[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 59 (Thursday, April 4, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H3093-H3098]
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. Madam Speaker, the bill that was entitled the Violence 
Against Women Act was passed in the House today, and I deeply regret it 
was not the kind of bipartisan bill that I feel like we should have 
had.
  I don't know anybody in this Chamber who supports violence against 
women or who does not want to do what we can to stop it. We battled 
this out verbally in the Judiciary Committee.
  It is so clear to me, having prosecuted sexual assaults of women who 
were battered and beat up badly by their husbands or partners, that it 
is such an egregious thing. I heard over and over as a felony judge in 
Texas about how traumatized the women were and potentially would be for 
the rest of their lives. I heard that, with counseling, they could work 
to avoid having the triggers that put them right back in the place 
where they were so badly abused.
  More recent literature indicates that women who have been sexually 
assaulted seem to have a much higher percent--a number of times, 
apparently--more post-traumatic stress disorder after having been 
sexually abused than even soldiers have after combat. One suggestion in 
a study indicates that because soldiers are trained for what they go 
through, perhaps that reduces the amount of PTSD. There is no adequate 
training to prepare a woman for the kind of abuse that so many have 
suffered.
  One of the triggers that I have heard about as a judge that could 
trigger this trauma, reliving the experience all over again, is a woman 
being in a confined space and having a biological man come in to that 
confined space. We have heard of women assaulting men who have done 
that, some who may have been through sexual assault before.
  I understand the idea of my colleagues across the aisle who want to 
help avoid hurting the feelings of biological men who think they are 
women, or according to the latest rendition of DSM-5, they are 
suffering from gender dysphoria, which is kind of the opposite of 
euphoria, but it basically is a confusion or a discomfort with one's 
biologically assigned gender.
  So I get it. You don't want to make them feel bad. You don't want to 
hurt their feelings. So to avoid hurting their feelings, we would put 
so many women at risk.

  A lot of folks I have heard say that one in four women will be 
sexually assaulted. If that is true, then that means that those who 
voted for this bill today would seek to punish again and again and 
again women who have suffered the outrageous and egregious assault 
sexually or being battered with no way out.
  When my friend across the aisle, Debbie Dingell, speaks of those 
fears and terrors as a child and abuse going on in the home, my heart 
goes out to her and anybody who has suffered like that.
  But this is the United States Congress. Can't we have a bill that 
doesn't have a political aspect and that just tries to do the right 
thing by women who have suffered from sexual assault or being battered, 
and let them have a confined space without a biological man being 
forced into their traumatized world? Couldn't we agree on that? The 
answer is no.
  Debbie Lesko, my friend and colleague also on the Judiciary 
Committee, has been such a victim. She had amendments. She spoke 
brilliantly about the suffering and what needed to be done to fix the 
bill. And yet, it was a political matter. It is too important that we 
not hurt the feelings of men who think they are women. Therefore, we 
are just going to let those women have to suffer. They just need to get 
over their trauma, their PTSD, their reliving the nightmare of a sexual 
assault over and over again. There is more regard for somebody's hurt 
feelings than someone else's. A woman's terror forces them over and 
over through such terror time and time again.
  I read a story about a woman seeing a man and freaking out and 
started to assault him. If a woman has been through a sexual assault 
before, my heart goes to her, not for the guy who walks in and 
traumatized her so.
  Yet if the majority here has their way, that bill would become law. 
Those traumatized women would be condemned to be traumatized repeatedly 
at the demand of the Democratic majority in Congress, in the House 
here.

