[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 19 (Monday, January 29, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H671-H672]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE FBI STEPS DOWN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) for 22 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from North 
Carolina (Ms. Foxx).
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, Mr. Gohmert, my 
classmate, for yielding to me.
  Mr. Speaker, tomorrow night the President will come before this 
Chamber to address Americans and the wider world. While some in this 
Chamber and those watching at home will disagree with the President's 
vision, I hope that we may all agree to pay attention to the facts.
  The fact remains that our economy is booming. Thanks to the Tax Cuts 
and Jobs Act, middle class Americans are receiving bonuses and are 
empowered to keep more of their paychecks. Energy companies are 
slashing their rates so that taxpayers are spending less on energy. 
Families are now able to keep more of their hard-earned money to spend 
any way they wish.
  The Dow Jones has soared into new heights under this administration. 
These facts will surely be addressed by the President, even if they are 
conveniently ignored by some in this Chamber and members of the news 
media.
  I look forward to attending the State of the Union and encourage all 
those tuning in to remember the facts.
  Mr. GOHMERT. My friend, former President Foxx, collegiate president 
and great Member of the House, made some great points. I look forward 
to hearing the President's State of the Union Address tomorrow as well.
  Mr. Speaker, there has been a great deal going on here lately in 
Washington, and something that has been a real threat to what I believe 
is the greatest law enforcement institution in the history of mankind, 
the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As former Speaker of the House 
Newt Gingrich has pointed out a number of times, had candidate Hillary 
Clinton won the Presidency in November of 2016, we would have no idea 
how badly or how significantly the Department of Justice and the FBI 
had been weaponized politically. I just thank God we had the 
opportunity to find out before it was too late and to do something 
about it.
  Today's news has been that, as The Wall Street Journal article by 
Aruna Viswanatha and Del Quentin Wilber today reported: FBI deputy 
chief steps down after Trump criticism.
  The article points out: ``Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe left his 
post on Monday after his bosses urged him to step aside, said people 
familiar with the matter, following weeks of criticism from President 
Donald Trump and other Republicans.''
  I guess I would be one of those other Republicans.
  ``Mr. McCabe will take leftover vacation time until he is technically 
eligible to retire from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in March, 
the people said.
  ``Mr. McCabe has faced a steady string of attacks over an alleged 
conflict of interest stemming from his wife's previous run for Virginia 
State Senate as a Democrat before he became deputy director. He has 
denied any conflict.
  ``But Mr. Trump and other Republicans have cited it as part of a 
broader assertion of bias on the part of the FBI, Justice Department, 
and special counsel's office as they investigate Russian meddling in 
the 2016 campaign and any links between the Trump campaign and Moscow 
in that effort. Mr. Trump has specifically called for Mr. McCabe's 
ouster.
  ``Democrats say these assertions are an attempt to distract from the 
investigations and discredit them.
  ``FBI Director Chris Wray, addressing Mr. McCabe's departure in an 
email to employees, said Mr. Wray `will not be swayed by political or 
other pressure' in making decisions, according to a person familiar 
with the message.''
  That is quite interesting coming this long after evidence was 
slapping people in the face, figuratively speaking. It appears that 
evidence that is overly compelling also may not actually sway Chris 
Wray into taking actions as the Director of the FBI that a reasonable 
and prudent Director of the FBI would have taken under the same or 
similar circumstances.
  ``Mr. Wray thanked Mr. McCabe for his service, adding''--I guess that 
includes the politicalization, the weaponizing, of the FBI in which Mr. 
McCabe was involved--``that Mr. McCabe said he would take leave 
immediately following a conversation between the two, the person said. 
The email was first reported by The New York Times.
  ``In the message, Mr. Wray also said he wouldn't comment on a pending 
report from the Justice Department's inspector general, or inhouse 
watchdog, which is expected to criticize the FBI's handling of an 
investigation into Hillary Clinton's email arrangement when she was 
Secretary of State. The report is expected to prompt some personnel 
changes.''
  You think?
  ``Mr. McCabe's decision Monday was a surprise to many inside the 
FBI''--apparently those who had gotten used to it being weaponized and 
politicized.
  ``Officials abruptly canceled a press conference to discuss an 
unrelated criminal operation. . . .''
  It goes on to say: ``The U.S. intelligence community, in January 
2017, said it believed Russia had conducted an influence operation with 
the goal of hurting Mrs. Clinton and helping Mr. Trump in the 2016 
Presidential election.''
  Gee, okay, so this article is citing the U.S. intelligence community. 
I guess that would include the part of the intelligence community that 
made the decision in 2012, along with the State Department--that would 
be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--to leave the Ambassador to Libya 
exposed to grave danger, and even after seeing footage of attacks, the 
same intelligence community that decided they were better off leaving 
people to die and ordering four heroes to stand down and not go protect 
the Ambassador and others from dying, that same intelligence community. 
How about that?
  They, apparently, according to the article, said they believed Russia 
conducted an influence operation. It turns out the same intelligence 
community that couldn't stand George W. Bush and leaked plenty of 
information to hurt his Presidency, and also has done a great job of 
leaking material to hurt President Trump's administration, if this 
article is correct, they helped the weaponized Department of Justice 
launch an investigation into potential Russian influence.

