[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 37 (Thursday, February 28, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H2295-H2299]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IMPORTANT ISSUES OF THE DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Finkenauer). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 3, 2019, the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Gohmert) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority
leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I do appreciate the Speaker's new policy
that says a Member of Congress can only have one Special Order in which
they are in charge of the time each week once a week. I have been
trying to get Republicans to take our time, much in the way my
colleague, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and the group they call the ``30
Somethings'' did in 2005 and 2006.
I have not had a great deal of success in getting a lot of people to
take Special Order time. But with this new rule and some of the
terrific freshmen that we have got who have come in--some of the folks
who have been here a term or two--they are stepping up and taking our
time to discuss critically important issues for our country. Today, I
am it from our party, and I am honored to be here.
We have heard a lot of talk, and the reason we say have heard a lot
of talk is because there is truth in seeing a double standard at the
Department of Justice for a number of years now.
There was a time when it was the Department of Justice that Jeff
Sessions remembered back in the 1980s during his time as U.S. attorney.
That time changed with top people in the FBI and top people in the DOJ;
it became no longer about justice, but just us and what we want at the
DOJ and the FBI.
In talking to former Justice attorneys, prosecutors, one dear friend
in Texas--not in my district, but a very dear friend--we were talking
about how the things that were done by people, including Rosenstein,
the former U.S.
[[Page H2296]]
attorney, McCabe, Strzok, Page, all of these other people, Ohr, were
incredible, just incredible, and I would include Mueller in that.
Mueller as FBI Director, I continue to believe did more damage to the
FBI during his 12 years as the director of the FBI than anyone, even
the problems that J. Edgar Hoover created, especially in his later
years, the wiretapping that he did of people who should not have been
wiretapped. Of course, he didn't just do it on his own. As I recall,
Attorney General Kennedy had supported wiretapping of Martin Luther
King, Jr., if I remember correctly.
But what we have seen in the unmasking of American citizens who have
been followed by email, by wire--not taps, but just following their
conversations as the NSA and our intelligence community is able to do
these days, is absolutely incredible. Hundreds and hundreds of
Americans were unmasked. We were assured with the PATRIOT Act when it
was up for being reauthorized, oh, no, we are so careful to make sure
that we don't capture Americans that should not be captured unless they
are involved with a terrorist organization or a known foreign
terrorist. They don't get picked up.
But now, if they are talking to a terrorist, a known foreign agent,
then it is possible they could be picked up, but those names are
masked. They are never unmasked. That is too big of a burden. And then
we find out under the Obama administration, the American people have
had their privacy violated, like Democrats and Republicans alike swore
to us would not happen. Well, it has happened. And it has continued to
go on.
I had hoped that Christopher Wray would clean things up at the FBI,
but he appears to be more concerned about covering up problems rather
than cleaning up the problems. I saw a good example of that at the end
of August when, once again, the intelligence community had made clear
they sent their investigator, Frank Rucker, over to explain to Peter
Strzok, as head of the FBI's counterintelligence--and also Dean
Chappell, their liaison--to explain that we now have 100 percent proof,
there is no question, Hillary Clinton's private email server was
hacked.
They embedded a direction into her server that forced every email
coming in and going out into what has now been disclosed publicly by
others as a Chinese intelligence agency front.
They were getting every one of Hillary Clinton's--over 30,000 emails
to and from. There were four that were glitches, but otherwise, over
30,000 emails. So that must include the ones that President Obama sent
using another name so people wouldn't realize it was him using a
private server.
But there were also the President's daily intelligence briefings that
went through her home. She had somebody at the home print them out for
her without any security clearance. There were all kinds of violations,
what appeared from the code to be outright crimes, but the double
standard appears to continue.
This is from February 25, an article from CNS News, Terence Jeffrey
reported that the inspector general says, ``Prosecution Was Declined
for Senior DOJ Official Who Sexually Assaulted a Subordinate.''