                              {time}  1330

  I really would have hoped we could have had a bill that we could all, 
of one accord, say: This is right. This is the thing to do by women.
  But we can't get a bill to the floor to try to protect unborn women, 
unborn girls.
  In China, the abortion rate of girls is dramatically higher than that 
of boys, because they think--they haven't been like me and had three 
girls. They don't know how wonderful it is. So they think: Gee, if I am 
only going to be allowed to have one child, I prefer it be a boy.
  And there is outrageous discrimination--a real, true war on women--
going on in China. And China has yet to feel the destructive results of 
what they have required.
  But that is a war, killing an unborn child because she happens to be 
biologically female. But we haven't heard condemnation about such 
practice in this Congress, and that is a legitimate war on women, 
children who were never given the chance to live simply because--not to 
live outside the womb simply because they are biologically women. It's 
very tragic.
  I hope the Senate will use some common sense and have a heart for the 
women who have been victims of assault. And I know. I have seen it. I 
have heard it. As a prosecutor, I was frustrated by it, when a woman 
would come in, beat to a pulp, black and blue, all bruised up and 
scarred. You want to put her husband in prison forever, doing that to 
anybody, and especially a woman who could not defend herself.
  And, time and again--too often, the experts will tell you, those who 
prosecute a lot--the woman will come back and say: You know what, now 
that everything has healed, it is really my fault.
  And they have this idea that somehow they deserved that kind of 
beating when they didn't at all. As a judge, there were so many times 
that I told young children--you could tell they blamed themselves for a 
sexual assault--without the jury around, you need to understand this 
was not your fault. You didn't deserve this. You never did anything to 
deserve it. This was a crime committed against you. You were the 
victim, and don't ever think that you deserved it, or you are the 
guilty party.
  Because it is amazing. Some men have the ability to make their 
victims think they are the ones at fault.
  Yet, for those who suffer the trauma again, having a man confront 
them in a very confined space, they are going to be condemned to relive 
it over and over again. It is very unfortunate.
  Hopefully, wisdom will win out and the Senate will help us have a 
bill that really considers the women and the damage done by the full 
complement, if you want to call it that, of this Violence Against Women 
Act, as it was labeled.

[[Page H3094]]

  We have also heard repeatedly: There is no crisis on the border. It 
is not a national emergency. This is a manufactured emergency.
  We have heard that over and over. We have seen the montages of the 
mainstream media saying: Manufactured crisis. Manufactured crisis.
  Apparently Jeh Johnson, former Secretary of Homeland Security, didn't 
get the memo that he was supposed to come forward and lie, so he 
actually said: Yes, it is a crisis on the border.
  It is a humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis for our Nation's 
security. And it is so out of hand.
  I keep hearing every day from people whose jobs it is to protect 
America and to protect Americans, protect people who are legally here. 
But they are so busy having to get names, whether they are fictitious 
or not. Most of the time there is no proper identification. You have to 
take the person's word, take the information on where they say they 
have relatives.
  I have pointed it out before, but I have been there when, while they 
are going through questions with one end of the group, at the other 
end, they are moving kids: Why don't you take this kid. You take this 
kid, claim it is yours. Oh, here. You take my address. I'll take your 
address.
  These were addresses, apparently, where the drug cartels needed them 
to operate or work in either their drug trafficking or sex trafficking. 
So, under the laws the way they exist now, as the border patrolmen have 
said, you know, the cartels say: We're the logistics. The drug cartels 
get paid, and they hire some person to bring them across the border.
  And the drug cartels, as I have heard them say out there in the 
middle of the night, when it is not on their list of questions to ask, 
but often it gets asked: How much did you pay to be brought into this 
country?
  And when the question is asked: Where did you get that kind of 
money--$5,000, $6,000, $7,000, $8,000. You don't have that. Where did 
you get that money?
  Well, we got so much here, so much there, some sent from the U.S.
  Well, what about the rest?
  They are going to let me work it off when I get where I am going.
  So then, our own Homeland Security, our own HHS, they ship the drug 
cartels' future employees to the place that the cartels want them to 
work.
  So, I would hope that, as people read stories: Oh, no, another meth 
lab busted, and this guy is part of the Mexican drug cartel, and it is 
not in Texas, then that is when people should remember: Oh, yeah, 
that's right. We use tax money to send the cartels' future employees to 
the cities where they want them to work in sex trafficking or drug 
trafficking.
  I mean, an advanced civilization cannot continue to reach its 
potential when we are bringing in the people and paying to put them 
where they can destroy the city, the State, and ultimately our country. 
This is a crisis.
  As I understand, down in the quadrant of Texas, especially down south 
of McAllen, where I have spent so many nights, one was saying: We 
process 1,200 a day, process 13,000 in about 10 days--one area.
  It is incredible. How can an intelligent civilization keep doing that 
to itself in the name of helping our country and helping our neighbors, 
when the fact is that the most compassionate thing Americans could do 
for our neighbors in Mexico is to secure the border completely. Nothing 
comes in, like drugs or women being sex trafficked. And, no, the drug 
cartels are not going to take lightly to it.

