[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 179 (Friday, November 3, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H8487-H8489]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ISSUES OF THE DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it is certainly an honor and pleasure to
follow my dear friend from Iowa with whom I got to share a little time
last
[[Page H8488]]
weekend, be out in God's nature and just enjoy the best Iowa has to
offer, and Steve King is one of those best things.
Well, we have heard a great deal about the New York terrorist,
although I believe Governor Cuomo told us there are no terrorist ties
initially, before he had any time to know anything, really. But that
seems to be kind of the way most mayors where these terrorist attacks
occur respond. They immediately declare, ``This is not terrorist. No
terrorist ties.'' And then, lo and behold, we find out, eventually,
there certainly are.
One of the problems that has been created during the last 8 years and
a little bit during the last part of the Bush administration is the
development discussion of countering violent extremism. But I do want
to touch on something about the diversity visa lottery program.
My first year in Congress, in 2005, we eliminated the diversity visa
lottery program--at least voted in the House to eliminate it--but the
Senate would not take it up, wouldn't take it up. We had a Republican
majority in the House and Senate, and the Senate wouldn't take it up.
Then, in November of 2006, we lost the majority in both Houses. And,
of course, the Democratic majority in both Houses loved the diversity
visa lottery program. In fact, I have a floor speech from Senator Chuck
Schumer where he extols the virtues of the diversity visa lottery
program. Here are some highlights.
Senator Schumer said--this is May 24, 2006: ``As a Member of the
House, I helped create this program, which my colleague, Senator
Kennedy, created in the Senate in 1990.''
He said: ``In fact, my city of New York has dramatically benefited
from this program, and diverse countries such as Ireland, Poland, and
Nigeria have had large numbers of immigrants to be able to come, set
roots, and help the diversity of New York and of America.
``So this is an excellent program. Nobody has said it has done a bad
job.''
Those were his comments in 2006.
Well, I am here to say it has done a bad job. So now nobody can say
that nobody has said it has done a bad job, because I am saying it has
done a bad job.
No matter how noble the original idea was, you should never trust the
country's security to a lottery. That is insanity.
Of course, in a speech back in 2006, then Congressman Schumer, now
Senator Schumer, said--or, actually, he was a Senator in 2006. But
Senator Schumer said: ``I think America should admit many more of those
people but not at the expense of this small, successful program that
guarantees that other countries, such as the Irelands, the Polands, and
the Nigerias that are unable to have immigrants come in for family
reasons, can get people to come into this country.''
Senator Schumer also said, about the diversity visa lottery program:
``But one of the things great about America is, again, we allow people
from all over the world to come here.
``So I plead with my colleagues, keep the diversity visa program.''
He said: ``As I ride my bike around New York City on the weekends, I
see what immigrants do for America. This program has dramatically
helped. Neighborhoods such as Woodlawn and Greenpoint have been
revitalized by new Irish and Polish immigrants. Neighborhoods such as
East Flatbush and Harlem have been revitalized by West African
immigrants. We don't have to stop this program.''
{time} 1315
Well, again, it is insanity to trust our national security to a
lottery, and that is what the diversity visa lottery program does.
We have had terrorists, and we have known it for a number of years,
that have been getting their names into the lottery so that hopefully
they would win the lottery and come to America to kill Americans.
I understand that there was a stepped-up effort in the last couple of
years to vet people a little better, but the trouble here is, as then-
Director Comey of the FBI testified before our Judiciary Committee, we
have got nothing to vet these people against, so many of them, from
Syria, from Yemen.
He said in Iraq, we had all of the government records. It turns out,
even with all the government records, they let in two terrorists. We
had fingerprints of theirs on IEDs that killed Americans, and they let
them in, and eventually realized they had made a mistake. So they said
we are going to step up our vetting after they realized they had
admitted known terrorists into the United States that created IEDs to
kill and maim Americans.
They could say we were stepping up the vetting program, but when
there is no information--this is what Comey said. With Iraq, we had the
government records, we had fingerprints, we took fingerprints off IEDs.
