[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 19 (Monday, January 29, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H672-H674]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. 
Perlmutter) for 22 minutes.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I am joined today by Jared Huffman from 
California. And eventually, I think, Brendan Boyle from Philadelphia, 
the home of the new NFC champions, is also going to join us.
  What we are going to talk about is: What are the Republicans afraid 
of? What is it they are hiding? What is it they think is going on with 
respect to this investigation of the President and his ties to Russia?
  It starts from the very beginning. This time last year, we asked the 
President: Are you going to turn over your tax returns so that people 
can see what is in your tax returns; whether you have relations with 
the Russians, or who knows who?
  Every President for the last 40 or 50 years has turned over their tax 
returns. But, of course, the President did not turn over his tax 
returns and has refused to turn over his tax returns.
  The first thing you ask is: What is in there? What are you hiding?
  Now, what we see is a concerted effort by the Republicans in the 
Congress and in the White House to smear and disparage hardworking law 
enforcement officers in the FBI, in the intelligence community, and the 
Department of Justice, who have been tasked with trying to figure out 
whether or not Russia involved itself criminally in our elections last 
year and whether or not there is any implication of the Trump campaign 
with respect to those particular efforts by the Russians.
  We need to make sure that Russia does not hack into our elections, 
does not participate in a way that favors one party over another or one 
candidate over another.

[[Page H673]]

  These investigations started and the first thing the President did 
was fire Jim Comey from the FBI. Through a process, the Justice 
Department then appoints a special prosecutor, a special counsel, to 
continue this investigation.
  Since that has occurred, there have been a couple of indictments and 
a couple of plea agreements. Michael Flynn, who was the intelligence 
head for the President, has faced part of this investigation. There was 
Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, who were involved in the campaign, and 
then George Papadopoulos.
  But that is just the tip of the iceberg. All these people, both on 
the Trump campaign side and all of these Russians, have played some 
kind of a role, and this investigation must be pursued.
  My friends on the Republican side of the aisle can complain, can 
stomp their feet, can throw mud at the individuals who are asked to do 
these investigations, but these investigations must continue so that 
the people understand exactly what happened and to make sure that the 
Russians are not allowed to participate and infiltrate and affect our 
elections once again.
  There are just a couple of questions: What are you afraid of? What 
are you hiding? Is there a coverup of some kind here?
  The bottom line is: just let our law enforcement individuals do their 
detective work, do what they were asked to do, and leave them alone and 
let it be done. If it exculpates and proved that nothing happened, then 
great. But if there is some wrongdoing here, America needs to know 
about it.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from northern California (Mr. 
Huffman).
  Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado for 
organizing this Special Order hour conversation.
  You asked the right question: What are they hiding and what are they 
afraid of?
  It is a bit of a rhetorical question, because when you think about 
that chart you have displayed there, when you think about the 
indictments and the plea deals and all of the other information that we 
are beginning to glean, it is pretty obvious what they are afraid of 
and what they are hiding.
  This investigation is getting pretty darn close to the personal and 
political and financial ties between this Presidency and those around 
him and Russia, and it is a lot of information that they don't want the 
world to know about. That is why we are seeing all of these 
distractions, all of these elaborate and increasingly desperate 
attempts to change the subject and create diversions.
  Frankly, today, I am very worried that--not so much that this is 
coming from our President, because we have seen him throughout his 
career engage in character assassination, burning down the house 
tactics, and all manner of ruthlessness, but I am disturbed that many 
of our colleagues in this body have taken up those same tactics and 
that same cause. That is dangerous.
  One of the great things about this country, I believe, is that it is 
about the rule of law. Our Founders actively debated this question 
about whether we would be a country of laws and institutions or a 
country of men.
  Would we have some people above the law or would we all be subject to 
the law?
  They answered it loud and clear. We were going to be a country of law 
and institutions. At every critical test in our history, we have 
reaffirmed that essential great aspect of what it is to be the United 
States of America. That is what Watergate was all about, as we are 
beginning to remember.
  Yet, today, it seems that that proposition is being retested all over 
again. To my dismay, some of our colleagues are hoping for a different 
answer as we retest that proposition this time. That is very troubling.
  I am not in the habit of quoting FOX News very often, and certainly 
not their news hosts, but one of their hosts, Shepard Smith, said 
something that really struck a cord in the last few days. Here is what 
he said about the so-called Nunes memo: ``A memo can be a weapon of 
partisan mass distraction.''
  That is exactly what this is: a desperate attempt to protect 
President Trump from investigation and accountability.
  I think we need to recap a few facts that brought us to this point.
  Back in November 2016, when the chairman of the House Intelligence 
Committee was appointed to President-elect Trump's transition team, he, 
like our President, started sowing doubts about whether Russia had 
interfered with the 2016 election, incorrectly claiming that there was 
some kind of disagreement between our intelligence agencies on the 
subject.
  In fact, there was no disagreement. All of the American intelligence 
community agreed that, as they had looked into this, they determined 
that Russian operatives had worked to undermine the integrity of our 
election. That conclusion has been reinforced and reaffirmed by 
everything we have learned since then.
  The chairman told Politico shortly before President Trump's 
inauguration that the House should not investigate contacts between 
Russia and the Trump camp, even though his Senate intelligence 
counterparts had already committed to following the facts wherever they 
may lead. So he had already made up his mind.