  But, you shut down the tens of millions of dollars every year that 
are flowing from the U.S. into Mexico that fund the mass corruption in 
Mexico, then Mexico, in my opinion, would become a top-ten economy in 
the world.
  They have got some of the best natural resources in the world, a 
better geographic location than the United States because they are 
between two continents and two oceans. Their trade ought to be 
astounding.
  And they have got some of the hardest-working people in the world. So 
why aren't they a top economy? It is because of all the money that 
flows across from the United States to the drug cartels in Mexico.
  And, now, a huge source of revenue for them is the money they get 
from sending people across by the thousands each week. It is insane.
  We can't prolong this little experiment in self-government when we 
are providing corrupt drug cartels with the method to take us down and 
to keep Mexico subjugated to their evil intentions.
  An article from CNS News by Terence Jeffrey, April 3 of this year, 
points out that the five Federal district court districts that sit 
along the U.S.-Mexico border were the top five districts in the country 
for the number of defendants they convicted and sentenced to 
imprisonment in fiscal year 2018, according to the data published by 
the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts.
  I have a rather interesting chart here. You see the Western District 
of Texas has had 7,126 individuals convicted as criminals and sentenced 
to prison; the Southern District of Texas, 5,939 people convicted as 
criminals, sentenced to prison; Southern District of California, very 
close, 5,470 convicted criminals sentenced to prison. So, it isn't just 
a wrist slap. Sentenced to prison.
  You have got the District of Arizona, 4,378; District of New Mexico, 
3,923. Of course, Florida is behind them. And there are a lot of people 
coming in illegally there, but it drops off so dramatically. So, you 
see a bigger number of these 30 top sentencing courts have 700 or less, 
and the Western District of Texas has 7,000.
  So why is this? It is because they are border courts, and they are 
dramatically affected by criminals coming across our border.
  As I understand it, one of the MS-13ers that was caught--supposedly, 
for every person we catch coming in illegally, there are many times 
that many that are coming in that we don't catch. No reason to doubt 
that that is true about gang members, gangsters, part of MS-13.
  But, why are we allowing this to go on for ourselves?
  The old saying in Washington is: No matter how cynical you get, it is 
never enough to catch up. And, the more you hang around this town, the 
more you see there is something to that.
  Could it be that a majority in the House don't want to stop this 
because the thinking is: These may be our future hope for being in the 
majority and electing a President?
  Heaven help us if that were the case, that power is more important 
than preserving a union where freedom once abounded.

                              {time}  1345

  Of course, it could never adequately abound as there was slavery.
  I just finished a book about the miracle of Yorktown, focused largely 
on George Washington. And we know he ended up, though he was from a 
State that prohibited the freeing of slaves, he freed the slaves in his 
will.
  But it wasn't until Martin Luther King, Jr.,   John Lewis, and 
others, withstood tremendous oppression in order that a White Christian 
boy like me could grow up and treat my brothers and sisters like 
brothers and sisters. So we have made great progress.
  And then it seemed like, just as we get to the sixties, and the 
Constitution finally is meaning what it says, we start moving in a 
direction that most civilizations, when you read their history, 
actually were moving them to the dustbin of history.
  Here we accomplished so much, and freedom for--we spread it around. 
The Civil Rights Act helped with that. And now we are going to punish 
women who have been victims of assault by forcing them to endure men 
coming into their private spaces.
  We are going to take a country where a massive amount of crime is 
occurring on our border and our border areas--we are overwhelmed with 
people that don't understand that it is a lot of education and a lot of 
work involved in order to preserve self-government.
  So it is not unusual to see socialism become so popular as an idea. 
It sounds wonderful. Everybody's going to share and share alike.
  But then you dig down, and you find out historically, you can't have 
socialism; you can't have communism unless you have a big, powerful 
government, strong enough that it can take from those who earn things 
and give it to those who didn't, without their permission, and punish 
them if they try to object. That takes a big, strong government.

[[Page H3095]]