Syria, Yemen, we have got nothing. The government there doesn't give
us their records. We have nothing to work from. In Syria, for a while,
ISIS had taken over one of the printing facilities where they could
print the passports. So we had no information to work from. We didn't
know what was true and what wasn't.
So, once again, we were trusting our national security and the lives
of Americans to a fatal game of Russian roulette, but it was from the
Middle East, it was from Uzbekistan, it was from places where people
have been radicalized.
I have got the numbers here. In fact, let's see, diversity visa
program statistics, as I understand, the New York terrorist, the ISIS
supporter who killed eight people, wounded so many others, in 2011, we
had 5,091 from Uzbekistan. There were none from Poland, and in the top
ten, there were certainly none from Ireland.
We had, in 2012, 4,800 from Uzbekistan; and even better news, we had
4,453 from Iran. For those who are not keeping track, the Iranian
Government has not given us information that we can count on about
people in Iran who want to come to America, and we know Iran is the
largest national supporter of terrorism in the world. So we don't have
much of anything to vet these people on, but, you know, Senator Schumer
said it is a great program, and nobody said anything against it as he
rides his bicycle around.
Well, fortunately he wasn't riding his bicycle around in front of the
terrorist that was allowed in on the program he thinks was so grand.
And, frankly, I am grateful he was not on his bicycle in front of that
terrorist killer that his program let in.
In 2013, Uzbekistan, we had 5,101 come in from Uzbekistan. We did
have 2,038 come from Poland that year.
In 2014, another 6,027 that we could not adequately vet coming from
Iran. Some of them we could with relatives, but many of those people
simply could not be vetted. We don't know if they were sent here by the
Iranian Government to kill Americans or not.
In 2015, we have another 4,992 from Iran; Uzbekistan, we had another
4,368.
So we don't have the numbers from 2016 yet, unfortunately, but
hopefully that gives some idea of what we are dealing with.
We also need to understand that government officials tell us: You
know, we had no indication this guy was a terrorist.
There were even people from the government, the Feds, who were
saying: Gee, you know, this was not a known person.
This New York terrorist, not a known person to the Federal
authorities.
Well, it turns out, in 2015, they interviewed him. He had terrorist
ties.
The thing people need to understand is--and I have been saying this
for years, I have grilled Director Mueller on this issue. I was
contacted by one media outlet that says: Why are you just bringing this
up now about the purge of training materials?
My goodness. I have been talking about this for years, I have been
made fun of about this for years, but I have been right about it for
years, Michele Bachmann and I.
It should not have been classified what they took out of the FBI
materials, but they classified it so we couldn't show America how
stupid some of their purging was, how senseless, how, as some of our
agents told me, we are blinding ourselves of the ability to see our
enemy.
So I grilled Mueller some years ago over the fact that they got a
heads-up twice that the older Tsarnaev brother was radicalized, he was
a terrorist, he
[[Page H8489]]
was a threat to American lives. They didn't do anything; the CIA didn't
do anything.
The FBI finally sends some agents out. They interviewed the older
Tsarnaev, but they didn't know what to ask. They don't know what the
signs are of someone who is radicalized, because they have had beat
down their throats for so long, and this was the Obama administration,
they had the FBI's Guiding Principles document on training. And this
was the document that the FBI used to say: Oh, no. We have got to be
politically correct. We can't teach people about how to find and spot a
radical Islamist.
So there was a purge of FBI training materials.
There is a fantastic Judicial Watch special report, it can be found
on their website, dated December 5 of 2013, ``U.S. Government Purges of
Law Enforcement Training Material Deemed `Offensive' to Muslims.''
Who was complaining? Well, the Council on American-Islamic Relations,
the Islamic Society of North America, and they just happened to have
known contacts who were named as coconspirators supporting terrorism in
the Holy Land Foundation prosecution.
What did Mueller's FBI do under Mueller's specific direction? They
created an outreach program. They called them their community outreach
partner for these people who judges said: No. There is plenty of
evidence to show that these people have ties supporting terrorism. No.
We are not going to eliminate their names.
The Dallas Federal Court said that; the Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals in New Orleans said that. It didn't make it to the Supreme
Court, but two courts said: Yeah, there is plenty of evidence to see
there are plenty of ties here, evidence of their ties to known
terrorists.
