[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 92 (Tuesday, June 5, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H4768-H4770]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Higgins of Louisiana). 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, so we hear today from the Mueller 
investigation, as he was appointed by a man named Rosenstein that we 
now know was completely disqualified from being able to select or name 
a special counsel for a number of reasons. For one thing, he would be a 
witness, because one of the issues was did President Trump obstruct 
justice when he fired Comey. And the President relied totally, or 
largely, on the memo that was prepared by Deputy Attorney General 
Rosenstein. He would be a material witness.
  You can't be involved in an investigation if you are a material 
witness.
  Rosenstein, as it would happen, also had worked with a guy named 
Mueller and Weissman when they were working on an investigation into 
Russia's illegal efforts to get U.S. uranium. And, in fact, they kind 
of had to jointly and severally put the quash on information about that 
investigation, because if they didn't, then the Committee on Foreign 
Investment in the U.S., CFIUS, including Hillary Clinton, would not 
have been able to vote to allow the sale of uranium that would end up 
in Russia's hands. And if that sale hadn't gone through, there is no 
question all those stockholders that benefited would not have been so 
anxious to put $145 million in the Clinton Foundation and probably 
Russia wouldn't have been as quick to pay $500,000 for a speech from 
former President Clinton.

                              {time}  2015

  But there are all kinds of implications there. Of course, we know 
from previous special counsels from the Department of Justice, all of 
them, until Rosenstein and Mueller, made a thorough effort to select 
lawyers and investigating officers who appeared to have no political 
bias going in.
  What did Mueller do? He specifically went for the people that loved 
Hillary Clinton and hated Donald Trump, went out of his way to do that.
  Some have complained, well, Weissmann has a history of putting 
innocent people out of work, destroying lives, not only making them 
unemployed, but making them unemployable and, as the Supreme Court has 
said, all for things that were not even crimes. That doesn't seem to 
deter him, just as it has never deterred Robert Mueller from destroying 
people's lives, people of integrity, honest, upstanding people, whether 
it was Ted Stevens--heck, Colin Powell, one of the previous Cabinet 
members, decorated military man, had nothing but just accolades to say 
about Ted Stevens and what an honorable, honest, upright man he was.
  And the Mueller FBI framed him. They hid information that not only 
would have raised a reasonable doubt that showed unequivocally he was 
not guilty of having a gift of hundreds of thousands of dollars of 
addition to his cabin because not only did he pay for it, he paid about 
20 percent more than the value because, as he had said before: I have 
to go above and beyond just to keep people at bay who might want to 
come after me. I have got to keep my nose so clean.
  Yet I guess it could be argued, well, maybe Mueller didn't know that 
the FBI framed Ted Stevens and convicted him immediately before his 
election. Well, there is no question he would have known about it as 
the FBI agent who was singled out by another FBI agent as having 
engaged in the malicious prosecution, the hiding of evidence, the 
failure to produce evidence that they had that was exculpatory.
  Well, we know that the FBI agent that signed the whistleblowing 
affidavit, he was driven out of the FBI; and the one that there is 
evidence under oath that she framed Ted Stevens, she continued to work 
in the Mueller FBI, which is kind of like Mueller when he was in 
Boston.
  As far as I know, there is no direct evidence that Mueller knew that 
his FBI agents in Boston were framing Whitey Bulger's competition, but 
he certainly had to have known that those four people were innocent 
when he kept putting pressure on the parole board not to release those 
innocent people, which I guess is another reason it cost taxpayers $100 
million to the two individuals and then the two families of the two 
people who died in prison.
  Or Curt Weldon, that was the Mueller FBI. I kept wondering my 
freshman term, Curt would come to this microphone right here--and maybe 
that should be a warning to me: if you make Mueller mad, he destroys 
your life. But somebody's got to stand up to a mean-spirited bully like 
Robert Mueller. If everybody is afraid of a guy like that, then, I 
mean, we are Third World governments.
  But I kept thinking, you know, Curt Weldon keeps saying the FBI had 
information before 9/11, they could have done things to stop it, and he 
kept raising serious questions. I thought Mueller has surely got to 
answer these. And, yes, I know he had only come to the FBI right before 
9/11, so chances are he was not implicated because of his recent 
arrival as FBI Director before 9/11. But surely he has got to respond 
somehow. These are serious allegations Curt Weldon was making.
  Well, he ultimately did respond. The FBI did a raid on Curt Weldon's 
adult daughter's lawyer office before, I think it was around 6 a.m., 
and, amazingly, the only people who knew were FBI; and yet all of the 
media was there to witness the raid, on television, newsprint, radio. 
They all showed up.
  And they are not the only ones to whom it was leaked, because 
protestors showed up immediately at Curt Weldon's office accusing him 
of crimes, caught red-handed, stuff like that. That was 2 weeks before 
his election that he narrowly lost.
  Apparently, that is how Mueller responds.
  You know, with all the complaints about bullies these days, you would 
think that adults in Congress would say: Do you know what? We don't 
want adult bullies either. We don't want to

