[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 54 (Thursday, March 28, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H2907-H2912]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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. Mr. Speaker, at this time, it is my honor to yield to my 
friend from New Jersey, not just a friend, but a brother, ardent pro-
life advocate who I have seen has compassion for every baby child.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).


               An Important Message America Needs to Hear

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend and

[[Page H2908]]

colleague for yielding and for his leadership on behalf of human 
rights. We have worked on issues in Sudan and other issues over the 
years. I want to thank him for being such a compassionate person.
  Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday evening, I attended a premiere of the new 
film, ``Unplanned,'' which opens this weekend in over 1,000 theaters. 
The movie is extraordinarily well written, well directed, and well 
acted. Ashley Bratcher is spectacular as Abby Johnson, the key 
character in the film.
  ``Unplanned'' tells a largely untold story, a very difficult story, 
and is packed with insight and a profoundly important message that 
America and the world needs to hear.
  Based on the life of Abby Johnson and her book, ``Unplanned,'' the 
film chronicles Ms. Johnson's work at Planned Parenthood as a student 
activist, followed by almost 8 years at a large Planned Parenthood 
clinic in Texas, where over 20,000 abortions were performed.
  Working as a counselor and then as actual director of that clinic, 
Abby says that 10 minutes of participation in an ultrasound-guided 
abortion shook the foundation of her values and changed the course of 
her life. She writes in the book, which is powerfully portrayed in the 
film:
  ``The details startled me. At 13 weeks, you could clearly see the 
profile of the head, both arms and legs, and even tiny fingers and 
toes. With my eyes glued to the image of this perfectly formed baby, I 
watched as a new image emerged on the video screen.''
  ``The cannula, a straw-shaped instrument attached to the end of a 
suction tube, had been inserted into the uterus and was nearing the 
baby's side. It looked like an invader on the screen, out of place. 
Wrong. It just looked wrong.''
  She goes on to write, and you can see this portrayed on the screen:
  ``My heart sped up. Time slowed. I didn't want to look, but I didn't 
want to stop looking either.''
  ``At first, the baby didn't seem aware of the cannula. The next 
moment was the sudden jerk of a tiny foot of the baby as it started 
kicking, as if trying to get away from the probing invader. As the 
cannula pressed in, the baby began struggling to turn and twist away.''
  ``And then the doctor's voice broke through, startling me. ``Beam me 
up, Scotty,'' telling the assistant to turn on the suction.''
  The abortion clinic director went on to write:
  ``I had a sudden urge to yell, ``Stop,'' to shake the woman and say: 
``Look what is happening to your baby. Wake up. Hurry. Stop.''
  ``But even as I thought those words, I thought of my own hand and saw 
my own hand holding the probe. I was one of them, performing this act 
of abortion.''
  Again, her eyes shot back to the screen, and she writes:
  ``The cannula was already being rotated by the doctor, and now I 
could see the tiny body violently twisting with it. For the briefest 
moment, it looked as if the baby was being wrung like a dishcloth, 
twirled and squeezed. And then the little body crumpled and began 
disappearing into the cannula before my eyes.''
  ``The last thing I saw was the tiny, perfectly formed backbone sucked 
into the tube, and then everything was gone.''
  Abby Johnson writes:
  ``The image of that tiny, dead baby, mangled and sucked away, kept 
replaying in my mind.''
  ``What was in this woman's womb just a moment ago was alive. It 
wasn't tissue. It wasn't cells. This was a human baby fighting for 
life, a battle it lost in the blink of an eye.''
  She writes in the book:
  ``What I have told people for years as a Planned Parenthood leader, 
what I believed and taught and defended, is a lie.''
  Mr. Speaker, someday--someday--future generations of Americans will 
look back on us and wonder how and why such a rich and seemingly 
enlightened society, so blessed and endowed with the capacity to 
protect and enhance vulnerable human life--the weakest and the most 
vulnerable--could have so aggressively promoted death to children by 
abortion.
  They will demand to know why dismembering a child like the one that 
Abby Johnson witnessed--pulverizing an infant with suction or 
chemically poisoning a baby with any number of toxic chemicals failed 
to elicit empathy, mercy, or compassion for these victims.