  And our Founders found actually, if you let people keep what they 
earn, put a small tax on it so you keep order in the country, that that 
is far more productive. That is how the United States has been the 
greatest economy, and still is, in the world.
  But those freedoms are going away. We are no longer ranked as the 
freest country in the world. And as those freedoms diminish, it 
shouldn't be a big surprise that freedoms are diminishing as people 
that don't understand what it takes to preserve liberty and self-
government come in, unabated, virtually. We are not stopping people 
from coming in.
  I am hopeful, prayerful, I hope that we will be able to have our 
government do what has not been done, as far as I know, since Woodrow 
Wilson, and that is, have people on the border, use nonlethal means, 
and say, you are not coming in to our country illegally.
  We ought to have a bipartisan bill passed pretty easily with regard 
to asylum that says, You can't come into the United States and claim 
asylum. You have got to go to the nearest embassy or an American 
embassy, somewhere to claim asylum.
  But if you come into the country illegally, and your first act in 
America involves breaking the law, then we are not going to allow you 
to apply for asylum. And you would see these massive caravans stop 
overnight. That is why there is such fluctuation.
  Earlier last year, numbers were way down. People in other countries 
thought Trump was going to stop them; that we had a President that 
wanted to do all he could to stop illegal immigration, secure the 
border.
  But by the time they found out that his party was not going to be in 
the majority in the House, and that people said they want to eliminate 
all barriers and let people in, anybody that wanted to come here, not 
just the over 1 million that we give visas to, then the numbers picked 
up.
  And when they got word that if you have a child, whether it is yours 
or somebody else's, it doesn't matter, that gets you into the country, 
and keeps you in the country, get a child. Bring a child. That is the 
thing to do.
  It is really outrageous what that has done to children. Now they are 
an important commodity to the drug cartels. Make sure, whoever you are, 
wherever you are coming from, even if you are an MS-13er, bring a kid 
with you, bring a child; because the United States made such a big deal 
about we won't separate children from parents, even though, to American 
citizens, we separate children from parents every single day of the 
year because, in America, at least in the past, we didn't believe in 
putting children in confinement for crimes their parents committed.
  As a judge, I don't know how many warrants I signed, but I would 
never allow a child to be incarcerated because of the alleged crime of 
their parents. We don't do that. So we separate children from their 
parents every day in America, in every county in America, in every 
State in America. It happens all the time, because we don't punish the 
children for the sins of their parents.
  But once word got out that if you come to America illegally with a 
child, you have got a good chance of staying in, claim asylum, the 
courts are backed up, and you have got a good chance of staying for 
years; and once you are here a number of years, just don't show up for 
your asylum hearing, and they won't know where you are, and you will be 
in good shape.
  It has got to stop. The American people expect us to protect them, 
protect the Constitution, and we have not done a good job of that 
because there seems, so often, right here in this room, more devotion 
to people that hate America, that still want to come here, than there 
is to those who are legally here, that are saying, I don't want to be a 
victim of a crime; would you please protect me from people coming in 
illegally that may commit a crime against me.
  And it shouldn't even have to be said, but because we have so many 
``lame stream'' media folks who either are liars by trade, or simply 
that ignorant--no, all immigrants are not criminals or people looking 
to commit crimes such as robbery, rape, destruction, murder; but they 
do happen.

  When you look at the percentages of people in our Federal prison who 
are in the country illegally, an objective bystander looking on would 
go: Wow, why is this country doing that?
  Why are they letting all these people in illegally, when they may 
have 20, 25 percent in their prison who are there because they are in 
the country illegally? Why are they letting that go on?
  And the only answer from an accurate cynic would be, Well, it is for 
politics. They think it is good for one political party, so they keep 
it up.
  That is so dramatic, such a dramatic demonstration of where the real 
problems are in this country.
  And I have heard my friend, now Senator Marsha Blackburn, point out, 
every city in America is now a border city, because of all of the 
illegal aliens that they are having to take care of.
  But an article in the Federalist, by John Daniel Davidson, April 4--
it is actually his testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs Committee--but he says: ``I visited a migrant 
respite center in McAllen, Texas, run by Catholic Charities of the Rio 
Grande Valley, the charitable arm of the Diocese of Brownsville. Sister 
Norman Pimentel helped establish the center in 2014, at the height of 
the unaccompanied minor crisis, when Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement was overwhelmed with thousands of children and teenagers 
turning themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol agents.
  ``At that time, the center was receiving between 60 and 120 migrants 
a day, nearly all of them families from Central America. Here's how it 
worked: Every afternoon, ICE dropped off the families at the Greyhound 
bus station downtown, about a mile from the respite center. Greyhound 
employees would call the center to let them know the migrants were 
there, and the center would send vans to pick them up.
  ``Once at the center, the children would be sent to a separate room 
for a hot meal while the parents took turns working with volunteers to 
get in touch with friends and family members all over the country.''
  Or, as we have seen, sometimes those are not friends and family; they 
are people to which the drug cartels have ordered them.
  ``The goal was to get them all bus tickets and get them on their way 
that same day, usually later that evening, because the next day there 
would be another group of families coming in, and there simply wasn't 
space for more than a couple dozen people to spend the night there.
  ``This wasn't some gleaming facility. The center occupied one half of 
a rundown commercial building, consisting of a large multipurpose room, 
a bathroom and a shower, a small kitchen, and a separate room for the 
makeshift cafeteria. There was an area in a corner of the main room 
cordoned off for young children to play and a large stack of blue 
plastic mattresses in another corner.''
  Anyway, ``in December, the diocese moved the center to a larger 
location, a former nursing home, about 16,000 square feet. . . . that's 
because the number of migrants turning up at the bus station 
skyrocketed. Today, the new respite center is receiving about 800 
people a day''--800 people a day--``sometimes more. Last Sunday, 1,300 
people were dropped off there and at other shelters around town.''
  I mean, this is what is going on on our border, when we are the most 
generous country in the world.
  Some people even in this room will shout: You know, we are a Nation 
of immigrants. That is right. And that is why we are so--we are the 
most generous country in the world when it comes to giving free passes 
into America. Nobody gives a million or more visas for legal entry into 
their country. Nobody. Not these countries that are geographically 
bigger. Not countries that have a number of times the population. No, 
nobody is that generous as we are with letting immigrants in.
  So it is outrageous to say, because we want to limit those coming in 
to the very--the most generous number in the world, that we say come in 
legally, what is wrong with that?
  As has been said before, a nation with no borders will not be a 
nation much longer. Not for long.
  But, we find out, yeah, it is a moneymaker. It is a moneymaker for 
the drug cartels. Some people profit off the people coming in here 
illegally. The people that work here, either from