[[Page H4769]]

give adults the power, unlimited, unbridled power, to just go after 
anybody they want any time they want.
  Manafort doesn't seem like somebody I'd ever want to hang out with, 
but, for heaven's sake, to knock down his door in the wee hours, drag 
him out of bed at gunpoint, when you just want to do a search--in fact, 
it would have been better, from a law enforcement standpoint, if they 
had done the raid when no one was home. But it wasn't about finding 
something; it was about raw, sheer intimidation.
  So what do we hear in the way of raw, sheer intimidation from the 
Mueller cartel? Well, now we are told that a message that Manafort sent 
to a partner, somebody he did business with, that that was a crime. It 
is all about threatening people. It is all about bullying and scaring 
people.
  And what authority is it that Mueller has? Well, that's interesting, 
because he doesn't want to produce that document. Congress has asked 
for it. We have absolute authority, and if we were doing our job, we 
would stop the Mueller investigation, pass an immediate law that not 
one penny could be spent without committing a crime on any 
investigation Mueller is undertaking until he shows us what authority 
he has.
  You can't just give somebody unbridled authority, and then he doesn't 
even have to report to anybody unless it is the person who was 
disqualified that appointed him to be special counsel when he, himself, 
should have been disqualified. If he had had any decency or ethics 
about him he would have said: ``Do you know what? This is going to 
involve Russia. I was involved in the Russia investigation. I was FBI 
Director and, actually, there are some touchy issues there I was 
involved in, and I could be a witness because, you know, actually, the 
truth is we closed up information so that the sale could g through that 
Russia would get our uranium, and then Hillary Clinton and the Clinton 
Foundation get $145 million. So, yeah, I was really involved in that.''

  The last people who ought to be involved in an investigation now as 
special counsel about Russia would be Robert Mueller, Weissmann, and 
Rosenstein, but there they are, back together, investigating, while the 
statute of limitations is running out on any potential crime they may 
have committed that should be investigated by a second special counsel.
  I have been saying this for a year now: We need a second special 
counsel. This is serious stuff, and people across the country, even 
some Democratic friends of mine, are realizing: Wait a minute. Trump's 
not getting the same treatment that Hillary Clinton got. It is pretty 
clear there are two different standards of justice.
  Some people who care about justice--and, yeah, they are politically 
involved, but they care about righteousness and justice--don't want to 
see us go into being a Third World banana republic, which it appears to 
much of the world we have moved into becoming.
  This latest allegation Mueller throws out about tampering with a 
witness, well, you know, under section 1512: If you kill or attempt to 
kill somebody, it might be a witness--nope, that doesn't apply.
  Or if you use physical force or threat of physical force--no, that 
didn't apply.
  Cause or induce a person to withhold testimony--no, didn't do any of 
that.
  Didn't hinder, delay, prevent communication--nope.
  Let's see. Well, did he knowingly use intimidation, threats, or 
corruptly persuade? No. No, that really didn't apply.
  All right. How about whoever corruptly alters, destroys, mutilates? 
No, he didn't do any of that.
  So how about obstructs or influences or impedes any official 
proceeding? No, really didn't do that, didn't attempt to do so.
  Or intentionally harasses another person, thereby hinders, delays, 
prevents, or dissuades anyone from attending or testifying--nope, that 
didn't happen.
  Reporting to law enforcement--nope, that didn't happen. He didn't 
even turn the message over to the FBI.
  Arresting or seeking to arrest--nope.
  Now, Mueller may be involved in these, but it doesn't sound like 
Manafort is.
  Causing a criminal prosecution--no, none of those apply. Oh, well, 
maybe. Oh, that is an affirmative defense.
  You know, there is something Mueller's good at: scare people, throw 
out highbrow allegations just trying to intimidate.
  It is like the Federal judge said, Mueller's folks don't care, and 
Mueller doesn't care about Manafort, anything that happened 20 years 
ago. We have seen it throughout Mueller's history. He finds somebody, 
whether it is Steven Hatfill, Ted Stevens, Curt Weldon, you know, 
people who got put in jail for crimes Whitey Bulger was involved in, 
though he was their FBI informant. I mean, he finds people he dislikes, 
and then he goes about trying to find a crime that he can pin on them.
  And even if they are not really guilty, he is fine with keeping 
people in prison for crimes they didn't commit if he thinks they are 
not good people, he doesn't like them. That is how he could tell 
President Bush that he was 100 percent certain Dr. Steven Hatfill was 
the guy that was the anthrax killer. He didn't like him. No evidence--
none, zero--yet they destroyed the guy's life.
  So it cost taxpayers--Mueller's actions, other people's actions in 
Boston--$100 million for the way he destroyed Steven Hatfill's life, 
another $6 million or so payout. You know, he leaves a terrible wake of 
devastation, lives wrecked, and he doesn't care.
  The one thing he is consistent in saying is: I don't owe anybody an 
apology for anything I have done.
  Yeah, it is the way bullies are.
  Well, we have got another problem here in the House. We had an IT 
worker named Imran Awan, who worked for between 40 and 50 of my 
Democratic colleagues. Now, he sent, apparently, over $100,000 back to 
Pakistan where he still has family, and he got that from a loan here in 
the U.S., and he is charged with making a false statement to get the 
loan.
  Yet that is a fraction of what we find from just the reporting of 
Luke Rosiak, the Daily Caller, this article from October 3, 2017. 
Unfortunately, the only thing they have indicted Mr. Awan for is 
basically making a false statement to get a loan, things related to 
that. But there are dozens and dozens of felonies in which he is 
implicated from his work here on Capitol Hill.

