[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 40 (Wednesday, March 7, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H1472-H1475]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             WE MUST PROTECT THE SOVEREIGNTY OF OUR NATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. 
Perlmutter) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Chair for the opportunity to 
address the House and people across the country.
  I am joined today by two of my friends, Jared Huffman, Congressman 
from northern California; and Dan Kildee, Congressman from Flint, 
Michigan.
  We are here on another very important topic. We just heard our 
friend, Jamie Raskin from Maryland, talking about gun violence and the 
need to try to limit that and bring it under control, but today we have 
another very important topic, a very troubling topic, and it has to do 
with the sovereignty of our Nation.

                              {time}  1730

  It has to do with our freedom, and it is really as pretty simple as 
that.
  This country separated from England so that we could be a sovereign 
nation, so that we could rule ourselves, and right now that is a real 
big question as to whether or not that is happening, because it is 
clear that the Russians interfered with our elections last year.
  The investigation into that interference now has resulted in at least 
13 indictments of Russians, coupled with indictments of 5 or 6 people, 
5 of whom have pled guilty to some crime or another based upon the 
investigation conducted by Robert Mueller. There seems to be something 
going on between the Trump administration and Russia, and we want to 
know what it is. The investigation is directed at that.
  Mr. Speaker, it starts with something that we asked for last year. We 
asked to see the President's tax returns. We asked for it on a number 
of occasions. But unlike anybody else who has run for President or who 
has been President, our President has refused to turn over his tax 
returns.
  So the question we ask is: Why? What is in there that would stop him 
from producing his tax returns? Is it a relationship that shows some 
kind of financial connection to Russia or the like? What is in there? 
Is he hiding something? What is it?
  As time has gone on, starting with that question, we have some more 
questions. There has been this effort, beginning last summer, to 
question the integrity of the FBI and to question Mr. Mueller and this 
investigation to the point there was word that Mr. Mueller was going to 
be fired from his job last summer, and that question seems to percolate 
to the surface every so often.
  And the question is: Why? What are they afraid of that he might find? 
What connections are they worried about that Mr. Mueller may uncover 
that really are hurting our Nation? So what is it that they are hiding? 
What are they afraid of?
  These are very simple questions that need to be answered. This is 
important because this goes back to the heart of why our Nation was 
founded and the heart of all of us as Americans. It is our sovereignty, 
and it is our freedom. And if, in fact, we are being directed, our 
government is being directed by a foreign entity, by Vladimir Putin or 
Russia, generally, then this country has been undermined to a degree 
none of us could have ever seen coming.
  Now, hopefully, that is not the case, but let's get this 
investigation going.

[[Page H1473]]