                              {time}  1215

  No one is expendable or a throwaway, Mr. Speaker. Every human life 
has infinite value. Birth is merely an event; it is not the beginning 
of life. Abortion is violence against children and it is violence 
against women.
  The movie ``Unplanned'' not only moved me, as I believe it will move 
others, but it also inspired me, as I believe it will inspire others, 
to care even more for both victims of abortion, the mother, and the 
child, to love them both, to reach out to post-abortive women. And 
there are ministries all over this country that say, Yes, an abortion 
has been procured, but we love you and we want to see you reconcile and 
find peace and joy again.
  This movie makes clear that we need to continue to reach out to the 
people inside the abortion industry, in the sincere hope that they, 
like Abby Johnson, will recognize that there is nothing compassionate, 
benign, or nurturing about abortion.
  Abby Johnson has formed a ministry, a nongovernmental organization. 
It is called And Then There Was None. It is designed to assist abortion 
clinic workers out of the industry. To date, approximately, 500 
abortion clinic workers have left that field of work including seven 
abortion doctors who now nurture life, rather than kill it.
  Abby Johnson is a courageous, selfless woman who spreads truth and 
compassion. She speaks truth to power. ``Unplanned'' is a truly amazing 
movie.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Will the gentleman stay for a question.
  Mr. Speaker, I am deeply moved and touched by everything my friend 
from New Jersey has had to say. But at one point, my friend said, he 
really believed that some day Americans will look back on this point in 
history. And one of my great concerns, because of the love I know is 
shared between us both for this country; and desperately wanting this 
country, our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, someday to 
enjoy our freedoms, one of my biggest concerns is that it won't be 
Americans that look back; that if we stay on this road where we 
dismember and kill babies, it may not be Americans that look back, it 
may be historians in some other country after the United States no 
longer exists in its present condition that look back and say, Wow, 
look how degenerate they had gotten, and it just seemed so accepted.
  Does the gentleman from New Jersey, my friend, have any concerns 
that, perhaps, if we don't address this problem that it may not be 
Americans that look back and see this problem area?
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding.
  I do believe that there are deep concerns about the loss of life and 
what it means demographically, both here and all over the world. I 
mean, in places like China, sex selection abortion has claimed the 
lives of so many of the girl children that there are tens of millions 
of men who will never marry because the women simply have been 
exterminated through sex selection abortion.
  I have held a number of congressional hearings--I have chaired them--
where we have talked about the disparity between boys and girls. One 
estimate posited there are 62 million missing girls in China alone.
  One of my witnesses said that if you look at all the women that have 
been killed in Asia through sex selection abortion alone, and it is 
worldwide, it equals, equates with the number of all the women and girl 
children living in the United States of America. I mean, that is a 
horrific crime, in my opinion, against women. And the disparity in male 
to female that is a consequence leads to other horrific consequences, 
like human trafficking.
  As my good friend knows, I am the prime author of the Trafficking 
Victims Protection Act and four other laws that combat human 
trafficking, including the most recently signed, the Frederick Douglass 
anti-human trafficking law signed by President Trump just a few months 
ago. I am the author

[[Page H2909]]