                              {time}  2145

  The chairman described the Trump-Russia connections as a dead trail. 
He said there is nothing there. And, of course, we know President Trump 
has said he has nothing to do with Russia, totally contradicted by 
everything we have learned since.
  All of this, of course, is going to come as a surprise if there is 
nothing there to the President's campaign chair, who is under 
indictment; to members of his family, who have been hauled before the 
special prosecutor to answer to secret meetings and other dealings that 
they have had with Russia; and to others in this administration who had 
repeated contacts with Russia.
  And, of course, no one can forget the intelligence chairman's trip to 
the White House last year, where he staged an impromptu news 
conference, claiming that he had briefed the White House about a source 
who could explain how Trump campaign officials were caught up in 
foreign intelligence intercepts. His unnamed sources that he rushed to 
brief the White House about, well, it turned out they were White House 
officials.
  This was a completely choreographed stunt. They had planted the 
misleading information with the chairman in the first place, obviously 
desperate to give some cover to the President who had tweeted out about 
wiretapping, conspiracies, and on it goes.
  Mr. Speaker, my colleague, Ed Perlmutter, is asking all of the right 
questions. This investigation is beginning to answer those questions in 
very, very important ways. We need to make sure that it runs its 
course. It is important to finding out the truth. The American people 
deserve to know the truth.
  It is also important to reaffirming that incredibly important aspect 
of what makes this country great, and that is that we are a nation of 
laws and institutions. We have to reaffirm that, unfortunately, over 
and over again from time to time.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from California for 
his comments. He was talking about a memo.
  One of the former chairmen of the House Intelligence Committee, a guy 
named Mike Rogers, was also a panelist, I think, on a CNN program. 
Apparently, this memo is going to be released today against all sorts 
of norms with respect to the Intelligence Committee and classified 
information. His words were, releasing a memo like this is farcical.
  It is a mistake. It starts to undermine so many things with respect 
to our intelligence community, the trust that we have with our allies, 
and all of it to kind of put up this smoke screen. They go after the 
law enforcement agents, who are the detectives on the beat. Now they 
are releasing information that is incomplete and, in Mike Rogers's 
words, ``farcical,'' to try to distract, divert, avoid the real 
conversation, which is: What did the Russians do? How did they play in 
the elections? Was there any kind of cooperation, collusion, whatever 
it might be, with the Trump campaign?
  We know that Bob Mueller was appointed. He has been a lifelong 
Republican. Everybody embraced his position as special counsel when it 
first came about, but quickly the President was

[[Page H674]]

