[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 45 (Wednesday, March 14, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H1601-H1604]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is nice when we can talk across party 
lines about someone's excellent level of service. It has been an honor 
and privilege to serve with Marcy Kaptur my 13 years here in Congress.
  Unfortunately, I want to move from talking about someone with 
ethical, upright, and righteous scruples to talking about a former FBI 
Director.

                              {time}  2015

  I had concerns back when Robert Mueller was FBI Director. And some 
people have forgotten, but one of the things that he implemented as FBI 
Director that I have heard from FBI agents around the country caused a 
great deal of concern was what he

[[Page H1602]]

called a 5-year up-or-out policy, which, in essence--it is more 
complicated than this, but basically anyone who found themselves in a 
supervisory position within the FBI offices anywhere in the country, in 
the world, they were in a supervisory position for 5 years. At the end 
of that 5 years they had to either come to Washington and most likely 
ride a cubical, sit at a desk, or they could get out of the FBI.
  Most of the honorable, wonderful agents we had in the FBI across the 
country that so many people here in Washington with the FBI like to 
point to--why? Because they can point around the country to upright, 
moral, ethical, honest FBI agents so that you don't look at the top of 
the FBI as it has been here. Since I have been here in Congress both 
under the Bush administration followed by the Obama administration, 
there have been problems at the top of the FBI.
  The first time I had an opportunity to question Mr. Mueller, FBI 
Director Mueller, after getting to Congress in 2005, I was not aware of 
all of the problems that Director Mueller was creating within the FBI, 
and so I paid deference, in effect, to his service in the military, in 
Vietnam. I felt like he deserved that. But then, as I have said about 
other individuals, no matter how grueling someone's service may have 
been, Vietnam or elsewhere, it still doesn't give them a right to harm 
my country either through negligence or intentional misconduct.
  This 5-year up-or-out policy--people didn't realize what I was 
understanding and realizing from around the country--was doing massive 
damage to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And I kept wondering, 
``Why would he do this?''
  Now, I understand here in Washington it wouldn't be a bad policy. If 
you are in a supervisory position for 5 years in Washington, maybe you 
ought to be bounced out into the real United States, outside this 
surreal District of Columbia for government service, the paradise for 
bureaucrats. That would have been a far better policy for the FBI, for 
probably any bureaucracy here.
  For many of the departments and agencies in Washington, that wouldn't 
be a bad idea: Okay. If you are in a supervisory position in 
Washington, D.C., for 5 years, at the end of the 5 years you have to go 
out to the real world, go out to the United States itself, in one of 
the offices out there and deal with real people in real situations 
rather than this bubble in Washington, D.C., inside the beltway.
  That might have been a good policy, but that is not the one that 
Robert Mueller utilized.
  As I wrestled with that--why would someone implement a policy that 
forced some of the best people in law enforcement, happened to be in 
the FBI, in a supervisory position, force them out, why would an FBI 
Director do that?--it became clear. And I believe it was NPR that had 
an article, I believe it was, about this policy of Mueller's and how, I 
believe it was in part of 2007, Mueller's policy ran off around 140 or 
so supervisors in our FBI offices.
  From the FBI agents I knew who were in supervisory positions around 
the country, some had 20, 25, 30 years of experience. So when one 
thinks about 140 FBI agents with absolutely priceless, invaluable 
experience in law enforcement around the country, and Mueller runs them 
off not because they are unethical--all the cases of which I am aware, 
they were very ethical. They were good law enforcement officers.
  And for those who have been in law enforcement, whether Federal or 
State or local, I think most would agree with this comment that it 
takes probably 5 years before someone in law enforcement can gain the 
respect of other law enforcement officers, and especially if that 
officer, that agent is with the FBI; because there are too many local, 
State law enforcement who have dealt with FBI agents who came in, 
wanted to make a name for themselves, the local officers would do the 
research, they would do the real tough police work going out, knocking 
on doors, talking to witnesses, only to have their work, when they 
finally find the culprit, have, as I have heard local law enforcement 
talk about, the FBI swoop in, have a press conference, and take the 
credit for the local work.
  So that is a reputation, fair or unfair, that local law enforcement 
often are thinking about when they see a new FBI agent come into town. 
They are watching to see: Is this person going to be a selfless team 
player, strictly in the pursuit of law and order and the rule of law, 
or are they going to come in and use my work to make a name for 
themselves?
  Over 5 years or so, the FBI agents would gain respect. I have seen 
it, read about it, and I know that that has, too often, been the case. 
It takes a while to build that kind of respect among local law 
enforcement and also to build that kind of respect in the criminal 
community so that they know that is a no-nonsense person, that the FBI 
agent is not about ego; it is about following the law and making sure 
everybody else does.
  Yet here Robert Mueller comes in as FBI Director, and he is putting 
in place a policy that is getting rid of the best of the best that we 
have in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
  And some say, well, you may not realize, but he was a Bush appointee. 
I know he was. And he took office as Director of the FBI shortly before 
9/11, so it would be a bit unfair to blame Robert Mueller for failing 
to see what was coming on 9/11 because he had just simply not been in 
office that long.
  But Director Mueller implemented this policy. And as I struggled with 
why he would do this--he is running off thousands of years of 
experience. I mean, just in that, about, three-fourths of 1 year, 2007, 
where it was maybe, I believe, about 140 supervisory agents who Mueller 
ran off--not for unethical conduct, not for inefficiency or inability 
to be a good law enforcement officer, no. He ran them off because they, 
perhaps, had too much experience.