So it wasn't until 2008, after years of having this evidence, that
Director Mueller sent kind of an apologetic letter to CAIR, Council on
American-Islamic Relations, saying: You know, we better suspend our
community partnership for a while.
It is just unbelievable, but it was the political correctness during
the Obama administration that has gotten people killed, because they
purged our training material. And God bless Ken Jensen, FBI agent. He
had prepared the 700-page training materials that Mueller ordered
destroyed.
Somebody needed to study that material before they went out and
talked to Tsarnaev. If they had, they would have recognized this guy
has probably radicalized, and we better be on the alert. They could
have saved lives at the Boston Marathon if Mueller had not prevented
them from knowing how to do their job. And he is special counsel.
By the way, Madam Speaker, the former Director of the FBI who blinded
the FBI of their ability to see terrorists, why do we think he came out
with the indictments exactly when he did? Well, I can tell you why,
because he is as easy to read as anybody in the world. He came out with
those indictments when he did because he had people starting to call
for his resignation, starting to demand that he be removed, demanding
that he recuse himself. Even The Wall Street Journal, that has been
very sympathetic, they pointed out it was time for him to go. What did
he do? He immediately comes out with indictments to show: No, no, no.
You can't demand that I go. I am too relevant.
You look at those indictments, and I am for punishing anybody who has
committed a crime, but there was no need for a special counsel to come
up with what he did. The FBI could have done that. The Department of
Justice could have done that. We didn't need Mueller and 20 lawyers,
all of these Hillary Clinton sycophants, in there to come up with this.
The DOJ could have done this. It was just a ridiculous couple of
indictments to be spending all these millions of dollars for.
We also know that same kind of conduct occurred when Comey came to
the Hill and testified there is no trace of evidence of collusion
between President Trump and the Russians.
Well, Mueller had to be puckering up, because he knew: Uh-oh. Now
there is testimony from the FBI Director that there is no basis for me
to be special counsel and to have hired all these people. Wow. So the
President could be in line to fire me, because now we have testimony
from the FBI Director there is no basis for this investigation. Shut
her down.
So that night, they leak out he is investigating President Trump for
obstruction of justice. Excuse me? We all know what that so-called
evidence was. They will never, ever get a conviction, because it was
not obstruction of justice.
Obstruction of justice is when you do what Comey and Loretta Lynch
did to prevent a proper investigation, and you make an agreement with
potential defendants that if they will just give you their laptops and
let you look at them, you will destroy all that you find, and you will
never use any of that information to prosecute them, and you give them
immunity from prosecution. That is not what you do if you are going to
prosecute a case. No.
You get them in a bind and then you tell them: Here are the charges
you are looking at unless you come clean and identify the person above
you with whom you were working and what they did.
Then you work up the chain to the big fish, which is how organized
criminal organizations have been prosecuted over the years. It would
work in this case, but Director Comey was so busy figuring out how to
explain how Hillary Clinton should not be prosecuted, though the
evidence was basically for a slam dunk case of conviction, that he
overlooked properly pursuing the case.
We don't need Director Mueller. We need him gone, and we need a
special prosecutor to get into this, clearly, since Jeff Sessions
recused himself on anything involving Hillary Clinton and Russia. And
we can't have Rod Rosenstein, for heaven's sake, now that we know that
he and Mueller should not be involved in this special counsel
situation, because they both were engaged in the coverup of the initial
Russian investigation that revealed Russia was trying to corner the
market on uranium, and they had to seal that, because if they hadn't
sealed that and covered up that evidence and that investigation, then
Hillary Clinton would not have been able to hit the Russian
megamillions lottery by authorizing the sale of uranium to Uranium One
that ends up in Russian hands.
Bill Clinton wouldn't have gotten $500,000. He didn't hit the
megamillions, except for the 145 or so that went into the Clinton
Foundation.
Mueller cannot possibly investigate this. He is in it up to his
eyeballs, and so is Rosenstein. They both ought to do the decent thing.
I know it is not characteristic, but they ought to do the decent thing
and resign and let somebody that is not completely submerged in the
original coverup investigate this whole matter.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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