[[Page H3096]]

drugs or legitimate businesses, they send an awful lot of money home, 
and that is the kind of people we want, people that care about their 
families, want to help them provide, make their way. That is a very 
noble thing to send money home to family. Unfortunately, that is not 
all the people that are coming in these days.
  I want to touch on one other matter, and that's with regard to the 
special counsel. I know there are people, the House and Senate, that 
say, Oh, you know, Robert Mueller is the gold standard when it comes to 
prosecutor. I submit that is some pretty tarnished gold with an awful 
lot of impurities, speaking metaphorically.

                              {time}  1400

  So I wasn't surprised when we learned that the Mueller report 
indicated, really, there is plenty of evidence Russians were trying to 
get the Trump campaign to conspire with them; no evidence they did 
conspire with the Russians.
  Through the years of questioning Robert Mueller in our committee and 
doing a lot of research on the man, it would explain why I was so upset 
when he was appointed as special counsel, because I wanted somebody who 
would be fair and investigate all parts. But when we look back now, we 
see all the indictments that came as a result of having a special 
counsel, not one single one of the indictments involved a conspiracy of 
any kind between anybody at the Trump campaign, including our 
President, and Russia.
  What we have learned from all the evidence we have gleaned in 
committee and in public is that there was a conspiracy, and it involved 
top people at the Department of Justice; it involved top people at the 
FBI; it involved the Clinton campaign; it involved Fusion GPS; it 
involved a foreign agent named Steele. He is a foreign agent.
  And, by the way, our great Justice Department, such as it is--or was 
in the last couple years--never bothered to tell the FISA court: This 
man has no credibility with the FBI. We have stopped using him as an 
agent of our government, the foreign agent that he is, because he is 
not trustworthy.
  Never bothered to tell the judge that.
  And I don't know if it was one FISA judge or more, but the fact is 
that the FISA judges, nobody has punished any of the applicants, or 
affiants, that have come in and sworn before them that this is true to 
the best of their knowledge.
  That was a lie. They didn't give the judge the best of their 
knowledge. It was a lie and they knew it, and they did it four times.
  I have lost respect for whoever in the FISA court would not call 
those lawyers in, or the FBI agents, and say: You lied to me when you 
didn't tell me the full truth. You committed a fraud on my court, and 
now I need to decide how long I am putting you in jail.
  They haven't done that. That tells me we either need to get rid of 
the FISA courts or we need to have such a big overhaul because they 
have gotten too comfortable in that star chamber.
  And I know all of them haven't, because I know there are some good 
judges who have been nominated, confirmed by the Senate, and sit on 
Federal benches. I know there are plenty of good ones. I have got too 
many good friends not to know that. But we at least have some who don't 
care when they are lied to if it furthers their own political ideas, 
because that is the bottom line.
  Why would the FISA court or courts that have been lied to, had fraud 
against the court, why would they not have already punished the people 
who committed the fraud against their court?
  It seems to me it has got to be one of two reasons:
  They must be dishonest people; therefore, they don't mind being lied 
to; or
  They were so politically aligned with the people who were committing 
the fraud upon their court that they are fine with the fraud because it 
helped accomplish their political agenda as well as the ones who 
committed the fraud.
  We need to do something about the FISA courts. It is a real problem.
  I know there are a lot of people who think: Well, no, it is not 
really a problem because it has only been abused against Republicans, 
and we hate Donald Trump, didn't want him to be President, and so it is 
okay for them to abuse the FISA court system and the warrant system and 
the First and Fourth and Fifth and Sixth Amendments. It is okay to 
abuse those because we don't like the people being abused.
  But there is a reason that we have an adversarial system. With all 
its flaws, it is the best there has ever been anywhere when it comes to 
justice. We are not supposed to allow the kind of thing that has now 
happened.
  I was not surprised when Mueller couldn't help himself, Weissmann 
couldn't help himself: Yeah, the evidence is not there to prosecute 
anybody, but we want you to know we are not exonerating him.
  Well, that is not a prosecutor's job. If a prosecutor learns that a 
crime has most likely--has probably been committed and that a person 
has probably committed it and they find out a crime has been committed, 
they look for a person who probably committed the crime. That is the 
job.
  When you find the person, you gather enough evidence that you can 
have probable cause that they committed the crime. You get them 
indicted. You pursue them, prosecute them, convict them, sentence them. 
That is how it is supposed to work.
  A prosecutor is not supposed to ever go into something to exonerate 
somebody. You don't go into it looking for evidence that exonerates 
somebody. You are looking for evidence that shows they are guilty. And 
if you don't find evidence that establishes they are guilty, then you 
are supposed to move on; although, Mueller has had a problem with that.
  We also have seen the history, whether it was Comey admitting that--
it sounded like he admitted a crime, because he leaked information that 
he knew should not have been disclosed to a professor so that he would 
get it to The New York Times so that they could have a justification 
for appointing a special prosecutor. Wow.
  You have got 18 U.S.C. 1905, disclosure of confidential information. 
That is a general provision. It is a felony to disclose confidential 
information. You have got other laws.
  Well, this from the DOJ, their own regulations. If you look at 1-
7.110, it says: ``It is against the law to disclose classified 
information to someone not authorized to receive it.''
  But that has gone on during the years Mueller was head of the FBI.
  We have had FBI agents make clear: No way we could prosecute a Member 
of Congress without the knowledge and okay of the Director of the FBI.