Let's keep it going. Let's not impugn the integrity of our detectives, 
the FBI, or the prosecutors who are trying to just find out what the 
truth is. And any kinds of actions to really undermine that, whether it 
is from here in the Congress or from the executive branch, it is like: 
What are you afraid of? What are you hiding?
  So just to kind of connect a couple more dots, something that I am 
concerned about, and I know my friends are, too, is you go back to our 
sovereignty, our freedom--and this Congress, Mr. Speaker--particularly 
concerned about the interference by the Russians in our elections. 
There is not any question that there has been some interference.
  We know that the Russians are flexing their muscle around the world. 
In fact, Putin, the other day, said: I have got nuclear weapons you 
can't detect.
  So they are flexing their muscles.
  We as a Congress--419-3 in this House, and 98-2 in the Senate, 
virtually unanimously--said: We want you to be imposing sanctions 
against this Russian interference, against some things that they have 
been doing around the world.
  Not one sanction has been added by the Trump administration. Why not?
  Even more perplexing, the State Department has been appropriated, Mr. 
Speaker, $120 million to prevent further espionage and interference by 
the Russians in our elections. Do you know how much money has been 
spent by them, by the State Department under this White House, to stop 
this interference, to stop this espionage? Not one dollar.
  These departments generally say we need more money to do X, Y, or Z. 
Here, something so important as to the integrity of our elections, not 
$1 spent by the State Department, despite the fact that this Congress 
appropriated $120 million. Why not?
  So a lot of questions are out there. I think it is time, and I think 
my friends will make some comments and statements similar to mine: What 
are you afraid of? What are you hiding? Let the detectives in the FBI, 
let the prosecutors do their job.
  Why aren't sanctions being imposed? And why aren't we using the money 
we have appropriated to spend against this espionage and interference? 
Why aren't you spending it?
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Huffman) 
to see if he has any answers or if he only has questions about what is 
going on.
  Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Colorado 
because I have all of the same questions and all of the same concerns, 
and so it is very appropriate that we are coming together to ask what 
are they afraid of, what are they hiding, because there are a lot of 
red flags.
  Last night, Mr. Perlmutter, I was at the Washington Press Club event, 
which is a fun event to celebrate the free press. The best joke of the 
night--and there is a lot of humorous material. The best joke of the 
night was when someone said, for a guy that claims he doesn't drink, 
President Trump sure loves a lot of White Russians. That brought the 
house down.
  Unfortunately, though, it is not really funny because, when you have 
got a President who won't impose the sanctions that we authorize him to 
impose, who won't direct his State Department to spend the funds to 
protect our election system that we authorize and appropriate, when you 
have all of these other problems, it is not clear that he is able to do 
his job without fear or favor, and that is a big problem for our 
democracy and for the interests of our country.
  If Congress were doing its job right now, we would be asking the hard 
questions to bring forward the transparency that the people need, to 
give this country the assurance that their government officials, 
including their President, can perform their job without fear or favor. 
But, unfortunately, this body is not doing a very good job of asking 
those hard questions, so that is, in part, why we are here trying to 
raise some of these issues.
  One of the very important questions that I think we have to ask 
involves the ties between the NRA, yes, the National Rifle Association, 
and this Trump Russia scandal. Specifically, we need to know whether 
Russia worked through the NRA to illegally move funds in support of the 
Trump campaign.
  Here is what we do know. We know that McClatchy and others have 
reported that the FBI is actually investigating whether Aleksandr 
Torshin, deputy governor of Russia's central bank and NRA's main 
liaison in Russia, used the NRA to funnel millions of dollars to 
support Donald Trump's candidacy in 2016.
  We know that in 2016 Donald Trump, Jr., had dinner with Torshin, who 
is a close ally of Vladimir Putin--also someone accused of money 
laundering--and they had that dinner at the NRA convention.
  We know that the NRA spent tens of millions of dollars on the 2016 
elections, including $30 million to support Donald Trump. That is three 
times what the NRA spent to support Mitt Romney when he was the 
Republican nominee just 4 years prior.
  So we need to think about and ask this question: Where did all that 
money come from? We have asked the NRA. The NRA won't tell us.
  Now, we know that in testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, 
there are indications that Russians made a very concerted effort to 
work through the NRA, and that is why Senator Ron Wyden has asked the 
Treasury Department--again, because the NRA won't answer these 
questions, but he has asked the Treasury Department for more 
information about suspicious Russian funding of the NRA.
  So just to recap a few of these things that we need to be asking 
about: We know how close President Trump is to the NRA. We know how 
close the Russian banker Alex Torshin is to the NRA. We know how close 
the NRA is becoming, closer and closer, to Russia.
  In fact, I have a piece here that explains how, in 2015, a series of 
top NRA officials--including one of their top donors, past presidents, 
a delegation that included Donald Trump's high-profile surrogate, 
Sheriff David Clarke--all went on a so-called fact-finding mission 
involving gun rights in Russia.
  Now, there aren't a lot of gun rights in Russia. Russia has very 
restrictive gun laws, and there is no serious effort in the country of 
Russia to change that. But, nevertheless, apparently this group felt 
they needed to go to Russia for this fact-finding trip to cozy up with 
some of these same folks that we are talking about. So that is one of 
the things we know and we need to ask questions about.
  We know that the NRA spent this huge cache of money on the 2016 
campaign to support Donald Trump, and we know that we have more 
questions that need to be answered. So we need to follow this money, 
and we need to find out, again, as you have asked here on the floor: 
What are they hiding? What are they afraid of?
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan 
(Mr. Kildee), and he will make some comments about how he perceives all 
of this, and then I am going to open it up to a little conversation 
among the three of us.
  Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Speaker, like my friend Mr. Perlmutter and my friend 
Mr. Huffman and others, we didn't come to the Congress with the idea 
that we were going to spend our time talking about Russian collusion 
with a campaign to try to undermine our electoral system. We came here 
to solve problems that Americans want us to take on, to deal with the 
big problems that we face, whether it is infrastructure or education or 
the environment or all the things that people actually worry about, 
financial security for families.
  But we do have an obligation to uphold the oath that we took. We 
swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States. So while it is 
not my preference, and I know from my friends it is not our preference 
to have to deal with this question, we can't avoid it. We can't just 
look the other way, particularly when it is very clear that not just 
this President, but, sadly, some around him; and I think we have to 
acknowledge some of our Republican colleagues seem willing to try to 
interfere with or obfuscate what is a really important investigation.
  Let's remind ourselves, Mr. Mueller, who is leading this 
investigation, the special counsel, was appointed by the Republican 
Attorney General, appointed by the President of the United States, both 
Republicans. Bob Mueller