  Anybody who has concern about their own self-image and perhaps--I 
mean, I was wrestling with why somebody would run off thousands of 
years of experience within the FBI, and what I kept coming back to is 
perhaps there is some kind of insecurity that would cause a Director to 
be concerned that there would be people within the FBI that might not 
be complete yes-men, who might have more experience and, because they 
have been there 20, 30 years, be able to say: Director Mueller, I know 
this appears to be a good idea. That is what we thought 20 years ago or 
15 years ago. We tried that, and it failed. And let me explain to you 
why, and perhaps I can help suggest a better policy or a better 
approach to this criminal case or this type of case.
  When you start running off thousands of years of experience within 
the FBI, you are creating a great vacuum for experience within the FBI. 
So that could create situations, and did, where you could have people 
who were the special agent in charge in the supervisory position for 5 
years, and then, because of Mueller's policy and them not wanting to 
take their family to Washington, D.C., and sit in some cubical or sit 
at some desk, be a yes-man--they wanted to be law officers.
  And so, in many cases of which I had heard, FBI agents said: I am not 
going to sit in a cubical for Mueller. I am a law officer. I am about 
investigating and enforcing the law. So I am getting out. I am going to 
make more money where I am going. I would rather have stayed in the 
FBI. That is where my heart is. That is where I wanted to be. But 
Mueller is forcing me out. Yeah, it will be better for my family. I 
will have better hours. I will make more money. But I am not going to 
Washington. I want to be here in real America making a difference here.
  Those are the kind of people that Robert Mueller ran off. Maybe it 
was his insecurity. Maybe, some have said, it was a God complex. I 
don't know. But I know, in my heart, I believe Robert Mueller did more 
damage to the FBI than all of the FBI Directors put together since J. 
Edgar Hoover. And it is dangerous when one person runs off so many 
people.
  So when we came to find out--and again, this was during the Bush 
administration, the second term. Alberto Gonzalez was the Attorney 
General. And we had been assured that this very dangerous--dangerous 
because it was so easily manipulated and abused, but it was called the 
National Security Letters, NSLs. They were like a subpoena, except 
without the formalities.
  Under this law that created what are called the National Security 
Letters, someone in the Justice Department

[[Page H1603]]

could simply write a letter to an individual, to a company, to a bank, 
and say: I am writing this under Federal law regarding National 
Security Letters that allows me to just simply send a letter to you, 
sign the letter, and direct you to deliver to me all of the documents 
you have regarding this person or this company, whatever the case might 
be.
  They would also put into the letter what the law said, that if the 
recipient of the letter leaks or tells anybody about that letter, then 
they have violated the criminal law of the United States and they can 
be put in prison for leaking, for saying that they had received a 
letter from the FBI or Justice Department asking for documents.
  That is a powerful weapon for the U.S. Congress to hand over to the 
Justice Department, and especially if it is utilized by one lone FBI 
agent.
  Well, we have been told in Judiciary Committee repeatedly by FBI 
Director--we have been told informally, talking about the NSLs, 
National Security Letters, no, there are no known abuses of the 
National Security Letters. And then there was an inspector general 
investigation just to see whether there had been any abuse of these 
National Security Letters.
  The report came back from the inspector general that there were 
potentially thousands of abuses of the National Security Letters where 
an FBI agent just sent the letter and, under the Fourth Amendment under 
our Constitution, there was no probable cause that a crime was 
committed.

