up the prior coverup, 
even though Hillary didn't get elected. Amazing the kind of stuff that 
is coming out now.
  The work that John Solomon and The Hill have done has been 
extraordinary. I have got an article from October 25: ``FBI informant 
in Obama-era Russian nuclear bribery was cleared to testify before 
Congress.''
  That is great news. Despite Mueller and Rosenstein's efforts to keep 
their prior Russian investigation that they covered up so that the 
Russia uranium deal could go through, wow, we may actually get to find 
out about that now that the FBI informant has been cleared under the 
current Justice Department, under Jeff Sessions. We will get to find 
out more about that Russia effort to corner the market using U.S. 
uranium.
  An article from FOX News: ``Gag order lifted: DOJ says informant can 
speak to Congress on Uranium One, Russia bribery case with Clinton 
links.''
  And then I was glad to see a friend down the hall, Chuck Grassley, a 
senator there from Iowa. He is calling for special counsel in the 
Uranium One scandal. Of course, that is appropriate.
  The FOX News article: ``Clinton mum on Fusion GPS scandal as Dems' 
dossier denials pile up.'' That is from October 26.
  So now there are indications the Democrat National Committee, a 
Member actually paid for this fictitious dossier that could be used to 
get warrants to investigate political opponents in a Presidential race. 
This is incredible. Absolutely incredible.
  Even going back to Tammany Hall, as far as I can recall, they didn't 
have an FBI Director and an Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General 
that had helped cover up a prior investigation so that their friends 
could make millions of dollars.
  Let's see. There is an article in The New York Times from Jo Becker 
and Don Van Natta, Jr. This goes back January 31 of 2008. It indicates: 
``Late on September 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian 
mining financier, Frank Giustra, touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly 
picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the 
west, a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could 
fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot 
pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.
  ``Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra''--I will just say 
``Mr. G''--``was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former 
Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, 
it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. G on his luxuriously 
appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former President of the United 
States, Bill Clinton.
  ``Upon landing on the first stop of the three-country philanthropic 
tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous midnight 
banquet with Kazakhstan's President . . . whose 19-year stranglehold on 
the country had all but quashed political dissent.''
  Another man ``walked away from the table with a propaganda coup after 
Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader's bid 
to head an international organization that monitors elections and 
supports democracy. Mr. Clinton's public declaration undercut both 
American foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan's poor human 
rights record by, among others, Mr. Clinton's wife, Senator Hillary 
Rodham Clinton of New York.
  ``Within 2 days, corporate records show that Mr. G also came up with 
a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements giving it the 
right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan's 
state-owned uranium agency. . . . `'
  So it is just incredible. The deeper you get in this stuff, the more 
it smells.
  A Wall Street Journal article written by Holman Jenkins, Jr.: ``The 
FBI's Political Meddling.'' Interesting story. I like the way it starts 
because it starts referencing a movie, I believe. ``Let's give 
plausible accounts of the known facts, then explain why demands that 
Robert Mueller recuse himself from the Russia investigation may not be 
the fanciful partisan grandstanding you imagine.
  ``Here's a story consistent with what has been reported in the 
press--how reliably reported is uncertain. Democratic political 
opponents of Donald Trump financed a British former spook who spread 
money among contacts in Russia, who, in turn, over drinks, solicited 
stories from their supposedly `connected' sources in Moscow. If these 
people were really connected in any meaningful sense, then they made 
sure the stories they spun were consistent with the interests of the 
regime, if not actually scripted by the regime.
  ``The resulting Trump dossier then became a factor in Obama 
administration decisions to launch an FBI counterintelligence 
investigation of the Trump campaign, and after the election to trumpet 
suspicions of Trump collusion with Russia.
  ``We know of a second, possibly even more consequential way the FBI 
was effectively a vehicle for Russian meddling in U.S. politics. 
Authoritative news reports say FBI Chief James Comey's intervention in 
the Hillary Clinton email matter was prompted by a Russian intelligence 
document that his colleagues suspected was a Russian plant.

  ``Okay, Mr. Mueller was a former close colleague and leader but no

[[Page H8267]]

longer part of the FBI when these events occurred. This may or may not 
make him a questionable person to lead a Russian-meddling investigation 
in which the FBI's own actions are necessarily a concern.
  ``But now we come to the Rosatom disclosures last week in The Hill. . 
. .
  ``Here's another story as plausible as we can make it based on 
credible reporting. After the Cold War, in its own interest, the U.S. 
wanted to build bridges to the Russian nuclear establishment. The Putin 
government, for national or commercial purposes, agreed and sought to 
expand its nuclear business in the U.S.
  ``The purchase and consolidation of certain assets were facilitated 
by Canadian entrepreneurs who gave large sums to''--drum roll--``the 
Clinton Foundation, and perhaps arranged a Bill Clinton speech in 
Moscow for $500,000. A key transaction had to be approved by Hillary 
Clinton's State Department.''
  How about that?
  ``Now we learn that, before and during these transactions, the FBI 
had uncovered a bribery and kickback scheme involving Russia's nuclear 
business, and also received reports of Russian officials seeking to 
curry favor through donations to the Clinton Foundation.
  ``This criminal activity was apparently not disclosed to agencies 
vetting the 2010 transfer of U.S. commercial nuclear assets to 
Russia.''
  That is why, Mr. Speaker, I refer to the original FBI and DOJ coverup 
involving Mr. Rosenstein and Mr. Mueller, which was going to be able to 
be covered up. That is, so we understand the plot here, Mueller as FBI 
Director, and Rosenstein working as U.S. Attorney or deputy U.S. 
Attorney, whatever he was at the time. It is interesting, I hear a 
rumor that he may have even signed on part of this sealing documents to 
help cover up the original investigation. It would be interesting to 
see if he did that. Wow. If it turns out he signed off to get the FBI 
investigation document sealed, and Mueller, as FBI Director, was 
charting the course to get this thing sealed, covered up, well, the 
guys that did the coverup are in charge of the investigation, which 
would allow them to cover up their prior coverup, which would look bad 
since they covered it up to allow the Hillary Clinton approved deal 
selling United States security via our uranium to Russia.
  I didn't realize how bad Russia was until my friends across the aisle 
and Secretary Clinton--candidate Clinton--defeated candidate Clinton 
kept talking about how bad Russia was. Well, they about convinced me.
  But this article says: ``The criminal activity was apparently not 
disclosed to agencies vetting the 2010 transfer of U.S. commercial 
nuclear assets to Russia. The FBI made no move to break up the scheme 
until long after the transaction closed. Only 5 years later, the 
Justice Department, in 2015, disclosed a plea deal with the Russian 
perpetrator so quietly that its significance was missed until The Hill 
reported on the FBI investigation last week.''
  They almost, if not for the good work of Mr. Solomon and I think 
somebody else at The Hill, might have been missed entirely. So good 
work. There are some potential Woodwards and Bernsteins out there, in 
addition to the hardworking news investigators with places like The 
Daily Caller and Judicial Watch, Conservative Review, and others.
  The article goes on to say: ``The agency, when Mr. Mueller headed it, 
soft-pedaled an investigation highly embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton as 
well as the Obama Russia reset policy.''
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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