                              {time}  2030

  This article says: ``A now-indicted IT aide to various House 
Democrats was sending money and gifts to government officials in 
Pakistan and received protection from the Pakistani police, multiple 
relatives claim.
  ``A Democratic aide also said Imran Awan personally bragged to him 
that he could have people tortured in Pakistan. Awan's lawyer 
acknowledged that he was sending money to a member of the Faisalabad 
police department, but said there was a good explanation.
  ``The relatives said Awan and his brothers were also sending IT 
equipment, such as iPhones, to the country during the same period in 
which fraudulent purchase orders''--and by the way, from what we have 
seen, there were clearly dozens of fraudulent purchase orders.
  Say, for example, an iPad cost $799 and Awan puts down it is $499 as 
a cost, maybe $300 for an insurance policy or something, but $499, that 
means it is under the $500 limit for things that do not have to be kept 
in inventory. So, as long as Awan kept prices on these invoices below 
$500, he didn't have to have a listing of all of the equipment.
  So he could keep buying iPads, iPhones, and all of these kinds of 
things for different Members of Congress' offices, and there is no 
record kept of where those items are. They don't record the serial 
numbers or anything, as long as it is $499. The trouble for Mr. Awan 
is, every time he put $499 on one invoice for something that costs 
$799, it is a Federal felony, and he is implicated in dozens of these. 
The evidence abounds.
  Yet some of us had an informal hearing and heard testimony about this 
matter, and he was bragging to people about all of the iPhones and 
iPads he was sending to Pakistan to the police there, to intelligence 
friends there, these kinds of things. And because he listed them at 
$499, they are not on an inventory so they don't have to be written off 
when they disappear. That is pretty handy.
  But the FBI has had opportunities to have those invoices presented to 
them.

[[Page H4770]]

