[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.
____________________