  It is just so amazing, when we start finding out facts that there was 
a dossier that Fusion GPS was involved in getting, strictly an 
opposition research effort that ended up having totally fabricated, 
really outrageously outlandish allegations, and according to the news 
media, what was in that dossier was so outrageous, if you were a 
Russian, you would think, these stupid Americans will have to be out of 
their minds to think that Donald Trump would have done something like 
this. But maybe--maybe--the now weaponized Department of Justice in 
America and the Obama administration when coupled

[[Page H672]]

with the Clinton campaign, maybe they are crazy enough to think Donald 
Trump would do something like this. It is going to end up making them 
look bad in the end, and that would certainly affect the election if 
the campaign were crazy enough to utilize such a totally fabricated 
dossier, I guess that would affect the election.
  I still have trouble getting over the decision to tell American 
heroes to stand down, don't go try to save the lives of our Ambassador 
and the others there with the Ambassador. Tyrone Woods, Ty, was not 
going to have any of it. He and the other heroes headed out there to 
help as they could, including willingness to lay down their lives to 
protect other Americans, something the CIA station chief, in 
collaboration with other ``U.S. intelligence community,'' apparently 
decided was not worthwhile.
  This article goes on to say: ``Mr. McCabe's abrupt departure is the 
latest event in a highly unusual back-and-forth between the Trump 
administration and a Federal law enforcement establishment that is both 
investigating him as it works for him and cherishes its independence.''
  We know that is not true. They don't cherish their independence. Oh, 
yeah, the FBI, in other levels, absolutely does. But then, at the same 
time, they also cherish their good working relationship with other 
local and State law enforcement.
  This article further down said: ``Mr. McCabe's resignation also comes 
as the FBI faces fallout from thousands of text messages between an FBI 
agent and lawyer who were involved in the Russia investigation, 
including some texts harshly critical of Mr. Trump.''
  How about that? The lawyer working for Mr. McCabe.
  Apparently, Mr. McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full 
benefits as the President himself tweeted out. I can't help but still 
go back to the former Director of the FBI, Mr. Mueller, who set up a 
personnel program that would ensure that the thousands and thousands of 
years of incredible law enforcement experience that was obtained by 
honorable, honest FBI supervisors--that they would be run off by Mr. 
Mueller. He didn't want those people hanging around.

                              {time}  2130

  He put a personal policy in place that ran off thousands of years of 
incredible law enforcement experience from the FBI.
  I can't help but think that if Mr. Mueller had not had such a policy 
to get rid of people that had great experience in law enforcement from 
the FBI, there would have been people who could have gently nudged 
people like Andrew McCabe or Mr. Strzok or Lisa Page and would have 
warned them when they were getting close to the edge before they got 
into such total politicization of our important FBI and DOJ. But those 
people weren't there because Director Mueller put in place a policy 
that ran them off.
  I still wonder about the victims at the Boston Marathon bombing. Had 
we had an FBI Director that was as interested in seeking out radical 
Islamist killers as he was in having community outreach with the mosque 
that was started by a man who is now doing 23 years in Federal prison 
for supporting terrorism, if he had not been so interested in playing 
patty-cake out with his community partnership and instead gone to the 
mosque and been asking specific questions about the older Tsarnaev 
brother after we got two notices that he had been radicalized--they 
never asked a question, not one, about Tsarnaev; about what he has been 
concentrating on, what he is reading, what he is memorizing, what he is 
talking about, what books he has got. They didn't know what questions 
to ask because Director Mueller had seen to the purging of the FBI 
training materials so the FBI agents didn't know what questions to ask. 
They didn't know what they were looking for in a radicalized Islamist.
  The same scenario has played out time and again. Tsarnaev should have 
never been able to carry out that bombing, because he came into the 
crosshairs of the FBI investigation. Basically, from all we can find 
out from the hearings, they asked him if he was a terrorist. He said he 
wasn't. They asked his mom if he was a terrorist. She said: He is a 
good boy.
  That is an encapsulation of it. But they didn't know what to ask 
because of Mueller.
  Michele Bachmann and I reviewed material that was purged. The FBI 
classified it so we couldn't reveal, Mr. Speaker, to others publicly 
what was purged. Some of it was silly and needed to be purged.
  Say, for example, there were a purging of verses from the Koran. Why 
should anything ever be purged from the Koran if it is part of the 
training materials?
  You have to ask Mr. Mueller that.
  The FBI and the DOJ deserve better. We are looking forward to finding 
out what the IG report has to say, but it is time for games to stop. It 
is time for law enforcement to do their jobs at the Department of 
Justice and the FBI. Jeff Sessions has got his hands full. It was 
obvious that he felt like he could trust those who were called career 
DOJ employees. Hopefully he has learned some of those career employees 
didn't have the law enforcement long in the tooth to give them the 
benefit of their experience because Mueller ran them off. They got off 
into an area of politicization of the DOJ and the FBI. He can't trust 
the people he would have been able to otherwise, had the FBI not gotten 
so far off track.
  We need a second special counsel, as I advised the President back in 
June, and we need it now. Investigations cannot be conducted by Mueller 
into what Mueller did during the prior Russian investigation, along 
with U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, and could not properly investigate 
his joined-at-the-hip friend, Mr. Comey.
  He could not properly investigate what will be in the inspector 
general's report, but it certainly should require further 
investigation. He can't do that. It needs to be totally independent. I 
am not talking about the godfather of one of Mr. Comey's kids, Patrick 
Fitzgerald, who conveniently got appointed after he talked John 
Ashcroft into recusing himself. I am talking about somebody totally 
independent. That is what we need.
  Where does the DOJ go to get its reputation back?
  It is going to be a long process and it is going to take truly 
independent people cleaning up the mess that has been created so that 
can happen. We need a reputable Department of Justice and FBI, and it 
is high time we got one back.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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