of those bills; and we watch very closely what is happening all over 
the world.
  In places like China, trafficking has increased because of the 
missing daughters who have been killed, simply because they happened to 
be girls and women, young women, young females.
  On this floor of the House, as the gentleman knows, because he voted, 
as did I, we had a bill to ban sex selection abortions. And to this 
day, I am shocked and dismayed how many of our colleagues--and I 
respect our colleagues on both sides of this issue--didn't see that 
discrimination begins in the womb, when a woman is singled out, a girl, 
girl child, simply because she is a girl and is killed for that reason.
  Sex selection abortion is almost never--although it is occasionally 
for the boy child, it is the girl child who suffers. So when we look 
back, when our future generations look back, they will also note that 
discrimination. Why did that bill not become law?
  It seems to me there are at least 20 nations around the world where 
there are disparities; India and China are among the worst, but it is a 
huge problem. And we need to look at protecting unborn children as a 
human rights issue.
  Killing an unborn child in the womb is the only human rights abuse 
that dares call itself a human right; and there are people, purveyors 
of abortion, who do that on a regular basis. They keep saying it is a 
right; a right to dismember a child; the right to chemically poison a 
child.
  As the gentleman knows, because he was, again, one of the sponsors of 
the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which I have re-
introduced in this Congress--Trent Franks had introduced it in 
previous--passed three times here on the House floor. It says that 
children at least 20 weeks, and maybe earlier, but at least at 20 
weeks, need to be protected because they suffer excruciating pain when 
they are being dismembered, for a couple of minutes. We are not sure 
exactly how long, but the evidence is very, very clear that they suffer 
as they are being killed by abortion.
  And that legislation passed with good numbers, good--a large number 
of Members of the House, but it is not law yet.
  So, you know, I think when we look back, we are going to say we had 
all these opportunities. And now the most recent--and I appreciate my 
friend from Texas yielding this time--the most recent outrage is what 
is happening with regards to children who are born alive and then are 
killed after birth.
  We just had the mayor--not the mayor--the Governor of New York 
eviscerating protections for children who survive abortions.
  Years ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer did a piece, a big piece, a big 
article called ``The Dreaded Complication.'' And the dreaded 
complication were those children who somehow evaded the dismemberment 
process or some other part of that process and emerged alive. It was 
usually a hysterotomy abortion in most cases, but other cases as well, 
to go on and breathe and gasp and cry. And these very weak and 
vulnerable children should be protected.
  We have a bill that has been introduced, the Born-Alive Protection 
Act. We have asked, as just a few hours ago from this floor many 
times--I did it as well--asking that our friends in the majority would 
allow this bill to come up, so at least when these children are born 
alive, the same regimen of care, the same due diligence would be given 
to that boy or girl, gasping for breath, to ensure that they are 
protected and get resuscitation.
  Why, in these abortion clinics, are they allowed to die due to 
exposure, or sometimes to additional effort to just kill them?
  This legislation has had a large number of cosponsors in the House 
and Senate. The Senate had an opportunity to take it up and it was 
voted down, sadly, by other friends on the other side of the aisle. And 
again, we reach out to our friends on the other side of the aisle to 
say this is a human rights issue.
  Born alive? I did a speech in 2012 on what is called after-birth 
abortion. Two ethicists wrote this piece--and I would invite anyone who 
wants to, read it; it is on my website.
  Two ethicists wrote this piece about how we ought to kill babies 
after birth because, really, they are not really different than the 
child before birth. They can't dream; they can't talk; they don't have 
cognitive abilities that say, a 4-year-old or a 5-year-old might have.
  You know, birth is an event that happens to all of us. It is a 
continuum of life, and abortion is violence against children. But 
after-birth abortion also is violence against children.
  Let me just conclude. Many people, like Alveda King, Dr. Martin 
Luther King's niece, she has had two abortions. And she has said, how 
can the dream survive--that is to say, her great uncle's dream, I have 
a dream--if we kill the children and hurt and wound the women?
  The pro-life movement, and I have been in it for 47 years, care for 
both, mother and child; love them both. And, again, this new movie, 
``Unplanned,'' chronicles a woman, Abby Johnson, who was right there 
with the strongest of the pro-abortion activists in this country, 
including counseling women to get abortions.
  And then she was director of a clinic in Texas, as I said earlier, in 
the gentleman's home State. Then, when she saw that child killed, in 
real time, on an ultrasound, it shattered the myth that somehow that 
child is not human and not alive, and she walked out the door and never 
came back.
  There were people praying for her from the 40 Days for Life, a very, 
very humane organization of men and women who pray for the clinic 
personnel; they pray for the babies; they pray for the moms. That is 
their agenda, care, love, compassion.
  She then, later on, and as depicted in the movie, was at--you know, 
trying to reach out to some women as well, so they wouldn't make this 
irreversible decision.
  So I want to thank the gentleman again. But, you know, someday we 
will recognize that these children--and you know, this millennial 
generation and others that are coming along, you know, first baby 
pictures now for parents and grandparents are of ultrasound imaging of 
their children. That is what goes on the refrigerator. The newborn 
pictures go on, too, with great smiles and great joy when the child is 
born. But we now know, before birth when he or she is a girl or a boy. 
We know just so much, and we have that picture, which is the first baby 
picture.
  And to think--and this is what got to Abby Johnson--she watched as 
that child was dismembered right in front of her. She was holding the 
probe; and it just dawned on her, the blind spot was lifted, and she 
realized, I am participating in the killing of a baby. And she left 
that clinic, and now she is one of the most courageous pro-life leaders 
in the country and the world.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate those words from my 
friend, Chris Smith, and I look forward to seeing that movie.
  I was very moved watching the movie ``Gosnell''. It just--I thought 
about the poets, the inhumanity to man. It is tragic.
  Having talked to people that have taught in China, you know, it is a 
human crisis what is going on with the abortion of so many women. And 
like my friend, Chris Smith, I can't help but wonder why that is not 
considered a war on women when you kill a baby in utero simply because 
the child is female. But apparently, in China, since couples are only 
allowed normally to have one child, many couples think, well, we would 
rather have a boy. Discrimination against girls.
  As a father who has three girls, they have brought joy to my life in 
so many ways. I just cannot fathom the thought of ever doing anything 
to have prevented those girls from being born.
  But there are far-reaching implications when you have a gendercide. 
But as was pointed out by a teacher in China, first of all, the boys 
don't have as much opportunity to have female friends, making it more 
difficult to find a heterosexual partner.
  But more than that, because it is restricted to one child, you have 
two sets of grandparents and two parents, six people who have one child 
to focus on, and it actually--
  One of the greatest disciplined groups of children in the world used 
to be considered from China.

