[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 204 (Thursday, December 14, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H9936-H9938]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           FEDERALISM ISSUES

  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. Mr. Speaker, I heard my colleagues across the aisle 
discussing the issue of Special Counsel Mueller. Since there are one or 
two possibilities about some of the things they said regarding 
Republicans, especially on a committee, either Mr. Cohen's memory is 
terrible or he is falsely, intentionally misrepresenting things.
  I am not saying that is the case. I am saying it is one or the other, 
and I will get to that momentarily.
  The hearing we had this week in the Judiciary Committee with Deputy 
Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was deeply troubling to those who want 
the Department of Justice to be about justice; those who want to see 
the FBI be that great arbiter, that great entity that will ensure that 
justice is done. We need an entity like that.
  The ATF, their reputation was sorely soiled back during the attack by 
the ATF on Waco at the facility where some folks had been sucked into 
basically a cult. It didn't have to happen. And as we found out, local 
law enforcement said that they knew that David Koresh went to Sam's 
Club right there on Belle Meade--I think they said Tuesday. And if the 
ATF had told us they wanted to arrest him, we could have helped them 
arrange to pick him up as he walked out of Sam's Club with grocery 
sacks in his arms. There would have been no incident. No lives would 
have been lost, no children burned up in a fire, no people killed. It 
was so unnecessary, but the ATF apparently wanted to make a point and 
wanted to have a big show. Actually, there were constitutional issues 
there.
  I read in the paper that a gentleman who served with me at Fort 
Benning in Georgia, during my time in the Army, had advised the post 
commander out at Fort Bliss that he should not allow the U.S. Army 
tanks or equipment to be used, in violation of the posse comitatus, 
unless he had a direct order from the President himself.
  As we found out after the fact, the President made clear that: Oh, 
that was Reno's deal. You have to talk to her about that.
  So, clearly, he did not order the U.S. military to use equipment and 
allow their equipment to be used against civilian American citizens. So 
there were all kinds of terrible things that came out and it really 
made the ATF look bad.

                              {time}  1415

  I was a fan of the ATF, the Federal ATF. I knew them to have done 
some great things, and I had some very dear friends, and still do have 
some very dear and very great friends, who are in the ATF.
  But the point is that such horrendous judgment in the ATF set up what 
they knew or should have known would probably result in losses of 
lives, including severe injuries to ATF themselves. I don't think they 
lost anybody, but they certainly were severely wounded and treated 
there in Waco. But that kind of outrageous judgment that puts political 
and news interests ahead of just doing the job and seeing justice done 
ends up being such a terrible blot on the reputation of any entity that 
it is hard to work back from that.
  I still hear people who refer to that incident nearly 25 years ago, 
and still it is such a blot on the ATF that it is hard for people to 
consider the ATF without thinking how terribly, just inappropriate, the 
ATF acted at times and caused people to wonder: Is that the general 
rule, or was that an exception? People, after some other episodes, 
began to think it is the rule with the ATF. Some claim: Let's get rid 
of it.
  What has gone on now and is currently going on now with the Deputy 
Attorney General taking all three positions that he sees no evil, he 
hears no evil--he doesn't know of any evil going on. He thinks 
everything is like the poet said: ``God's in His Heaven, all's right 
with the world.'' I believe the author had a little girl saying that.
  But it is not right with the world. It is terribly wrong. America and 
the world sit in a position of Western civilization where potentially 
the most incredible and amazing strides in healthcare, in energy, and 
all kinds of areas of life on this Earth have been made better 
exponentially, and the United States of America is at the very heart of 
those great developments.
  A majority in the United States throughout our history would always 
say: We call those blessings from God.
  Now, maybe it is and maybe it isn't a majority, but we are ever 
getting closer to a position where this grand experiment in self-
judgment is potentially on the verge of being lost. History is not 
being taught as zealously as it once was. Places like Hillsdale College 
or Liberty or Regent, there are some places where it is being taught. I 
had fantastic history teachers, which is what I majored in at Texas A&M 
because I knew I was going to do 4 years in the Army, at least, and if 
we were at war when my 4 years were up, I would have continued to 
serve.
  But our students don't know history anymore. Why? Because President 
Carter decided that the Federal Government intervention into education, 
even though it is not an enumerated power under the Constitution, and 
it is, therefore, a power that is reserved to the States and the people 
and not the Federal Government, we have been acting extra-
constitutionally, that means outside the Constitution, for quite some 
time going back to the late seventies under President Carter.
  Our students have suffered as a result. They don't know history. 
Someone had advised me that even though history is not an important 
part of the federally mandated test, there are things that in different 
subjects are mandated by the Federal Government. Here is an element 
that students should know about the subject. I was advised that the one 
area that the federally mandated test, the only area historically that 
students were required to know, is that when the United States dropped 
two atomic bombs, one on Hiroshima and one on Nagasaki, it raised 
serious questions about the United States' morality, which is 
absolutely fictitious unless the ignorance of the authors requiring 
such a thing did not allow them to know the truth.
  The truth is that Truman was advised that because the Emperor of 
Japan had ordered the Japanese people to fight for their homes to the 
death, then the Allied Forces would have to land in Japan. They would 
have had to move across the country, and it was considered a very fair 
and possibly quite conservative estimate that there could be 10 million 
people losing their lives if Allied Forces had to land and were 
fighting the Japanese people home to home to home.
  So the morality of the issue is: Would we morally be better off in 
this absolute war that the Japanese started