                              {time}  2030

  There was no evidence that this individual committed a crime. The FBI 
agent just wanted to find out more about this person; maybe do a 
fishing exercise to see if there might be something that the FBI agent 
might investigate.
  Perhaps the FBI agent, maybe he didn't like somebody in the 
community, so he wanted to see if there was anything out there, maybe 
in his banking records, or in his dealings with other companies. So he 
sends a national security letter, says give me all the documents you 
have on this person.
  In my mind, that is a violation of every American's constitutional 
rights. It was a gross deviation from propriety. It violated what FBI 
Director Mueller told us about how the NSLs were being used as an 
investigatory tool, and a lot of us got very upset. And I think, to a 
large degree, that is why the Attorney General ended up stepping down.
  In retrospect, it really should have been Robert Mueller who stepped 
down. They were his FBI agents. He failed to control; he failed to 
provide proper supervision. And I can't help but think perhaps a 
contributing factor, maybe the contributing factor to all of the 
widespread abuses of this power that Congress gave the Justice 
Department could well have been, probably was because FBI Director 
Robert Mueller decided to get rid of thousands of years of experience.
  These are the agents, the supervisors, the people with the most 
experience that could have told a younger, inexperienced FBI agent: You 
may be tempted to do this, but that would be an abuse. Don't even try 
it. Don't even go there.
  But because Mueller had stripped the FBI of thousands of years of 
experience, there were not the ``gray hairs'' or the ``no hairs'' that 
were out there to mentor younger FBI agents. Sure, there were some 
around, but not like there would have been had there been such 
insecurity or whatever it was that caused FBI Director Robert Mueller 
to do such terrible damage to the ranks of the FBI.
  This is a guy that we were told: He will be an absolutely perfect 
special counsel. Well, I knew as soon as I heard that he was being 
appointed that this was a mistake; that this is a guy that did such 
horrendous damage to the FBI's ranks, to their experience level.
  In fact, as I mentioned to FBI Director Mueller on one of the 
occasions where I was given the chance to ask questions during our 
Judiciary Committee hearing, in essence, I said: Director, do you 
realize that if you really applied your 5-year up-or-out policy to 
everyone in the FBI in a supervisory position, since you think it is 
such a good idea, you, Director Mueller, would have had to have left 
before September of 2006?
  But instead of being consistent in the way he treated himself as he 
treated such invaluable FBI agents when he ran them off for no reason 
other than possibly insecurity, not only did he serve 10 years as FBI 
Director, which was an insult to all of those he ran off after 5 years, 
but then President Obama said: Hey, I am going to extend you 2 years.
  An ethical, fair man, I believe, would have said: I am sorry, 
President Obama, but I was so vicious in the way I implemented this 5-
year up-or-out policy and ran so many good agents off, it would be 
inappropriate, not only for me to have served 10 years, but to add 2 
years on top of that, 12 years. But Robert Mueller did not do that. He 
was not fair across the board. He was not consistent.
  That brings me back to--here is a report, March 15 of 2012, by NPR, 
the headline is: ``Report: Prosecutors Hid Evidence in Ted Stevens 
Case.''
  Now, Ted Stevens, as I recall, was the longest serving Republican in 
the Senate back in 2008. Senator Stevens was running for re-election, 
and he was considered by many to be one of the most ethical, upright 
Senators out of the 100 who were in the U.S. Senate. Yet Mueller's FBI 
decided, apparently, to take out this patriotic, honest, honorable U.S. 
Senator by what I consider to be abuse of the justice system.
  This article from NPR says, it starts with this:
  ``A blistering report released Thursday found that the government 
team concealed documents that would have helped the late Stevens, a 
longtime Republican Senator from Alaska, defend himself against false-
statements charges in 2008. Stevens lost his Senate seat as the scandal 
played out, and he died in a plane crash 2 years later.
  ``The 500-page report by investigator Henry F. Schuelke III shook the 
legal community, as law professors described it as a milestone in the 
history of prosecutorial misconduct.
  ``Investigators weren't talking Thursday. But Brendan Sullivan, who 
defended the Senator, had plenty to say. `The extent of the corruption 
is shocking,' Sullivan says. `It's the worst misconduct we've seen in a 
generation by prosecutors at the Department of Justice.''
  But it is important to note, Mr. Speaker, that this was an FBI case, 
and it is difficult to believe that the Director of the FBI would have 
not been personally monitoring, if not personally dictating 
instructions in such a politically sensitive case as a long-term, 
sitting U.S. Senator; that if you are going to use and manipulate the 
Department of Justice to take out a U.S. Senator, you should be 
extraordinarily sure that you have a legitimate case.
  But I don't have the information that would indicate what briefings 
FBI Director Mueller had over the investigation, but I would humbly 
submit, Mr. Speaker, either Director Mueller got regular briefings on 
the investigation and development of the case against Senator Ted 
Stevens, or he was incompetent in not even bothering to keep abreast of 
developments in a case that would be so politically sensitive.
  But this article says: ``The report''--by the Inspector General--``is 
based on a review of 128,000 documents and interviews with prosecutors 
and FBI agents on the hot seat.''
  But sadly, the FBI, under Mueller, pushed this case, this 
investigation, to a head so that it was capable of being tried before 
the 2008 election in November and, in fact, Stevens was convicted just 
days before the election, and then I believe he only lost the race for 
Senate by a couple of thousand votes or so.