And each time they have instructed: Don't bring any of those documents. 
We don't want to see any of that. We just want to talk to you. And as I 
understand, even this week, they continued to report--the FBI 
investigating--that, yeah, we still found no evidence of anything other 
than this false statement on a loan. Why? Because they have instructed: 
We don't want to see the documents that prove those cases.
  They are readily available for anybody, any Federal officer who wants 
to see them, but they don't want to see them. So they can keep 
reporting to the new U.S. attorney that there is no evidence. No, there 
is just nothing there. They can tell the Attorney General, yeah, we 
have looked into it, and there is nothing there.
  And yet we hear from the reporter, he continues to talk to the 
witnesses--Luke Rosiak--and it was 80 percent of the witnesses that 
have personal information about the crimes the Awan cartel--crime 
family, whatever you want to call it--have committed, was 80 percent; 
now between 70 and 80 percent of those witnesses have never been 
interviewed by the FBI.
  That way they can still report to the new U.S. attorney, to the 
Attorney General; we looked into it. There is nothing there. There is 
no evidence. Yeah, because you don't want to look at it. It abounds. 
And then when we hear that Mr. Awan is spreading the word among his 
friends from Pakistan that: I have just got to get this deal done and 
work out a plea where I don't get jail time, and I am already assured I 
will be able to work back on the Hill.
  I was staggered to find out when we took testimony that actually 
about 3 to 9 months of every year for the last 13 or 14 years that Mr. 
Awan has been doing work as a computer technician for 40 to 50 
Democrats here on the Hill, that he had never had a background check, 
but 3 to 9 months out of each year he was in Pakistan, and he was using 
the Pakistani internet to work on three or four dozen Members of 
Congress' computer systems.
  We also learned that, at one point, they put over 40 Members of 
Congress' data on one server so that anybody that Awan wanted to could 
access the server and get information on all of these other people. And 
what happened? Well, that server with that serial number has 
disappeared, but the FBI has no interest whatsoever--at least so far--
in investigating what happened to the server on which Awan put 40-plus 
Members of Congress' data.
  One, we do know some of the files that existed. We don't know what 
were in the files, but Awan had actually organized files that had 
Members of Congress' emails in them. Well, gee, why would Awan want to 
take Members of Congress' emails and put them in one file? That sure 
would make it easy if you were going to transfer somebody's emails to 
somebody else. You just put them all in a file. Put them on one server 
that lots of people have access to.
  It is phenomenal the kind of breach that has occurred on the Hill. 
There are two kinds of justices, and it breaks my heart. There is the 
Hillary Clinton kind of investigation, and there is the Donald Trump 
investigation.
  This is really tragic. So taxpayers are paying for Imran Awan's 
lawyer because he says he is destitute. Yet he sent $100,000 or more 
over to Pakistan in one transaction, and we know that he has property 
listed in his bankruptcy. We know that he was in business, took a loan 
from a guy from Pakistan who has known ties to Hezbollah, and they owed 
him money.
  We can't seem to get the FBI interested in that. There are too many 
holdovers, apparently, from Mueller's day, and Comey's day. We need to 
know what was compromised.
  And I don't care who the person works for, congressional computers 
should not be serviced from Pakistan. From information and belief, 
folks that should know, they tell me Pakistan would be one of the last 
places you would want somebody getting into congressional computer 
systems.
  He said: Well, what difference does it make? It is just emails and 
calendars. Well, there are people that would pay a lot of money to have 
all of the emails from a Member of Congress. We just need the FBI more 
interested.

  Again, I understand, the last guy that started making charges talking 
about FBI's lack of duty, he ended up being defeated by the FBI raid on 
his office and his daughter's office 2 weeks before the election. I 
understand, but somebody has got to stand up and say: Right is right. 
Wrong is wrong.
  There are so many FBI agents that have given their lives, day after 
day, not making the kind of money they could elsewhere, but enforcing 
the law. And to have people like Mueller and Comey come along and put a 
blot on the reputation they poured their honest lives into is a 
travesty. And the only way we remove the blots is to call out those and 
make them responsible for the damage that they have done. And it is not 
happening.
  Anyway, I realize I am running out of time. Luke Rosiak has great 
information here. He has done so much more investigation than the FBI 
has. I know there are a lot of FBI agents that I know personally that 
could take this case.
  I mean, just not listing a piece of property in your forms here that 
you have to file, the financial disclosure, could be a crime if you do 
it intentionally. Sometimes you forget, but for heaven's sake, he 
didn't forget when he filed bankruptcy. He has got property. He has got 
all kinds of things that he has never listed, and those are the kinds 
of things that are important when people are servicing congressional 
computers. People need to know.
  We need people that will be honest enough not to lie to the U.S. 
attorney and not to lie to the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney 
General--I don't guess it matters to them--but for other people who are 
honest and trying to follow and enforce the law and the Constitution as 
their oath requires.
  We need a second special counsel. We need to investigate Rosenstein, 
Mueller, Comey, and Weissmann. And we need somebody assigned to the 
Awan case that will protect Congress from further breaches and from the 
Awan crime family for the future.
  Now, today, there was a continuance filed moving Awan's hearing from 
this Thursday to July 3. It sounds like they are trying to do just what 
Awan has been bragging, that he is going to get a deal. It is not going 
to say anything about all of the breaches of security, all of the 
felonies committed in the forms that he filed, none of that. And so he 
is telling people--at least he has assured people--he can come right 
back and start servicing dozens of Members' computers on the Hill 
again. For heaven's sake, we need somebody in the FBI to step up and do 
their job.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________