thinking about firing him. Now people want to smear all of this: It is 
a mistake.
  The real question is: What are you hiding?
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Brendan 
F. Boyle), my friend from Philadelphia, who is a pretty happy camper 
because his Eagles are going to be playing in the Super Bowl on Sunday.
  Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank my 
colleague and friend for his belief early on in the season in the 
Eagles, despite the fact he is a die-hard Broncos fan. The Super Bowl 
will be a nice diversion from the seriousness of the subject that we 
are discussing and debating tonight.
  Let me take us back a bit to a couple of events that, yes, may have 
happened a little bit before I was born, but I know well as a student 
of American history. I fear that we are on the verge of repeating them, 
possibly only days away on the verge of repeating them.
  In October 1973, the Watergate investigation was being conducted by 
the special counsel, Archibald Cox. It had been going on, at that 
point, for most of 1973. On a Saturday night, President Nixon decided 
to fire the special counsel, in part, because the special counsel was 
doing his job and was getting too close to uncovering the conspiracy.
  President Nixon ordered his Attorney General to fire the special 
counsel. The Attorney General proved to be a profile in courage and 
refused. It then went to the Deputy Attorney General. The Deputy 
Attorney General refused. Finally, the number three man, the Solicitor 
General, named Robert Bork, decided that he would follow what President 
Nixon wanted and fired Archibald Cox. That became known as the Saturday 
Night Massacre.
  When John Chancellor, then the anchor for NBC News, came on the air--
and I was recently rewatching this--he said: Tonight, I utter words I 
never thought I would say, but we are in the midst of the greatest 
constitutional crisis in the history of the Republic.
  I fear that history may very well repeat itself. We now know, since 
we were last in session--and it has been reported and confirmed by many 
media outlets, including FOX News--that President Trump has ordered his 
own White House attorney to fire the special counsel.
  Why? If the President really has nothing to hide, then why would he 
fire the special counsel and want to bring this process to an end? It 
gets back to the very first question that my colleague from Colorado 
has asked: What does he have to hide?
  I sincerely hope that the special counsel will find and will prove 
that nothing happened. That would be the best outcome and best course 
for all of us as Americans. But, boy, if the President is innocent, he 
sure isn't acting like it.
  We must come together--as Democrats and Republicans second, but as 
Americans first--and do what is in the best interest of justice and of 
this country and say that the special counsel must be allowed 
to continue his work until its natural conclusion.

  If the President moves to fire the special counsel, that, by its very 
definition, is obstructing justice. This body and the other body on the 
other side of this building cannot allow that to happen.
  Here is the good news. In Watergate, ultimately, the American people 
didn't let it happen. There was such an outcry on a bipartisan basis 
that, within 48 hours, President Nixon had relented and appointed 
another special counsel, Leon Jaworski, who ended up being just as 
dogged, pursued the President all the way to the Supreme Court. Then 
the Supreme Court ruled, unanimously, that President Nixon had to hand 
over the tapes even though three of the eight Justices were Nixon 
appointees.
  President Nixon, actually, to his credit, complied with that Supreme 
Court order and released the tapes, including a few tapes that clearly 
proved he was guilty--the so-called smoking gun--and, within about a 
week or two, resigned in August of 1974.
  We can prevent that history from repeating itself if we act here in 
Congress to ensure there is a proper procedure in place to protect the 
integrity of this investigation. If that does not take place, there 
will be, I predict, an outcry of the American people you have not seen 
or heard since October 1973. This country and its institutions are a 
heck of lot more important than any political party, and it is about 
time all of us in this body act in such a way that shows we believe in 
those words.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Pennsylvania for 
the history lesson he just reminded us about. His words are ones that I 
don't think I can add anything to.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Huffman), 
my friend, if he has anything else to add.
  But I just want the Speaker to know and I want this Chamber to know 
that we are not going to go away. We are not going to allow things to 
be hidden. We are not going to allow things to be covered up. This has 
got to run its full course, just as my friend said.
  Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  We are being taken back to the lessons of Watergate tonight. The 
system worked in the 1970s. The checks and balances that our Founders 
put in place took effect. The public stepped up. The media stepped up. 
People of conscience in important positions within the government stood 
their ground and did the right thing.
  But I think it would be foolish for us not to take the threats of 
this moment in our history very, very seriously because there are some 
things at play this time around that weren't there in the 1970s. You 
did not have rightwing media organs out there actively trying to 
undermine public trust in our government. You did not have a complicit 
United States Congress that, instead of doing oversight, seems to be 
spending more of its effort running cover for the administration, 
trying to hide the facts, trying to block investigations, playing 
tribal politics at its worst, instead of fulfilling our institutional 
role in a critical constitutional test like this.
  I think it is a very, very serious moment in our history, and I am 
glad that the gentleman is convening discussions like this on the 
floor. We have to make sure that, in this investigation, the 
professional law enforcement personnel who do this for a living are 
allowed to do their job so that we can all learn the truth, whatever 
that may be.
  The question is: What are they afraid of? What are they hiding?
  This investigation is going to answer those questions, and we will 
all accept those answers, whatever they may be, but we have got to let 
the system work.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership tonight.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from 
engaging in personalities toward the President.

                          ____________________