[[Page H1474]]

was appointed head of the FBI by a Republican President.
  This is not a partisan question, certainly not a partisan witch hunt. 
This is a question as to whether or not we are going to let this 
investigation go to completion.
  The President keeps saying no collusion. The truth of the matter is, 
so far, there has been no conclusion. There is no conclusion to be 
drawn yet from this investigation, other than 17 individuals have been 
indicted. Several have pled guilty to very serious crimes, some people 
who have been very close to the President of the United States, the 
closest you can be, literally engaged in his campaign, side by side 
with him every day.
  So it begs the question and, really, the most important question: 
What are they afraid of? What do they have to worry about?
  If there is nothing to find, if there is no collusion, then let's let 
the process complete itself. Let's let the process come to conclusion 
and accept the result.
  So this is really a fundamental question to our democracy: Are we 
going to adhere to the rule of law, or are we going to allow a 
President to rule by fiat and, essentially, dismiss or diminish or 
discredit anyone who raises any question about his conduct coming into 
or performing his duties?

                              {time}  1745

  That is not the America that we know, and that is not a standard that 
we ought to allow: 17 people indicted, people at the top of his 
campaign, including a whole group of Russians who clearly were engaged 
in trying to affect our election.
  You know, don't you remember the good ol' days? I think about some of 
our friends on the other side, when the biggest scandal that they could 
come up with was that the President of the United States wore a tan 
suit. The outrage. Where is the outrage now when a special counsel has 
been appointed and, at every moment, there is an attempt to try to 
discredit the work that this individual is doing?
  So I ask my Republican colleagues to stand up, adhere to the oath 
that they swore, support this process, allow for your own good and the 
good of the country, allow the investigation to be completed without 
interference. Push back when the President tries to discredit this 
process. There is just too much at stake. What are they afraid of? What 
are they worried about?
  This guy is a professional. When he was appointed, remember the 
chorus of praise left, right, and center for Bob Mueller and the 
integrity with which he has conducted himself in public life. He didn't 
change. He is still doing that. Let's let him do his work.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Michigan for his 
comments. And he was talking about the 17 indictments. We have a poster 
here. Starting over on the far side of this poster to my right is Paul 
Manafort, the campaign chairman. Then we have 13 Russians who have been 
indicted, plus three Russian companies that interfered with our 
elections, and we will see how these indictments and the cases unfold, 
but Bob Mueller and the team have said those people should be indicted.
  This side, we have guilty pleas by Michael Flynn, National Security 
Advisor; Rick Gates, assistant campaign manager; George Papadopoulos, 
campaign adviser; Richard Pinedo, apparently he did some kind of--stole 
identity from somebody; and a lawyer, Alex van der Zwaan, from--he is a 
foreign lawyer who worked for a firm here in the United States. We have 
five guilty pleas. We have 14, 15, 16 indictments. There is a lot of 
smoke. Where there is smoke, there is fire.
  Mr. Kildee talked about sort of the bread-and-butter issues: Do I 
have a good job? Am I ready as the economy changes and innovation kicks 
in; am I going to be ready for the next job? You know, do we have the 
proper infrastructure for this country so that for the next 50 years we 
can compete with anybody at any time?
  I mean, those are the conversations we really want to have. But when 
you get down to it, at the very heart of why we are America, why we are 
the United States of America, it is about our freedom. It is about the 
sovereignty of this Nation to conduct its own affairs without 
interference by another entity: Russia, England, Japan, North Korea, it 
doesn't matter. We want to take care of ourselves and not be told what 
to do by others.
  That interference from outside of this country, despite these big 
questions we have as to our infrastructure, our future of our 
workplace, our education, when it comes to freedom, you don't step 
away. You don't ignore attacks on our freedom.
  And we are not going to let that happen. I am just very pleased that 
these two men joining me today, and Democrats, really, throughout this 
Chamber, and I know some Republicans, are very concerned about what is 
unfolding. And all of us are asking: What is the problem here? What are 
you hiding? What are you afraid of? Why won't you let the detectives do 
their work?
  Sam Nunberg, he was going to--last night, he was on all the TV 
stations: I am not going to honor that subpoena. What is he afraid of?
  We have been joined by our friend Jamie Raskin, but, first, let me 
give him a second to catch his breath.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from northern California (Mr. 
Huffman) for a comment or two, and then I will yield to Mr. Raskin.
  Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, Congressman Perlmutter is asking all the 
right questions, and it seems to me, in the short time we have been on 
the floor here, in some ways, we are asking harder questions than what 
we are seeing from the committees that should be conducting oversight 
and investigations if Congress were functioning and taking this issue 
as seriously as it should.
  Those questions would include very disturbing reporting, just in the 
last few days in The New Yorker, that suggests that the Steele dossier 
may just be the tip of the iceberg; that, in fact, you have senior 
Russian officials who claim that they had something of a veto power 
over our choice for Secretary of State.
  We should be looking into that right now in a very intense way, and 
the American people should know that we take those matters very 
seriously. But so much of this simply flies by these days with the 
constantly moving media cycle, and I think more and more people are 
beginning to wonder if Congress is interested in even asking hard 
questions or if we just have to sit back and either wait for Special 
Counsel Mueller to catch these folks in crimes or wait for the media. 
Thank God for the free press, but the media is unearthing far more 
information than the oversight actions of this Congress, and that is 
disappointing.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, you know, we have got to say to the 
Speaker and to the other Republicans in this Chamber, you know, they 
need to do their job on this thing. This isn't just something that is 
peanuts. This goes to the heart of what America is all about: our 
freedom and our sovereignty.
  Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin).
  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Perlmutter very much for 
yielding for just a moment. I was very moved by his comments. We know 
that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and I want to salute 
him for his vigilance and his zealousness in defending American freedom 
and our democratic process against foreign and potentially domestic 
enemies, those who would subvert and undermine our political processes.
  It seems to me that, in Congress, we have two jobs that we need to do 
now. One is to defend the Mueller investigation and the Department of 
Justice against unfair attacks and attempts to subvert and undermine 
investigation; and two, and perhaps more importantly now, is we have 
got to work to fortify our election systems against a repeat in 2018.

