[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 57 (Tuesday, April 10, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H3089-H3091]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    A RAID ON CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Comer). 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, a very tragic thing occurred for those of 
us

[[Page H3090]]

who care about constitutional rights yesterday. It is a continuation of 
the travesty that is coming out of the so-called special counsel Robert 
Mueller.
  I am not aware of anybody else in the House or Senate who was as 
absolutely concerned and livid as I was when I heard about the 
appointment of Robert Mueller as a special counsel because, from my 
questioning of the man and from my research from questioning the man 
during judiciary hearings, I believe he has done more damage to the FBI 
than all of the FBI Directors put together since J. Edgar Hoover.

                              {time}  2015

  He ran off thousands and thousands of years of experience from the 
FBI in his goofy 5-year up-or-out policy. It works in some areas, but 
not in law enforcement. That is the one area where law enforcement 
needs time to build credibility with local law enforcement.
  But anyway, these guys were--most of them that he ran off with 
thousands and thousands of years of experience during his first 10 
years, which is the requisite term set up for an FBI Director--those 
guys were trained to recognize radical Islamist characteristics as to 
what they were studying, what they believed, things they did, and that 
was a very helpful thing for the FBI to know.
  They began, I guess really got on track after the attempted--well, 
actually, the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. It was 
incredible, the amount of information the FBI had discerned about 
radical Islam during the prosecution of The Blind Sheikh, led by Andrew 
McCarthy, a brilliant lawyer. He was a fantastic prosecutor. I believe 
Mr. McCarthy said yesterday, in an interview, that he had three 
prosecutors helping him with what, at that time, was the most important 
and high-level prosecution of radical Islamist terrorism in our 
country.
  Since then, back in 2008, there was prosecution and conviction of 
principles involved in the Holy Land Foundation who were convicted for 
supporting terrorism. The FBI gathered that evidence as well.
  Yet, under Robert Mueller, who came in immediately before 9/11--you 
would have thought that this man would have enough wisdom after seeing 
the tragedy befall thousands of Americans--what does he do? He crawls 
in bed with CAIR, one of the named coconspirators in the Holy Land 
Foundation trial, along with others, and wants to placate them at all 
costs.
  They wanted his training materials that helped FBI agents understand 
what to look for in trying to find radical Islamist terrorists. They 
wanted those materials purged, cleaned out of anything that might help 
educate our FBI agents as to what to look for in radical Islamists, and 
FBI Director Robert Mueller obliged.
  And there was nothing that, I think, draws the distinction about how 
wrongheaded he was as FBI Director than his responses when I was asking 
him about the heads-up that they had gotten over the Tsarnaev older 
brother who was the main Boston bomber, killed and maimed so many 
people, totally preventable if Robert Mueller had allowed his agents to 
know what to look for.
  But in frustration, I said: You didn't even go out to the mosque to 
find out if they had been radicalized. You didn't go out there to find 
out about the Tsarnaevs at the mosque where they worshipped.
  He said they did go out to those mosques in their outreach program. 
It is where they go play patty-cake, sit around, maybe have a meal 
together on the floor, something like that. And that is great. That is 
fine to do. It is a good thing to do. But not when you are ignoring 
your law enforcement function that will prevent so many people in 
Boston from having their lives tragically ended or tragically altered 
and a living hell imposed upon them.
  But that was our Robert Mueller. If you go back to his days as the 
acting U.S. attorney in Boston when, even after it was clear to most 
everybody else that the FBI had helped frame Whitey Bulger, the mob 
boss' competitors, and put four in prison, it was clear to most 
everybody at that point the FBI framed these guys. They didn't do it. 
And yet Mueller was still riding the parole board demanding that they 
not let them out on parole, which ended up costing the people of Boston 
and Massachusetts over $100 million for Mueller's horrible aide.
  The taxpayers of the United States paid less of a price for the years 
of harassment that Robert Mueller, with his sidekick, James Comey, did 
zeroing in on Dr. Hatfill as the person who was spreading bioterror. I 
think they only paid about $6 million as a result of Mueller's 
intensity on pursuing the wrong guy, against whom there was not one 
shred of any evidence that could ever be used.
  The only thing they had to justify the many years of torture that the 
FBI put Dr. Hatfill through was when two dogs--which were later found 
to have been totally bogus in spotting anything--when they went by Dr. 
Hatfill, he rubbed their ears, and they seemed to have reacted 
favorably to having their ears rubbed. That was the only so-called 
evidence Robert Mueller ever had, and he was relentless.
  One thing you have got to give Robert Mueller credit for, he is 
consistent.
  He has destroyed so many lives. He has cost people their lives, but 
he never apologizes. He always hides behind the words that he is doing 
his job when he goes about destroying innocent people's lives.
  Alan Dershowitz, I disagreed with him so many times on policy 
matters, but he understands the Constitution. So does Jonathan Turley. 
As Dershowitz said, he didn't vote for Donald Trump, but he sees what 
is happening. And he points out in an article published today in The 
Hill, he says: ``There is much speculation as to the significance of 
the search of the offices and hotel room of President Trumps lawyer, 
Michael Cohen. To obtain a search warrant, prosecutors must demonstrate 
to a judge that they have probable cause to believe that the premises 
to be searched contain evidence of crime. They must also specify the 
area to be searched, the items to be seized and, in searches of 
computers, the word searches to be used.''
  The problem is there has to be probable cause established by sworn 
evidence to justify a warrant. And when anyone gets a warrant to go 
after a lawyer of someone that law enforcement wants to target the way 
Mueller and Rosenstein want to target Donald Trump, there has got to be 
probable cause put in the affidavits.
  These guys have gotten so used to sending out bogus national security 
letters like subpoenas. We found out that while Mueller was at the FBI, 
the IG says there may have been thousands of letters sent out with no 
basis in fact. This was under Mueller's direction at the FBI.
  He may not have known individual letters, but he let things get out 
of control because, in his mind, when he or any of the people working 
for him are going after people they think are bad guys, it doesn't 
matter what they do. They are in the right. And that is exactly how you 
can lose a constitutional republic that we have.
  Dershowitz says: ``I believe we would have been hearing more from 
civil libertarians--the American Civil Liberties Union, attorney groups 
and privacy advocates--if the raid had been on Hillary Clinton's 
lawyer. Many civil libertarians have remained silent about potential 
violations of President Trump's rights because they strongly disapprove 
of him and his policies. That is a serious mistake, because these 
violations establish precedents that lie around like loaded guns 
capable of being aimed at other targets.''
  ``What else does the raid tell us?''
  He says: ``It seems likely that special counsel Robert Mueller is 
bifurcating the investigation: He will keep control over matters 
relating to Russia, the campaign and any possible obstruction. But he 
has handed over to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New 
York any matters relating to Trump's personal and business affairs.''
  Well, I would submit to you, having been a prosecutor, defense 
attorney, felony judge, chief justice, that normally when somebody in 
law enforcement raids a lawyer's office--and in this case, office, 
home, and, since they were out of the home while it was being 
apparently remodeled, they raided the hotel room. When a raid on a 
lawyer's office--and especially personal lawyers--occurs, the guys 
raiding that are lawyers know, if they find something, even if it is a 
potential defendant telling his lawyer, ``I am guilty as sin''--we know 
that didn't happen in