[[Page H2910]]

  


                              {time}  1230

  More and more, you have doting grandparents and parents. Since they 
only have one child to dote on among the six of them, more and more of 
those Chinese children are being spoiled rotten. It is much more 
difficult to maintain order, because now that there is one child to 
spoil among six people, the teacher is never right. The child is always 
right.
  It is interesting, seeing all the far-reaching ramifications of this 
gendercide against women. I hope and literally do pray that things will 
change, and babies will no longer be killed just simply because they 
are female.


                          Fraud on FISA Court

  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, there are four other topics I wanted to 
touch on.
  One, I was greatly surprised to find out about a motion and order by 
the Obama administration in 2012 before the FISA court, because being 
on the Judiciary Committee--I wasn't there when the PATRIOT Act was 
passed; I have been there for reauthorization--I have grave concerns 
about some of the civil rights there.
  My colleagues across the aisle on the Judiciary Committee, many of 
them had extremely grave concerns when they were in the minority about 
civil rights and civil liberties, and those seem to have taken a 
backseat while the President was President Obama.
  I am hopeful that, now that there is not a Democrat in the White 
House, we can get some bipartisan concern again about civil liberties, 
after the Obama administration really did run roughshod over so many.
  One of the things we were assured in reauthorizing the FISA court, 
the procedures and all, is that no American, and this was in the 
PATRIOT Act as well, but no American would be caught up in any foreign 
surveillance or surveillance by our U.S. entities, whether CIA, NSA, 
whatever, unless the American citizen was engaged in a conversation 
with a known terrorist, foreign terrorist, or an agent of a known 
terrorist organization.
  Then through this colonoscopy, figuratively speaking, that the Trump 
campaign and administration were getting, we come to find out things 
were far more loose in protecting civil liberties and privacy rights.
  On the FISA court, unfortunately, we have at least one or more FISA 
judges that really don't care about the Constitution. They don't care 
about Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. They have allowed the Justice 
Department to run roughshod over those.
  I am very concerned about how far this goes back. Did it go back 
before the Obama administration? Is it a newer invention? Just how many 
activities once considered unthinkable by the Federal Government are 
now just ho-hum to FISA judges?
  The fact is that we now know the FISA court, at least one, perhaps 
more courts, were lied to. Since this is basically a Star Chamber where 
the public is not allowed to know what went on--things are held in 
secret. The transcripts are held in secret, unless you get them 
released by WikiLeaks, as the application for warrant, the affidavit on 
which it was based, and the order regarding Verizon some years back--
WikiLeaks released that.
  That was the eye-opener for me, because as just an ardent historian 
when it comes to so many things American, and that includes First 
Amendment rights, I was shocked, Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment.
  We know the Constitution is very clear. You can't just say: Give me 
all the information you have.
  It is required that you have some kind of probable cause here, and 
you have to describe with particularity the area to be searched or the 
thing to be searched and the specific thing that is being sought for 
which there is a warrant.
  I was overwhelmed to see an affidavit saying: Well, for America's 
protection, we just need every bit of information that Verizon has on 
every one of their customers.
  I am going, oh, my gosh. During my days as a felony judge in Texas, 
if an officer had come with an affidavit and an application signed, 
sworn to, and given that to me, that we need a warrant, I am going, you 
have got to be kidding. There is no particularity here. It is just 
saying give me everything you have on every customer this company has.
  Are you kidding? You need to go back to school. I am not sure I need 
to be signing any more warrants for you if that is the way you consider 
constitutional rights.
  Yet, it was just ho-hum for the Justice Department, ho-hum for the 
FISA court judges.
  I mean, unless there is some FISA judge that signed these four 
warrants regarding the Trump campaign, and individuals with it, who has 
just completely lost his or her mind and doesn't know what is going on, 
that judge, or judges, has to be aware they were lied to. There was 
fraud upon that court.
  The fact that we have Federal judges who were confirmed by the U.S. 
Senate after being appointed by a U.S. President who would not be 
bothered that the United States Department of Justice and the FBI had 
people who would come before that judge and lie to that judge, and the 
judge is not bothered--``oh, well.''
  I remember after a bankruptcy hearing many years ago, I really liked 
this judge, but he said: Louie, you seem bothered that the person who 
filed bankruptcy got caught in a huge lie. That seemed to bother you. 
But, Louie, they all lie. You just got to get used to it.
  Well, I have still not gotten used to the idea that somebody can come 
in and lie under oath before a judge without any ramifications coming 
from that.
  The fact that we have one or more FISA judges who are not bothered, 
have done nothing, and have put no one in jail for the fraud committed 
in the FISA court tells me we have to either get rid of the FISA 
courts--go back to the way it was before, when if you had a matter of 
national security, it was treated differently, but we didn't have 
special Star Chambers where you came and had secret hearings. You just 
went to a normal judge and handled things in camera, if necessary. We 
have to either do that, get rid of the FISA courts, or we have to have 
some safeguards to make sure that Americans' rights are protected.