[[Page H9937]]

against the United States, would we be better off losing the horrible 
tragedy of 300,000 or so lives, or would we be better off having 5 or 
so million Japanese people killed and 5 or so million Allied Forces 
being lost?
  The morally correct decision was that a Democrat, a man who 
apparently really wrestled with the issue from a moral standpoint, 
decided to put the American bombers at risk, those flying the planes 
and taking the atomic bombs, and to put 200,000 or 300,000 or so people 
at risk in an effort to avoid losing 5 million or so Japanese and an 
equal number or more of the Allied Forces. I think he made the correct 
moral decision.
  So that doesn't raise moral issues about the United States. It raises 
ignorance issues about the federally mandated test. We would be so much 
better off if we got back to allowing local school boards to decide and 
States to decide--as they had been for many decades--deciding what 
their students should learn. That was the beauty of a federalist 
situation where States would have so much power.
  But as is often the case when the Federal Government takes over an 
area like education, then it gets worse. I was on the board of 
directors of the Texas A&M Association of Former Students, and I can 
recall the president advising us that the official SAT had to change 
the scoring system for the SAT because students across the board were 
doing so much worse than they did when classes around my era, in the 
1970s, had done, that we had done, overall, so much better than the 
students who came through after the Federal Government took over 
education.
  So I don't know if it was accurate, but I had educators back at that 
time say that there is a formula; so it is hard to say. But if you 
scored, say, 1,400 out of 1,600 on the SAT in the seventies, then under 
the new scoring system it would probably be scored closer to 1,600, 
1,500 to 1,600, maybe a couple hundred points that they had to add to 
the system, because after we had a Federal Department of Education, 
then students started doing worse. So to keep it from looking like the 
Department of Education here in Washington made education as poor as it 
helped to do, we had to raise the SAT scores basically on an arbitrary 
basis.