[[Page H3091]]

this case because President Trump knows he is not guilty. But even if 
the target had said that to his lawyer, judges ultimately--even if it 
has to go to the Supreme Court, that is not going to be admissible. 
That is going to be protected by the attorney-client privilege.
  That is why every defendant who people suspect told his lawyer 
exactly what he did doesn't have that lawyer's office raided because, 
if this system of justice is going to work, there has to be two 
adversarial sides that do the very best they can as long as it is 
ethical and it is constitutional, following the law.
  So the attorney-client relationship means something. It is protected. 
Courts have made that clear. It doesn't matter what you have got that 
went between the attorney and client. Now, there were those who say: 
Well, but, you know, the law, if they are both engaged in fraud, then 
together--well, you still have got an attorney-client problem with 
admissibility.
  And that is why, normally, when someone in law enforcement raids a 
lawyer's office trying to target their client, they are looking for 
something that they can use against that lawyer, hopefully, maybe a 
bunch of violations, no matter what it is, they can use against that 
lawyer that doesn't have an arguably protected status of attorney-
client, just something to do with the lawyer, so that they can tell 
that lawyer: Here is what we have got now. We had what we believe was a 
lawful search, and while we were searching, we found all of this stuff 
that shows you have committed other crimes. So you are looking at going 
for life or 1,000 years, whatever it is they happen to use in that 
particular case. However, if you will simply testify that your client 
violated the law, you don't go to prison at all. You stay rich. 
Everything looks good for you. It is only your client who suffers.
  Well, in this case, it would be a constitutional republic going down 
the toilet. Mueller doesn't care. He has shown that over and over. He 
let Eric Holder get away with all kinds of things--some would say even 
murder in the Fast and Furious operation where one of our own agents 
died and potentially hundreds of others across the border died as a 
result of Eric Holder's Department's actions. But they covered up.