  The U.S. intelligence agencies, they told us, in January of 2017, 
that there had been a campaign of cyber espionage and cyber sabotage 
and cyber propaganda against the American elections. They have told us 
that the Russians are very likely to be doing the same thing with 
respect to the 2018 election. And, by the way, it is not just the 
Russians now. They may have just set the template for other bad actors 
who want to stick their nose into American elections, too.
  You know, James Q. Wilson wrote this book called, ``Broken Windows,''

[[Page H1475]]

where he said if somebody throws a rock into a window and you have got 
a broken window and nobody does anything about it, it is an invitation 
for more people to come along and break some more windows. Well, right 
now, the U.S. Government has done nothing.
  As you have said, we have not spent the money in the State Department 
to try to defend ourselves against the foreign subversion of our 
elections and cyber espionage and sabotage. And when we had the 
Attorney General come to the Judiciary Committee, we asked him what had 
he engaged in to try to defend our elections across the country against 
another attack, and he said basically nothing. And followup efforts by 
members of the committee to get the Attorney General to meet with us 
have resulted in nothing.
  So, this week, we have asked for $14 million from the appropriators 
to go to the Election Assistance Commission, which is the only Federal 
body we have got that is charged with trying to help State election 
administrators defend themselves against cyber attack. That $14 million 
is urgent and necessary, and it is obviously a very small sum of money, 
given the amount of money we spend on defense in America, but this is 
defense of our elections.
  We are also asking for $400 million to help update outmoded and weak 
election technology in the States today. That is another badly needed 
infusion of cash to the States so we can fortify our elections. We know 
that at least 22 States suffered attempted electronic probes by foreign 
actors in 2016, and they are coming back in 2018, and everybody wants 
to know what are we doing about it, and we have no coordinated plan. At 
the very least, we should get this money to the Election Assistance 
Commission so we can help the States harden themselves.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Maryland for 
participating with us. We are going to be doing this because we want 
people asking this question all across the country.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield now to my friend from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) to 
let him close us out.
  Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Perlmutter for yielding, and I 
want to just underscore a point he made in his opening remarks.
  This is fundamentally about a principle that we hold pretty dear in 
this country, and, that is, our freedom. Our freedom is rooted in the 
assumption that our democratic systems actually work, that the process 
of democracy has integrity, and that the choices that people make are 
not the subject of interference by some foreign power.
  We know that Russia interfered in our elections. There are only two 
people I can think of who have denied that repeatedly. One of them is 
President Trump; the other one is Vladimir Putin. Everyone else, 
including our Republican colleagues and our intelligence community, 
acknowledges that the Russians interfered with our elections.
  Five people have acknowledged that they committed crimes as a result 
of the investigations taking place; 12 other--15 others indicted. Why 
on Earth would we not allow the investigation that is taking place 
right now to determine the extent of that interference in order to 
prevent it from ever happening again? Why would we not insist that we 
protect that principle of democracy and that foundational principle of 
freedom by letting this process complete? What are they afraid of? That 
is the question: What are they afraid of?
  That is why I am glad Mr. Perlmutter initiated this effort, and I 
will continue to stand with him as he does it.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, I thank Mr. 
Huffman, and I thank Mr. Raskin for their comments.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________