[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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