  We know that the students coming through in the eighties, nineties, 
and then this new millennium have the potential to do better than we 
ever did, but because the Federal Government got involved, I don't 
think it is just a great irony when the Federal Government took over 
education under President Carter that, wow, ironically, isn't it 
amazing, at the same time students were doing worse and worse. So that 
is what often happens when the Federal Government gets involved.
  We saw that with Waco. If they had gotten the help of the local law 
enforcement, there would have been no loss of life, in all reality, but 
the ATF was going to bust in and make a big show out of it, and it cost 
an awful lot of lives.
  You would like to think that, when the FBI comes in, you don't have 
to worry, they are going to do the right thing. I know so many 
incredible, outstanding FBI agents. But for Mr. Cohen to continue to 
say, even after he has been advised and reminded that I have been 
raising Cain about Robert Mueller for over a decade, I guess, he came 
in, sworn in in January of `07, as I understand it. Initially, when I 
questioned Robert Mueller as FBI Director when I first got to Congress, 
I was carrying that image of the great FBI, the image that so many of 
the agents still carry, thousands of them still carry, but with more 
and more difficulty because of the cesspools that have developed here 
in Washington and the way in which it has been used, as we saw with the 
IRS, during the Obama administration, weaponized and used as a 
political instrument.
  Now, how do we know that? We didn't know near as much as we continue 
to find out, but Robert Mueller ran off thousands of years of 
experience, and I contend it was because he wanted nothing but yes 
people. He didn't want the experienced people around the country who 
might try to point out to the director when he made one of his many 
mistakes as FBI Director or chose software programs, chose law 
enforcement programs that created problems because they had more 
experience than he did, he did not really want people around the 
country to have more experience than he did because they might question 
something that he ordered inappropriately, and he just wanted people to 
salute him, salute the flag, figuratively speaking, and drive forward.
  That means when Mueller wanted somebody to bust down the door in the 
middle of the night, even though there was no threat of the individual 
fleeing, no threat of the individual hiding evidence, it was done, as 
we are now seeing the Mueller special counsel group, team, SWAT unit, 
unofficial SWAT, of course, but we are seeing them use these types of 
tactics.
  Now, I don't really know Paul Manafort. He doesn't seem like a fellow 
that I would enjoy getting along with. Nonetheless, it certainly 
appeared that he was very materially mistreated because Mueller wanted 
to make sure he got his point, and he knocked down the door, or at 
least went in in the middle of the night, however they got in. We have 
heard this before, this heavy-handed Federal Government, and there was 
no reason for that other than bullying, mean, Federal agents at the top 
wanting to bully people around.
  We saw that kind of conduct with Mike Flynn as he was set up. He had 
been, as part of the transition team, talking to people at the FBI 
about different issues, and now we know Strzok was part of that, this 
man that absolutely loathed President-elect Trump, he loathed 
everything about Trump and those he was going to be bringing into 
office. We didn't know how badly they despised or loathed the President 
and Republicans supporting him until we got more information.

                              {time}  1430

  But these kind of things are things that Robert Mueller should have 
known. He should have known the Department of Justice's reputation and 
hope for being considered righteous was all riding on him and what he 
did. Yet he rode in with his black hat--figuratively, for those in the 
mainstream media who don't understand those type of references--and he 
began to overreach.
  We heard yesterday from the guy that appointed Mueller, Rod 
Rosenstein, that, to have a special counsel, you have to believe that a 
crime was committed. So it would seem to reason that Mueller was 
appointed to investigate something that they had reason to believe that 
possibly a crime had been committed.
  Yet because of whether it is incompetence or zeal in wanting Mueller 
to go on a witch hunt, to just keep searching until you find something, 
even if it is a poor guy like Scooter Libby who devoted his life to 
helping his country, we need somebody's scalp. It doesn't look like 
Donald J. Trump was colluding with the Russians, so we have got to have 
somebody's scalp. Let's intimidate some people. Let's bully our way 
into homes in the middle of the night. Let's do whatever we have got to 
do and maybe we will scare somebody into admitting something.
  Like many are saying, Michael Flynn didn't lie. To be a lie, you have 
to have intent to deceive. But whether they are right or wrong about 
that, the word is he was bankrupted by an overzealous bully.
  All my friends on the left are talking about bullying. I was small 
for my age. In my class, I was bullied. I had a black eye, a bloody 
nose. A fifth grade teacher, after a big bully took my football and I 
tried to get it back and ended up with a bloody nose and a black eye--
our teacher loved the bully back then--pulled me in front of class 
while I was trying to get my nose to stop bleeding and told the class: 
This is what happens when little boys try to play with big boys.
  I know something about being bullied and I recognize it in a 
government group when I see it. The Mueller team has been bullies, but 
that is what Mueller wanted. Why do you think he went and hired 
Weissmann, who destroyed thousands and thousands of employees' lives 
who worked for Arthur Andersen in a joust at windmills that cost these 
people their livelihoods, caused more pain and suffering than 
imaginable, for what the Supreme Court said, 9-0: You are a fool. This 
was not a crime. You made this up?
  That is who Mueller wanted on his team. This is the same Robert 
Mueller, as I have been pointing out for years,