And it goes on to talk about that. The name is not disclosed. He
sexually harassed subordinates, sexually assaulted yet another
subordinate, and then lacked candor. That is the DOJ's explanation for
people they don't want to prosecute when they are actually saying that
he lied, committed a crime, but lied when the IG investigated this
matter.
So the unnamed prosecutor or prosecutors were not disclosed, but
allowed to retire, no consequences, though guilty of sexual assault in
the DOJ.
Now, there were a lot of things I disagreed on with a late, former
Federal judge in Texas named William Wayne Justice, but one thing I
agreed with him on, and I heard him tell people: ``You, of all people,
especially, knew better.''
And he would come down harder on somebody like this who had been part
of the DOJ. I would imagine Judge Justice, if he were around, he would
throw the book at somebody who worked at Justice and still committed
crime and abused the system. I can just hear him still today coming
after somebody like that.
But not in the DOJ. We have got lots of carryover from the Obama
years, and I know my friend, Jeff Sessions, called them career people
because they were in career slots. But he was talking about people who
loved Sally Yates, thought she did the right thing in refusing to
defend constitutional positions taken by the Trump administration.
Yet, many of those people are still there undercutting President
Trump, undercutting Matt Whitaker when he was acting, and will, no
doubt, be undercutting Attorney General Barr.
{time} 1230
So this is a real problem when the Justice Department, the one we
counted on for many decades now, if there was something wrong, whether
it is civil rights or others, and justice could not be found, the
Department of Justice could be counted on to come in and pursue real
justice, to their credit.
FBI agents and prosecutors, some retired now from the Department of
Justice, have privately conveyed to me their broken hearts over the
damage done to the Department of Justice and to the FBI because they
became so calloused, so self-absorbed, and so political that they have
damaged not only the FBI and not only the Department of Justice, but
this country.
But when you have willing allies in the alt-left media--or some call
them the mainstream media; certainly, alt-left these days--it is
understandable that same feeling of desperation is felt by the American
people: Where do we turn when the Justice Department is not honest?
It used to be you could trust the media. You could find somebody who
would do such great investigative journalism that they would get to the
heart of it and bring something to the forefront, to the point that the
American people would justifiably become outraged, and that would force
either elected or appointed Federal officials with the Federal
Government to do something.
But here we have alt-left, lamestream media saying that there is no
crisis on our border. Yet if you look at the same things said by Obama
officials about the same problems, except now exacerbated on our border
with all the caravans that have come, are coming, and are continuing to
be established in Central America, it is amazing how some of these
media outlets can even continue to call themselves journalists.
An article from Brian Flood, January 10, this year, points out that:
``News outlets readily described a `crisis' at the border under then-
President Barack Obama when he sought funding to deal with a surge of
migrants, many of them women and children. But now that President Trump
is in the White House, the mainstream media seem far more reluctant to
use the word.
``Back in the summer of 2014, the headlines and stories referring to
the C-word''--apparently the crisis word--``were plentiful as the
border surge was taken seriously along the Acela corridor.
``The Washington Post''--now an alt-left medium--``wrote in 2014,
`White House requests $3.7 billion in emergency funds for border
crisis' ''--there is that C-word, crisis--``while CNN published a
feature, `Daniel's journey: How thousands of children are creating a
crisis in America.' It described a problem of `epic proportions.' ''
Now, they point out that: ``Around the same time, the Huffington Post
declared that `photos of the humanitarian crisis' ''--even Huffington
called it a crisis--``along the southern border were `shocking,' and
ABC News reported that Obama requested `$3.7 billion to cope with the
humanitarian crisis on the border and the spike in illegal crossings by
unaccompanied minors from Central America.' ''
The ABC News story even mentioned this word to deal with plans for
$3.7 billion. This was ABC's headline: ``Immigration crisis funds.''
Incredible.
NBC, June 2014, Andrea Mitchell said the undocumented children
flooding the border were, in her words, ``creating a crisis'' for
authorities.
How these news outlets can turn around and now say that there is no
crisis when the testimony and the evidence is clear that the overall
numbers for last year may have been down, but
[[Page H2297]]
as the testimony and evidence makes clear, in October, November,
December, and January, those numbers spiked to numbers that our Border
Patrol has not dealt with before for minors and family units.