  But there is a motion and order here. The motion, it was secret, 
classified, before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. This is 
from April 23, 2012. It has now been declassified. I had no idea that 
the Obama administration, the Justice Department, had sought this and 
gotten it, but apparently, as broadly spread as information was about 
American citizens whose names were unmasked and about what they were 
saying when it didn't necessarily involve any foreign terrorist 
organization--I am still not over the fact that some of us were lied 
to, in order to get some of the PATRIOT Act reauthorized. That was not 
the Obama administration I am talking about.
  But this is a motion, and the title is: ``Government's Submission of 
Amendments to Standard Minimization Procedures.'' That is the procedure 
where, if it is an American citizen who is caught up in a phone 
surveillance, phone conversations that are being surveilled by our 
intelligence, the minimization is what the law requires where you mask 
the name. You minimize the conversation so that the identity and other 
information is not available for review, because the Constitution 
protects American citizens and gives them Fourth Amendment and Fifth 
Amendment rights that otherwise would be abused.
  But this says: ``For FBI Electronic Surveillance and Physical Search 
Conducted Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and 
Submission of Revised Minimization Procedures for the National 
Counterterrorism Center, and Motion for Amended Orders Permitting Use 
of Amended Minimization Procedures.''
  Then I see that it was classified by Tashina Gauhar, Deputy Assistant 
Attorney General. She answered directly to Rod Rosenstein, I guess 
still does.
  My understanding is, and I was told, that she is one of the key 
people who was telling Jeff Sessions that he needed to recuse himself. 
This is an attorney, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, who was loyal 
to Sally Yates, is still loyal to Sally Yates, even though she refused 
to do her constitutional duty to defend a constitutional act by 
President Trump. She didn't care for the President, so she wasn't going 
to carry out her constitutionally mandated duty.

[[Page H2911]]

  Fortunately, Sally Yates is no longer there, and we have at least 
some people there who are willing to carry out their obligation under 
the Constitution.
  But when my friend Jeff Sessions was saying he has talked to career 
people and they have encouraged him, told him he needed to recuse 
himself, I had heard that Tashina Gauhar was one of those people. You 
can call her a career person. I hope her career is about ended, at 
least in the Justice Department.
  I also had understood she was someone who was trying to make Jeff 
Sessions look bad. As the National Security Council liaison, the 
notices of NSC meetings would go to her for the Attorney General. I was 
told she would sit on those and not get them to the Attorney General. 
He would get his notices late. He would be, therefore, the least 
prepared at the NSC's critical meetings. Sometimes, he would have 
conflicts because she didn't get him the notices early enough. Yet she, 
I was told, is one of those who said: Oh, yeah, you have to recuse 
yourself.
  Her loyalties were more to President Obama and Sally Yates than they 
appear to be, at least to me, to the Constitution itself. Yet she is 
the one who is also pushing to change the minimization requirements.
  What really got me as I read through this lengthy motion, I think 
this is really the crux of it, over here at page 64.