  But the report says that prosecutors should have shared information 
that might have obliterated the witness' credibility against Stevens, 
and they had evidence that their key witness had told the same story 55 
different times; but that the FBI got evidence that their key witness 
had had a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl and then asked 
the girl to lie about it under oath. And so it is easy to see how he 
would have been manipulated.
  But after telling the story that would have acquitted Ted Stevens, as 
he should have been acquitted we now know from all the evidence, 
actually, they were able to push the witness into changing his story 
immediately before trial in order to testify against Stevens.

[[Page H1604]]

  Like I said, we do not know exactly what Mueller knew, didn't know, 
but he surely had to know when the FBI agent who was assisting his 
supervisor in the case, when he did an affidavit, signed it under 
penalty of perjury, indicating the improprieties of the agent in charge 
of the case, which is named Kepner, Director Mueller had to have known 
that one of his agents said: I cannot live with this prosecutorial 
misconduct. This is figuratively what he said.
  The agent in charge, the FBI agent in charge, hid evidence that would 
have proved what I believe, beyond a reasonable doubt, Ted Stevens was 
not guilty. Not just raised a reasonable doubt; would have proved he 
was not guilty.
  As the Alaska Dispatch News asked in their headline from their 
article in September 2016--actually, June 6, 2012, then updated 
September 2016, their headline asked: ``Why is lead FBI agent in 
botched Ted Stevens case still employed?''
  So we do know, under Mueller's FBI, that he did such horrific damage, 
running off thousands of years of experience, years later, after one 
FBI agent had such pangs of conscience that an innocent man, Ted 
Stevens, was convicted when he was 100 percent not guilty, the agent 
that was the whistleblower had been run off from the FBI. That had to 
have been with Mueller's consent. He was removed from every criminal 
case, which means you need to get out because you are not going to have 
a job.
  Yet the agent, Kepner, who was in charge of the investigation, 
manufactured evidence, hid evidence, according to these reports, and 
she was still working in the criminal division of the FBI.
  So when anybody talks to me about how fair and ethical and upright 
Robert Mueller is, I don't buy it. I have seen the damage he did to the 
FBI. I have seen the damage he created by not allowing his FBI agents 
to be trained to recognize radical Islamists.
  Sure, after the FBI got notice under Mueller that Tsarnaev, the 
Boston bomber, had been radicalized and he was a threat to lives and 
U.S. security, oh, yeah; they sent out an FBI agent to talk to him. And 
apparently he said: Oh, no, I am not a terrorist.
  And then they went the extra step to talk to his mother who said: Oh, 
no, he is a good boy. He is not a terrorist.
  But because of Robert Mueller placating the Council on American-
Islamic Relations that was a named party co-conspirator supporting 
terrorism, he placated CAIR, and he had the training materials for our 
FBI agents purged so they didn't know what to look for. That is the 
reason the Boston bombers were on the loose. He needs to resign and go 
home.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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