Why would they all of a sudden spike during that time? Because it
appeared the Democrats had a chance of taking the majority here in the
House, and in so doing, Democrats have made clear they wanted to
continue to allow illegal immigration. They welcomed the families.
Naturally, you were going to see a spike.
These people below our southern border in Mexico, Central America,
South America, and now coming from the Middle East and other
continents, have been coming for some time from other countries. They
are being lured in.
The head of the Border Patrol testified this week in our committee
that they were being pulled in. But really, it is being lured. They
hear: Gee, if we will just come now, we have people who are in charge
of the House of Representatives who want us there, and they are going
to try to stop the President from enforcing and securing the border, so
now is the time to come.
And they are coming. We heard the testimony that about 80 percent of
the people who came across our borders in decades past were normally
male adults. It made sense. Usually, it was people who were coming
looking for work, and they were going to send money to their families
back in Mexico. But the word got out the end of last year and this year
that if you will come and bring a minor child, whether it is your child
or not, then you have a good chance of staying in the country.
We know that nobody crosses our border illegally on the south unless
they have gotten permission by paying the drug cartels. Over and over
during the nights I have spent on the border, the question has been
asked: Where did you get the money to pay to come?
Oh, 1,000 here, 1,000 from people in the U.S.
Well, what about the rest of the money you have to pay?
The drug cartels are going to let me work it off when I get where I
am going.
They would normally have an address. As I understand it, that is
often the address the drug cartel told them where they would need to go
get set up and work off what they owed to the drug cartels.
But, Madam Speaker, you shouldn't be surprised when you see headlines
like: Meth lab in major U.S. city busted, run by drug cartels.
As the Department of Homeland Security folks have pointed out to me
before, the drug cartels call us their logistics. All they have to do
is get somebody illegally into the country, and they hand us the
address of somebody supposedly that they know where they can go live,
and we handle the shipping for them. We ship them to wherever they want
to go. Sometimes, they are detained, but we have shipped millions of
people around, all over the country.
If what they have told the Border Patrol about working off what they
owe the drug cartels is true--I haven't seen or heard any reason it
wouldn't be--then our Homeland Security Department for a decade or so
has been shipping people to the location where the drug cartels want
them. The drug cartels are making billions and billions of dollars a
year.
When you hear any Mexican or Central American official who says they
want to keep the American border open, you can just pretty well
guarantee they are getting money from the drug cartels.
The best thing, the most caring and loving thing, we could do for our
neighbors to the south would be to secure our border, put border
barriers where they need it, whether it is a wall, a 30-foot barrier,
whatever. Secure the border and then that will cut off the billions of
dollars of American money going to the drug cartels for them to
terrorize people in Mexico and people in Central America.
You care about people south of our border. Of course, we can't bring
in all those millions who are suffering under drug cartel rule and
reign, but we could secure our border and cut off the domestic
terrorists called the drug cartels, cut off their funding so they won't
be able to pay people to cut off the heads of police chiefs or mayors
who take a strong stand against the drug cartels and put those heads on
a pike as an example to anybody who tries to stand up against the
cartels.
It used to be that the drug cartels had a deal. It was just kind of a
policy that they are not going to allow any kind of crime or violence
to tourists because that is too important for Mexico to have those
tourists' money coming in. That has long since gone by the way.
Tourists are killed and terrorized.
I long for the day when my wife and I can go back to where we
honeymooned in Mexico, back to where we celebrated anniversaries. It
was wonderful. We don't believe we can do that now.
If we secure our border and dry up the money to the drug cartels,
then the money can begin flowing to Mexico for something besides drugs,
and we can cut off the fentanyl and the massive amount of drugs that
pours across our southern border undetected.
I know some people say the majority of drugs are coming through the
ports of entry. That is where they catch more of it. But as it was
explained to me and Steve Chabot some years back down in Colombia,
when they were showing us--we had DEA. The British had people who were
helping. They were doing a great job fighting the FARC's drugs down in
Colombia under then-President Uribe. They were saying that this guy is
fearless. It is hard keeping him alive, but he is amazing. He is
fighting the drug cartels down there.