                              {time}  2030

  But they covered up. They obfuscated how they had violated the law 
that resulted in death.
  Eric Holder said recently in the press about how he knows Mueller and 
that Mueller is going to get Trump on something.
  There is a reason President Obama extended the horrendous 10 years 
that Mueller was FBI Director for 2 extra years. Any of my colleagues 
who really want to go back and see who Mueller is and what he did, I 
can show you. There is plenty to show the damage that this man has done 
to our country.
  He served valiantly in Vietnam. Great. Congratulations. He deserves 
awards. But that doesn't give him the right to ruin my country after he 
gets back, and that is what he has been doing. He is bringing us to the 
brink of a terrible constitutional crisis.
  I think he is also trying to provoke the President to firing Mueller 
because Mueller knows he doesn't have anything right now. This is a 
last-ditch effort to try to find something, try to get something, get 
somebody to testify against the President, even if it is a lie just as 
it was that put Sergeant Derrick Miller in prison for life whose parole 
hearing I came back and testified before last week. It is not that hard 
to get people to testify to a lie against somebody else when you are 
threatening to take everything they care about away.
  Rosenstein needs to be stopped. He was involved in the original 
Russia uranium investigation as a U.S. attorney. He should never have 
been allowed to appoint a special counsel. If Rosenstein had any 
decency and ethics about himself, he should have told Jeff Sessions: I 
am not the guy who can do this because I was involved in that Russia 
uranium investigation that enriched Hillary Clinton's foundation $145 
million; I can't do this.
  But since he is not ethical, he is not moral, and he doesn't mind 
keeping the limitations running while they are looking elsewhere rather 
than at him and Mueller who is also the FBI Director involved in that 
Russia investigation where Russia was trying to get our uranium, 
neither one of them should have been able to accept.
  Rosenstein has got to go, and his assistant who so often keeps the 
good people who supported President Trump in the dark, Tash Gauhar, she 
needs to go. She needs to go, and Rosenstein should follow right out 
the door. Those people are doing more damage over there. They have got 
to go, and then we can try to salvage this country and our 
constitutional Republic.
  By the way, tomorrow we are voting on a balanced budget amendment. I 
came up here wanting a balanced budget amendment, and Congress wanted 
it passed here, in the Senate, and across the Nation, but I saw very 
quickly how easy it was to raise revenue--taxes, fees, whatever you 
want to call it--and if we don't have a spending cap on a balanced 
budget amendment, it is a prescription for ratcheting up the level of 
spending taxing, spending taxing, because we just can't get people to 
vote for real cuts.
  We vote to slow the rate of spending sometimes, but real cuts, we 
couldn't even vote to do that. We had the horrendous thing called the 
sequestration that gutted our military which we have been trying to 
make up for. But every time, we add hundreds of billions of dollars 
just to do what is right by the military.
  Now, to cover for the horrendous omnibus that gave Chuck Schumer and 
Nancy Pelosi big smiles because of all that they were awarded during 
that horrendous vote is a huge mistake. I guess it is a cover-our-rear 
type of action, but it doesn't cover anything. It is like a hospital 
gown. You only think you are covered. This doesn't cover anything.
   Bob Goodlatte has a good balanced budget amendment that includes a 
spending cap, but that is not the one we are going to be allowed to 
vote on. We are not going to be allowed to bring an amendment to put a 
spending cap on this bill. That is why I voted against it last time.
  People say: Oh, but you don't have to worry. There is protection in 
this against things like that terrible omnibus.
  Oh? What is the protection?
  Oh, if you look--and I did--it says that it will require three-fifths 
of a vote from the House and Senate to set aside the requirements of 
the balanced budget amendment and to raise revenue. So to raise 
revenue, we have got to have a 60 percent vote; and in that horrendous 
omnibus, it passed with 60.5 percent of the vote.
  This terrible balanced budget amendment we are voting on is such a 
farce. It would not have even stopped us from hurting future 
generations in this last omnibus bill. It still would have passed even 
if the balanced budget amendment we are voting on tomorrow were a part 
of the Constitution already.
  Then you say it won't take effect for 5 years. Please. The Senate is 
not going to take it up. This is to try to make us look conservative 
after the omnibus bill. I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, I want a balanced 
budget amendment that means something, not a hospital gown bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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