[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 117 (Thursday, July 12, 2018)]
[House]
[Page H6118]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            MOMENT OF TRUTH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Huffman) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, finally, Scott Pruitt is gone.
  After months of scandal, 19 separate investigations, countless 
ethical failures, abuses of his official office at taxpayer expense, 
finally, this corrupt, swamp creature who has been heading our 
Environmental Protection Agency announced his resignation last week.
  As welcome as this news is for many of us, let's be clear: Scott 
Pruitt was far from the only creature in the toxic Trump swamp.
  Another great example is our Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, who 
profited from short sales in a Russian-linked navigation company. He 
made those short sales only after learning that journalists with The 
New York Times were about to expose his conflicts of interest. And 
apparently, while serving as our Commerce Secretary, Ross was also 
partial owner of a Chinese company and a Cypriot bank that is a part of 
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
  These are scandals that, in any other previous time, would bring down 
a Cabinet Secretary, but in this swamp climate of the Trump 
administration, it is just another news cycle and is soon supplanted by 
the next outrage and the next scandal.
  Let's also not forget our Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, who 
faces many of his own scandals. Our Secretary of the Interior, of 
course, oversees oil and gas development on public lands. In this case, 
the Secretary stands to personally benefit from a land deal with the 
chairman of Halliburton, a company that has literally billions of 
dollars of business on the line when Secretary Zinke makes decisions 
about where, and how, oil drilling will be permitted in this country.
  That is just the tip of the iceberg with this administration. It is 
time for this Republican Congress to wake up and take these issues 
seriously. Conduct some real oversight and put a stop to this culture 
of corruption in the Trump administration.

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