                              {time}  1245

  Over here on page 64--so, obviously, it is a long motion on behalf of 
the U.S. Government by Tashina Gauhar--it says:
  ``The following underlined text will be inserted into the first 
sentence: `The FBI may disseminate FISA-acquired information concerning 
United States persons, which' ''--and then here is the underlined 
part--`` `reasonably appears to be' ''--and then not underlined--`` 
`foreign intelligence information' ''--more underlining--`` `is 
necessary to understand foreign intelligence information or assess its 
importance, or is evidence of a crime being disseminated for a law 
enforcement purpose.' ''
  Look, when you get language like this that could allow the massive 
distribution of what we were assured during reauthorization of these 
type procedures--oh, no, it is so restricted.
  See, here are the regulations. This is who can find out about an 
American citizen who was surveilled electronically. It is protected. If 
somebody--an American citizen--happens to be captured just because of 
who they are talking to, you know, we have the minimization--nobody 
gets to know who that person is. The requirements are so tough to 
reveal the name.
  Oh, no, not in this that was filed by Tashina Gauhar, if it 
reasonably appears it is necessary to understand some intelligence. 
Good grief, that throws the door wide open. You could justify giving 
this constitutionally protected information to basically anybody. Well, 
I think this will be important to help them understand some other 
intelligence information. This is an outrage.
  And I had no idea--I don't know of anybody who did know back in 
2012--that the Obama Justice Department was throwing this door open 
with this kind of vague and ambiguous terminology: Oh, well, if it 
helps them understand other information, well, then they can see and 
hear and get all of what otherwise should be constitutionally protected 
information where the U.S. Government has been spying on U.S. citizens.
  As I have said before, I mean, it is becoming more and more clear 
that the only thing that Orwell got wrong was the year. It wasn't 1984. 
But here, oh, yeah, anything that our DOJ, our intelligence, want to 
disseminate to their friends, even if it is somebody that may be 
working at the U.N., we will disclose it to anybody, because it will 
help them understand other information better.
  For everyone's sake, this is such an outrage. And here it is, 7 
years--yeah, next month--7 years since this motion and order was filed 
in order to allow the government to pass around top-secret information 
that should be not only classified, it should never have been obtained 
in the first place.
  And then, through the investigation of the Donald Trump campaign, we 
find out that, actually, you don't have to be a terrorist or a member 
of a known terrorist organization. If you happen to be an ambassador, 
which, I would imagine, most all of the Members of the House and Senate 
have met with ambassadors and have talked to ambassadors of foreign 
countries. And it had never crossed my mind that our Justice 
Department, or our NSA, CIA, or FBI, that they may say: Oh, here is a 
Senator or a U.S. Congressman who is having a conversation with a 
foreign ambassador, so we get to surveil this Member of Congress or 
Senate.
  But, it turns out, if you have a conversation with an ambassador, you 
can't be sure anymore that you don't have the FBI's electronic 
intelligence community noting and logging and checking everything that 
you are doing and saying. That is incredible. That is just almost 
unfathomable, due to the protections that used to be observed for 
American citizens. I thought we made progress.
  The days when Attorney General Kennedy authorized a wiretap of Martin 
Luther King, Jr., and Hoover were surveilling so many people that never 
should have been allowed to be surveilled, I thought we had gotten 
beyond that. Some of those activities were unconstitutional, were 
illegal. I thought we had progressed to the point that Members of the 
House and Senate, both sides of the aisle, should be deeply offended to 
find out that their government may be spying on them, perhaps when they 
talk to an ambassador. Even if it is not a terrorist country, it is 
just extraordinary what we have been finding out in the last 2 years 
about the extent of abuses of Americans' privacy rights.
  I am hoping, though, that we can work across the aisle to rein in 
some of these abuses, since the Obama administration is no longer there 
and the protection that seems some of my colleagues were trying to 
afford them, even though, in my mind, it meant really abuses of 
Americans' constitutional rights.
  And then, somewhat related, my friend Rand Paul, down the hall, this 
story from Paul Bedard, yesterday, notes that, ``Senator Rand Paul 
escalated his demand for an investigation into former Obama officials 
who `concocted' the anti-Trump Russia scandal, revealing that former 
CIA director John Brennan was the key figure who legitimized the 
charges and discredited `dossier' against the President.''
  And it is interesting. This term ``dossier'' everybody is using now 
because of the former MI6, a former FBI informant who became no longer 
trusted by the FBI, no longer usable, because he was untrustworthy by 
the FBI, which was never conveyed to the FISA judge, that allowed the 
judge to keep signing warrants based on this untrustworthy person, but 
now to have this. As Senator Paul was reporting in a tweet, he said 
that he had heard from a high-level source that Brennan helped to 
validate the dossier in intelligence reports.
  ``A high-level source tells me it was Brennan who insisted that the 
unverified and fake Steele dossier be included in the intelligence 
report . . . Brennan should be asked to testify under oath in Congress 
ASAP,'' Senator Paul tweeted.
  In an earlier tweet Wednesday, Senator Paul called for wide 
investigation into former President Barack Obama and his team. ``Time 
for Congress to investigate. What did President Obama know and when? 
How did this hoax go on for so long unabated?''

