[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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