[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 18 (Thursday, January 25, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S508-S509]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                  FBI

  Mr. President, now I want to focus on one more thing that really 
should disturb every American, and it certainly disturbs me--recent 
events concerning the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
  For decades, the FBI has been our Nation's premier law enforcement 
agency, admired from one end of the country to the other. TV shows and 
movies all talked about how good the FBI was. We know because we trust 
them with protecting our country against many-faced threats: drug 
trafficking, terrorism, white-collar crime.
  In 2016, the FBI--not politically, but just in the way it works to 
keep being vigilant to protect us in our security--was tasked with 
another mission of great importance--investigating Russia's 
interference in our elections.
  As that investigation progressed, it found that members of the Trump 
campaign had concerning associations with the Russians in the lead-up 
to the election. That was pure law enforcement. That wasn't some 
political direction. Now that that investigation led by Special Counsel 
Mueller has resulted in two guilty pleas and two more indictments of 
Trump campaign officials, there seems to be a fervor on the other side 
to discredit what the special counsel's investigation has already 
revealed. That should give serious pause to Democrats, Republicans, and 
all

[[Page S509]]

Americans. A foreign power, probably the one that is most in our face, 
Russia, is interfering in our elections. I don't care if it is 
Democratic elections, Republican elections, national elections, or 
local elections. When a foreign power interferes in our elections, that 
gnaws at the wellspring of our democracy. All of us should be giving 
the FBI space and encouragement to finish their investigation without 
delay or interference.
  Instead, ever since Special Counsel Mueller was appointed, too many 
Republicans and too many in the rightwing media have been desperate to 
distract the Nation from his investigation.
  First they waged an aggressive and coordinated--I would say 
shameful--attack on the integrity of the special counsel. I was in the 
gym this morning. I spoke to one of my senior Republican colleagues, 
who said he knew Mueller, and he knew what a fine man he was. He is a 
model public servant. He spent decades earning the trust and reverence 
of both parties. He was known as somebody who was a registered 
Republican through my years in Washington. He wasn't regarded as a 
partisan figure, somebody who would have vendettas, political or 
otherwise--no. It got so out of hand--I couldn't believe this--that a 
Republican Congressman suggested Special Counsel Mueller's 
investigation was a ``coup,'' on the floor of the House. That 
Congressman ought to go back and read his Constitution and read his 
history books. The rule of law is not a coup. I would say to that 
Republican Member of Congress: No person, not even the President, is 
above the law.
  The political smear campaign has now bled into a spiraling and 
delusional attack on the FBI itself. The Republican majority on the 
House Intelligence Committee has, according to Representative Schiff, 
manufactured a secret memo of partisan talking points, full of innuendo 
and glaring omissions, intended to suggest widespread corruption at the 
Department of Justice and the FBI. They are very, very serious 
allegations, if they had any truth to them or backing. Adding to the 
impropriety, some of those same Republicans are now trying to release 
this slanderous memo--and that is what it is, a slanderous memo--to the 
public.
  Since this investigation has started, our Nation has had to endure 
conspiracy after conspiracy from Republican Congressmen and Senators 
and, of course, from the rightwing press, which acts in total cahoots. 
There are conspiracies about ``deep state'' leaks and unmasking 
requests, phone taps at Trump Tower, Uranium One, who paid for the so-
called Steele dossier, and today it is this memo. On and on and on, 
they are conspiracy theories with virtually no fact--paranoia, 
delusion. Why? Are they afraid of the truth of the Mueller 
investigation? It seems so.
  Meanwhile, Republican Members of this body, I am ashamed to say, 
picked up on casual texts sent between FBI agents to peddle the 
nonsense that there is a ``secret society'' at the Department of 
Justice, without a shred of evidence. I saw one of those--the Senator 
who was propagating this, this morning on television. It looked crazy. 
It looked delusional. It looked paranoid. What began as an attempt to 
discredit the investigator has now devolved into delusional, self-
serving paranoia.
  The Republican Party, which used to hold itself up as a law and order 
party, seems intent on destroying the credibility of our premier law 
and order agency and the hard-working men and women who serve there--
all to assist a President who cares and knows very little about the 
boundaries of rule of law.
  Imagine, the FBI, which for decades the Republican Party upheld--I 
remember lots of political debates here--now they are discrediting them 
with virtually no basis in fact. Guess who has joined the Republican 
campaign to attack the FBI. The Republican campaign to attack the FBI 
has been joined by the same forces that interfered in the 2016 
election--Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and Russia.
  Just a few years ago, those things were attacked by our Republican 
friends, particularly the hard right. Now they are joining them, 
wittingly or unwittingly. Can you imagine the outrage on the right if 
President Obama's message was being spread by Wikileaks, Julian 
Assange, or Kremlin sources?
  Within hours of GOP lawmakers and FOX News calling for the release of 
the Nunes memo, Russian-linked bots began pushing the narrative using 
the hashtag ``releasethememo''--Russian bots, hashtag 
``releasethememo.'' Just a few hours after some of our Republican 
friends started this push, use of the hashtag spiked and was used 100 
times more than any other hashtag by Kremlin-linked accounts.
  We are witnessing an effort by the Russian Government to intervene 
and influence our democratic processes in real time. Every single 
American should be concerned by this, particularly when their elected 
officials are willing to work--wittingly or unwittingly--alongside 
Russia to manipulate our opinion. Some of our Republican colleagues--
sadly, unfortunately, wittingly or unwittingly--are acting as allies of 
Russia's disinformation campaign. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? It 
is hard to make this stuff up. It seems like we make this stuff up, but 
it is real--hard-right Republicans and the Russians trying to discredit 
our premier law enforcement agency.
  This country erected institutions like the FBI and the Department of 
Justice to defend the vital interests of the Nation without deference 
to political parties. Much like the Federal judiciary, they act as an 
essential check on political power--whosever power it is--a defense 
against creeping authoritarianism.
  What the FBI is investigating right now is about shielding our 
democracy from the disinformation campaigns of foreign adversaries. 
Russia wants nothing more than to undermine our democracy by eroding 
people's faith in its institutions, for without resilient democratic 
institutions, there can be no democracy.
  Make no mistake about it. Today Russia may be doing the same thing 
that a lot of our Republican colleagues are. Tomorrow they may be 
attacking our Republican colleagues. The Russians have no interests 
other than hurting America. So the Republican attacks on the 
credibility of the FBI and the Department of Justice are playing right 
into Putin's hands. They constitute an attack on democracy itself.
  There has to be a line. There has to be a line where the interests of 
your political party stop, because to go any further would be to 
diminish our country. I say that to my colleagues here and in the House 
who have participated in this besmirching unfairly, paranoically, self-
interestedly of the FBI. Peddling delusions of secret societies, ``deep 
state'' leaks, and coup d'etats cross the line of what anyone of any 
party should do. It has to stop.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.