I said, well, so you are saying about two-thirds of the cocaine, the
drugs from Colombia, goes up through the Gulf of Mexico into Mexico, so
it can cross our southern border. Another one-third apparently goes up
to California, trying to cross the border, it goes into Mexico across
our southern border. I mean, if they have boats that will go that far,
why not just have them pull up to a Texas or California beach that is
deserted?
These Colombian, American, and British drug experts explained that it
is because the drug cartels are businesspeople. They have a business
model. They have a business plan. They play the odds. They know the
odds are many times better to get the drugs into America if they don't
go to a port of entry and they don't go to an abandoned beach
somewhere. They bring it into Mexico, have it cross the Mexico-U.S.
border, and they will get most of their drugs in. So that is their
business plan.
{time} 1245
That is still going on. It was going on during President Bush's
administration, probably back to Clinton and the former Bush and even
Reagan, to a lesser extent. But it is sure going on in the 21st
century.
With all the discussion about there not being a crisis when clearly
there has been and is--it is a humanitarian crisis, but it is also a
crisis of U.S. sovereignty.
We cannot have a country that is based on laws if we cannot control
our own borders. We will be overwhelmed, as we have been, by more and
more people who do not observe the laws, do not think the laws are
important. They do not understand. They have not been educated how
important it is to enforce the law fairly across the board. They don't
know what it is to preserve self-government.
Franklin knew that, Benjamin Franklin, when he said: ``It is a
Republic, madam, if you can keep it.'' He knew. He had studied history,
as had our Founders. They knew that the Constitution that came
together, as Washington referenced, had to have divine providence at
work, because no way these guys who started out for 5 weeks doing
nothing but yelling at each other could have come up with a document
that was the best governing document, the best constitution, put
together in the history of mankind.
Here is more about the media's hypocrisy, an article from the
Washington Examiner, Eddie Scarry. This has a quote: ``We now have an
actual humanitarian crisis''--there is that C-word again--``on the
border that only underscores the need to drop the politics and fix our
immigration system once and for all.'' That was a quote from then-
President Barack Obama in the Rose Garden in 2014.
He went on to say--that is, President Obama--``In recent weeks, we've
seen a surge of unaccompanied children arrive
[[Page H2298]]
at the border, brought here and to other countries by smugglers and
traffickers.''
That is basically, as the Examiner points out, what President Trump
said. He said: ``Last month, 20,000 migrant children were illegally
brought into the United States, a dramatic increase. These children are
used as human pawns by vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs.''
This article says: ``The only difference is how the media are
covering it.''
The Washington Post said, 2014--this is The Washington Post's words--
``The current crisis on the Southwest border, where authorities have
apprehended tens of thousands of unaccompanied Central American
children since October''--well, there you are. There is that C-word
they used then and belittle the word being used now.
Anyway, this is an article from The New York Times from 2014 by
Michael Shear and Jeremy Peters. They said, talking about the border
crossing into Texas, it is ``an urgent humanitarian situation.''
Their article said, and this is from Senator Marco Rubio: ``Let's
remember, this administration''--talking about the Obama
administration--``went around for years saying the border has never
been more secure than it is now. I think,'' and this is Marco Rubio,
``that's been exposed as a fallacy over the last 3 weeks.'' That is
because people were realizing it was a border crisis during the Obama
years.
Just the fact that it has gone on for years and years does not
diminish the crisis. It actually exacerbates the crisis. When you put
the October, November, December, January numbers, record numbers, of
people coming in claiming to be family units--why? Because they have
heard, if they have minor children, then they will be allowed to stay,
and they will be allowed to keep the minor children. It is encouraging
a dark market, a criminal market, in children.
Make sure, if you are coming to America, you have a child in your
group, because then you claim: Oh, we can't be separated.
As the Director of Border Patrol pointed out this week in testimony
under oath, now the huge majority is people coming who are claiming to
be family units. Most of them are, but we don't know. That is why it is
important to check.