  It goes on to say:
  ``Brennan has denied in the past that he included the salacious 
dossier. . . . But at least two other top intelligence officials said 
he did.''
  And we do know, sort of parenthetically here, it is not in the 
article, but we know Brennan has admitted being untruthful under oath 
before the Senate. He has admitted perjuring himself when it suited 
what he wanted to accomplish. And this is a guy that was overrunning 
the Trump campaign, Donald Trump and his campaign--then Donald Trump, 
now President Trump--just abusing his position as head of an 
intelligence agency.
  This says, ``And Washington Post editor Bob Woodward also said that 
Brennan endorsed the dossier from Christopher Steele when he''--Bob 
Woodward--``got a copy in late 2016. Woodward said that Brennan felt it 
matched the Russia collusion charges he had heard.''

[[Page H2912]]

  And I can't help but wonder now if where Brennan heard this was when 
it came out of his own mouth.
  ``The dossier was never considered true until it was recognized in 
intelligence assessments and only after the late Senator John McCain 
and top Obama officials helped circulate it, said Paul.''
  ``The dossier was underwritten by the Democratic National Committee 
and Hillary Clinton's campaign. By indicating the Kremlin interfered in 
the election, it helped to fuel false allegations of foreign collusion 
with the Trump campaign, leading to 2 years of nonstop 
investigations.''
  `` `I'm very concerned that it's becoming more clear that the Obama 
administration was able to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on our campaign 
based on phony opposition research from the Clinton campaign. Having 
Federal law enforcement spy on a Presidential campaign based on phony 
campaign research is really distressing and the true untold story,' he 
said.''
  This is a problem. I know others may feel otherwise.
  I like Adam Schiff. He was put in charge of--back when he was in the 
Judiciary Committee where I was serving, we actually impeached two 
Federal judges who needed to be impeached, who needed to be removed, 
and my colleague, Adam Schiff, did a wonderful job in handling that 
effort. As far as I am concerned, he developed great credibility with 
me in his professionalism in the way he handled the impeachment of 
those two Federal judges.
  But, over the last 2 years, as he has continued to say we know there 
was collusion between the Trump administration and Russia and we have 
evidence and on and on, his credibility when it comes to intelligence 
matters has now been done great harm, not only here, but abroad. So I 
think it is time to have a different chairman of intelligence.
  It is too important that we have someone who is a chairman that 
hasn't spent 2 years saying something was true that it turned out 
wasn't. We need to have a Democrat who has credibility with foreign 
governments, as well as here in the House, as well as in the Senate, 
and there are people like that. There are people like that on both 
sides of the aisle that have that kind of credibility that we know just 
would not be spreading something that wasn't absolutely true.
  So I agree with my friends that are on the Intelligence Committee, 
and I appreciate my fellow Texan, Mike Conaway, for pointing out this 
is now a problem and it needs to be addressed.