[[Page H9938]]

who has been grossly unfair in running off the thousands of years of 
experience that he did so he could have great people, wonderful people.
  Not only were they new and young, but he was eliminating the older 
folks who had the experience that could bring them along, because 
Mueller wanted them created in his image and to get rid of all the 
wisdom of the ages that could be found throughout the FBI before he 
took over.
  I am sure there are a bunch of people that needed to go, but you 
don't destroy an entire entity like the Federal Bureau of Investigation 
just because you want a bunch of yes men. That is what Bob Mueller did. 
That man shouldn't have been close to being a special counsel. He 
couldn't stand Trump.
  As the Washingtonian magazine was glorifying James Comey--I believe 
it was in a 2013 issue where they said, basically, in essence, if the 
world were burning down, James Comey knew that the one person who would 
be standing with him would be Bob Mueller--Comey is the very guy who 
admitted leaking information out in order to try to get a special 
counsel appointed.
  As I covered with Mr. Rosenstein yesterday, this is part of an FBI 
typical employment agreement. Everybody is supposed to sign this thing 
and swear to it: ``All information acquired by me in connection with my 
official duties with the FBI and all official material to which I have 
access remain the property of the United States of America. I will 
surrender upon demand by the FBI, or upon my separation from the FBI, 
all materials containing FBI information in my possession.''
  If a man like Comey goes to a meeting in his official capacity of FBI 
Director with the President of the United States and he comes out of 
this and types up a memo, even though it appears it was a pretty less 
than unbiased memo trying to make President Trump look bad, so he 
commemorates it with a memo, that memo, as I discussed with Mr. 
Rosenstein yesterday, is probably government property. That is 
government information, government property. And the question is: Did 
he commit a crime when he leaked that information?
  There is a decent chance it is, yes.
  So where is the FBI in its investigation of James Comey's potential 
crime?
  When you look at the record and you go back, now we know from that 
one incident this is the person to whom he leaked, and then that got to 
The New York Times. Well, here is another meeting where he was the 
principal character there, the most likely person to have leaked.
  Well, lo and behold, his same conduit for leaking information that he 
has admitted to ends up being in place in this story. There may be at 
least six other places where he has leaked information, and some of 
them will be crimes, but because the special counsel was all about 
trying to strip the winner of a Presidential election, we are not going 
after Comey. We are not going after any of these other people. They are 
trying to find something.
  As we know from the text messages of FBI Agent Strzok, they wanted an 
insurance policy so that, in case Trump won, they could still get rid 
of him. Poor Strzok believed that no one in this country should vote--
not a single person, not even Donald Trump's family--should vote for 
him. It ought to be 100 million to zero.
  But, Mr. Speaker, it is so clear, in my days of trying cases in 
Federal court and State court, where you are asking questions of a jury 
panel to see who would be fair enough to sit on a jury, we can see that 
these people who were working and have been--and some still are--for 
the FBI, for the Department of Justice, have no business getting close 
to this investigation unless they are a target of investigation.

  Andrew Weissmann should never have been a part of the special counsel 
team.
  Peter Strzok, this is only some of the text message he sent, but he 
says:

       He asked me who I'd would vote for, guessed Kasich.

  It goes on:

       God Trump is a loathsome human.
       Yet he may win.
       Good for Hillary.
       It is.
       Would he be a worse President than Cruz?
       Trump? Yes, I think so.

  This, of course, is an exchange between Peter Strzok, or PS, and his 
mistress, Lisa Page, who is also working for the FBI. These people had 
done irreparable damage to the FBI. But worse than that, they have made 
a mockery of justice in the United States.
  What really gets me is I know how upset I was in the Bush 
administration when I saw somebody doing wrong. I didn't care if he was 
appointed by a Republican or a Democrat. I didn't care that President 
Bush had appointed a man or a woman to a position. What I cared about 
was them being righteous and doing the right thing.
  Now, where is my Democratic friend who will stand up and say this 
isn't right?
  We know Alan Dershowitz, a great Democrat, brilliant intellect, has 
done it. But where are people across the aisle who would do what I did 
during the Bush Presidency, pick up the phone and say: This is an 
outrage. What has happened under this Attorney General should never 
have happened. He has got to go?
  Where is the Democrat who has a sense of moral outrage when the 
justice system is just shaken to its core by people who want to take 
out a President because they didn't support him, they didn't want him 
to be there, they didn't think any American should vote for him, and 
they are destroying the sense of justice and our justice system?
  It is time for Americans to wake up. It is time to clean house, get 
rid of Mueller, and get some fair people in there to investigate.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded that remarks in debate 
in the House may not engage in personalities toward the President, 
whether originating as the Member's own words or being reiterated from 
another source.

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