So this is a time of crisis, and you would hope that major media,
whether it is alt-left or whatever, would be reporting what is
happening in America. It is a humanitarian crisis, as they acknowledged
during President Obama's term. It is even more of a humanitarian crisis
now that there are so many more minor children who are being brought
here.
Once again, for those who bring up the term ``war on women,'' how
about the fact that over a third of the young girls, the young women,
who are brought to our southern border illegally are being sexual
assaulted, raped, normally multiple times along the way? Do people not
care what is happening? Wouldn't that be a war on women that some of us
want to stop?
The estimate by doctors who have been treating these people say that
17 percent of the young boys coming up and crossing into the U.S.
illegally have been sexually molested, assaulted.
Where is the outrage? It ought to be from both sides of the aisle.
These are people whose lives are just being terrorized. When we hear
about, ``Oh, well, people are just caring about their families,''
really? You would subject your daughter to being one of the third who
is sexually raped numerous times while you want to come into America?
You would do that to your daughter?
We ought to be helping Mexico. They are not helping much. They are
helping some. But we ought to be shoring up the border. It is the best
thing we can do for Mexico, continue to be the most generous country in
the world, in the history of the world, in allowing people to come into
our country legally.
Keep that going. It is good for America. But stop the drug cartels
from controlling our southern border. It ought to be our authorities
controlling our border, nobody else.
If that is not enough, here comes what has been called a Green New
Deal. Some have accurately called it more of a green socialist
manifesto, a green raw deal.
Rick Manning has a great article this month: ``Everyone is talking
about the Green New Deal and how it would end domestic airline travel,
the internal combustion engine, fossil fuel usage, most electricity
generation, and even ban cow flatulence. You have groups guessing what
the cost of the Green New Deal would be in terms of dollars on an
annual basis. . . . To everyone seeking to normalize this Green New
Deal, please just shut up.
``The Green New Deal is the baring of teeth by the new American
communist, a new breed unleashed that we have seen in the streets,
attacking people attending Trump rallies, screaming at teenagers
wearing Make America Great Again hats, shouting down and rioting
against conservative speakers on college campuses.
``Here is the truth. Socialism and communism are evil. Putting a
shroud of legitimacy and normalcy to the destruction of the American
ideal is being a Menshevik in a Bolshevik revolution. You cannot
moderate the bloodlust of those who seek to enslave you by trying to
come up with common ground or discuss alternatives to meet their needs.
The revolution demands immediate payment.
``So let's stop talking about the symptoms which the Green New Deal
represents and actually begin to dissect the disease that is
collectivism. First, definitionally, the only difference between
socialism and communism is if you voluntarily surrender your freedom
and wealth or have it confiscated. Either alternative ultimately comes
from the coercive power of the gun and are based upon the premise that
those who have attained wealth used ill-gotten means to get it. As a
result, they have no moral authority to keep it from those from whom it
presumably was stolen.
``In socialism and communism, individual rights are not derived from
God and guaranteed by the Constitution. Instead, everything you have
and can expect comes from the goodwill of the government. It is no
mistake that John Lennon's socialist anthem `Imagine' starts with the
following words: `Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No
hell below us; above us, only sky. Imagine all the people living for
today.'
``In order to achieve a kingdom ruled by man, unfettered by morality
or rules, you have to nix a sovereign God from the equation. If there
is no God, then all rights are nothing more than those that the
government chooses to allow you to have, and the only protections that
exist are those which they grant. The only question is who gets to be
the one holding the keys over everyone else's life.''
This is what, on one hand, surprises me about billionaires in America
funding a move toward socialism. Obviously, these are not stupid
people. They can look at the history of socialism, communism. They know
that, whether it is socialists or communists, you have two classes. You
eliminate the middle class. There is no middle class. You have this
small group of ruling class, and then you have everybody else, all the
miserables.
I guess they think they get us to socialism and they will be part of
that elite socialist class that rules over everybody else.