                              {time}  1300

  This article points out something I very much appreciate. The article 
is from Gregg Re with FOX News. ``President Trump, in an exclusive, 
wide-ranging interview Wednesday night with FOX News' Hannity''--and 
that was a great interview my friend Sean Hannity had with the 
President, really enjoyable, last night. But anyway, it says, `` . . . 
to release the full and unredacted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance 
Act warrants and related documents used by the FBI to probe his 
campaign, saying he wants to `get to the bottom' of how the long-
running Russia collusion narrative began.
  ``Trump told anchor Sean Hannity that his lawyers previously had 
advised him not to take that dramatic step out of fear that it could be 
considered obstruction of justice. `I do, I have plans to declassify 
and release. I have plans to absolutely release,' Trump said. `I have 
some very talented people working for me, lawyers, and they really 
didn't want me to do it early on. . . . A lot of people wanted me to do 
it a long time ago.' '' I was one of those people.
  He says: ``I'm glad I didn't do it. We got a great result without 
having to do it, but we will. One of the reasons that my lawyers didn't 
want me to do it is, they said, if I do it, they'll call it a form of 
obstruction.''
  Last fall, when I was in the Oval Office along with the President 
talking for a while, and then his personal attorney came in, it seemed 
clear to me that his personal attorney was very concerned about 
declassifying the documents, that it was not the time to do it.
  But there is no reason not to do it now, for sure. These things need 
to come out. We need to see just how badly abused this system was.
  My friend Jerry Nadler is chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary. 
I remember my first term. There was no more vocal advocate on behalf of 
civil liberties and privacy rights. I really hope that our chairman of 
the Committee on the Judiciary will join in with Republicans to try to 
correct this situation.
  Clearly, there are still many people who are working in the Trump 
administration who don't want President Trump to succeed, don't want 
the President to succeed with what he is trying to do, what he promised 
he would do.
  I don't think anybody has to worry about President Trump being 
abusive secretly of somebody's rights. But if this isn't handled now, 
even though Republicans are not in the majority, if we don't clamp down 
on what we see are clear abuses within the DOJ, within the intelligence 
community, with the FISA courts, then we are easily headed for a time 
when somebody else will come in there and they will see how the system 
was abused during the Obama administration.
  I don't know whether that will be a Democrat or a Republican, but I 
am telling you, if we don't clamp down on it now, the abuses will allow 
the arising of a Chavez. It will allow the arising of these people who 
got elected and then became totalitarian.
  I think there is a great deal to the poster that circulated: ``The 
problem with socialism is, you can vote your way into it, but you have 
to shoot your way out of it.''
  That is what they found in Venezuela. They voted it in, but in order 
to have true socialism, you have to move toward totalitarian. You have 
to have such a powerful government. You can take from those who have 
earned and who have worked and give to those who are more desirable to 
have it, according to the government.
  It is interesting that we have billionaires who are contributing 
massive amounts of money to move toward socialism. Obviously, they 
don't know their history well enough to know, that, yeah, they are 
considered good friends of the movement--thank you; you are a hero--but 
then when you move either toward communism--which true communism means 
there is no government. Everybody just shares and shares alike out of 
the goodness of their heart. You never can get there. You got to have a 
totalitarian government. That is why communism doesn't work.
  Socialism, they welcome the help of all the rich people. But once you 
move toward real, true socialism, most of the time, the billionaires, 
they are going to end up in prison or dead and their money confiscated.
  So I am amazed that so many billionaires don't realize they are just 
lackeys who are being appreciated now, but some day, they are going to 
go under the bus, and their money is going to be relieved from them.
  It is a very critical time. As the Mueller investigation has finally 
concluded, having questioned Mr. Mueller numerous times, having done so 
much research on the man I feel like I know him very well--obviously, 
not as well as Eric Holder, who thought he would end up with an 
indictment to keep going.
  I can't help but wonder if we have a new Attorney General who came in 
and realized there is nothing here. After all these subpoenas, tens of 
millions of dollars, it is time to wrap it up.
  I really do think Mueller, left to his own devices, would have just 
kept an investigation going until every potential limitation on 
anything he had done wrong had run out.
  But it is time to reform FISA courts, time to reform DOJ, time to 
reform our intelligence communities so the kind of abuses that have 
just gone on will not continue and Presidents in the future, whether 
Democrat or Republican, will not be tempted to abuse the system, as it 
is now appearing to have been done.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the indulgence. At this time, I yield back 
the balance of my time.

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