I have seen it. The summer I lived in the Soviet Union, when it was
the real Soviet Union, there were some nice things, but it was clear
they didn't have freedom. The government watched, through spies,
everything that those people did.
I asked, on one occasion: Why is that lady running off?
Well, she is going to go report me, he said.
Why would she go report you? You are not anything to her.
No. In your country you can get ahead by making money. In my country,
he said, we get ahead by stepping on others. So anybody you can turn in
for anything, anybody that you can step on, it elevates you in our
system here in the Soviet Union.
He was right. And that is where we are headed with people thinking
socialism is a good way to go.
The bumper sticker is true. The big problem with socialism is you can
vote your way into it, but you will have to shoot your way out.
That is what we are seeing play out in Venezuela. They voted
themselves
[[Page H2299]]
into it, and now they are having to shoot their way out. Unfortunately
for most of them, they don't have guns, so they are pretty empty-handed
in fighting a government that has the guns.
{time} 1300
It is a tragic situation. It should be one of the most prosperous
countries in the world. It was until socialism took over. And again, as
Rick Manning is trying to point out, that is where we are headed.
``It makes one wonder if Ono,'' he said, ``has given up 100 percent
of her songwriter royalties to the song to the government as a show of
solidarity for the dream.
``And here is what they don't say,'' he says, ``in order for the
world to `live as one' with no possessions, someone is going to have to
take all the stuff and hold it collectively for the common good.
``In order for there to be stuff to take and most importantly eat in
the future, someone is going to have to do the hard work to produce it.
Someone is going to have to figure out how to produce it, and someone
is going to have to get it from where it is produced to where the
brotherhood is living. And then someone is going to have to distribute
it, being certain that everyone gets the same amount of gruel.''
And I saw that, too, in the stores back in the Soviet Union. If you
were part of that elite ruling class, they would keep back a really
nice pair of shoes, maybe the only pair they got, for the highest
ranking person that they dealt with.
In the stores, the Soviets would tell me: We never find toilet paper;
they hold it in the back for the ruling class. We never find good,
fresh vegetables. They hold that back for the ruling class.
It is really tragic the way people are treated, ultimately, in a
socialist or communist society, or now called progressivist.
So, good article by Brad Polumbo, February 26, How Socialism Destroys
Private Charity and Hurts the Poor. It is tragic.
Between what we see destroying the rule of law in America, coming
across our southern border illegally, overwhelming our schools--how
fair is it? If you really care about children, how fair is it to this
big group of children in school?
And as teachers have pointed out to me: I love my kids. I love the
kids that come in and don't speak English. But they throw them into a
class of English speakers because we are required to educate them, and
we have to stop teaching, basically, the English-speaking citizens and
residents and go to teaching the new kids that just got thrown in, no
fault of their own. But those that suffer are the kids.
They have dreams, but, unfortunately for them, they were either born
here or came here legally and speak English. But their dreams are going
to be put on hold. They are not going to be able to be educated as well
because we have not secured our southern border. And children who don't
speak the same language are thrown into their classes, and they are
harming the dreams and the hopes of the children who were here.
So is the solution to welcome in 30 million or so people from Mexico?
No. It would overwhelm this country, and there would be no place for
people to flee to when they are trying to find real asylum from danger.
The better thing is just enforce the law. Secure the border. Cut off
the flow of money to the drug cartels, and allow people to live freely
here, without worrying about extra crime that wouldn't be here if
people weren't here illegally.
It is about preserving the Republic that the Founders gave us. It is
about acknowledging that we have, as a nation, been more blessed than
any nation in the history of the world. Solomon's Israel didn't have
the individual opportunities, the individual assets, the freedoms that
we have.
When a majority of Americans fail to recognize that we have been
blessed by God and His protective hand has secured our Nation, then
those blessings and that protective hand will disappear; and we will be
the once-great Camelot, where people could live free, and they could
work and keep what they grew, built, earned, that once-great country
where people were treated the same, whether poor or rich. They were
treated the same under the law.
That once-great country. Wow, what a dream. How did it go wrong?
Well, we just talked about it, and it is time we did something
together to stop it.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________