  That would be Mueller when they were pursuing Ted Stevens, Senator. 
They fabricated a case against the man. He had evidence he was not just 
not guilty, but completely innocent.
  But you do your investigation. You gather up all the evidence that 
would show somebody is innocent, completely innocent, 100 percent 
innocent, and you don't let them have all their stuff back and you 
manufacture evidence. You threaten a witness to get them to lie so you 
can convict somebody. That happened to Ted Stevens.
  When I first heard, gee, he had added a $700,000 addition to his 
home, something like that, I am going, well, he should have known 
better than that. Surely you are going to try a guy for that.
  Well, it turns out he overpaid. He even told the contractor: Just 
cash my checks. I have to overpay, because they are watching everything 
I do, and I have got to keep my nose clean.
  They still went after him and convicted him immediately before an 
election that he narrowly lost.
  Thank God there was an FBI agent with a conscience who did an 
affidavit so the judge found out that the prosecutor, the FBI, had 
framed Ted Stevens for a crime he didn't commit.
  Those people should have been disbarred. They should have been thrown 
out of the FBI. But the only guy forced out was the one who did the 
affidavit, because Mueller--obviously, it had to be done with his 
knowledge, that you run the guy off that had a conscience and reported 
it to the court and you keep on the FBI agent that helped fabricate the 
case against the longest serving Republican in the Senate at the time.
  He wouldn't have been on that plane where he was killed if it hadn't 
been for Mueller's FBI and the framing of

[[Page H3097]]

Ted Stevens. So he lost his seat in the Senate, even though he was 
later exonerated.
  And, of course, you know, we have these repeated examples. I am not 
even going to go back into the Whitey Bulger situation when Mueller was 
in Boston.
  But, you know, Curt Weldon, serving here in the House, he was giving 
speeches right here over and over about the FBI could have stopped 9/
11.
  I didn't know what he was saying, whether it was true or not. He 
talked about a program Able Danger, but I sure did feel like Mueller 
needed to respond, because this was a serious allegation against his 
FBI.
  Unbeknownst to me, he was going to respond, but not with a statement 
that Curt Weldon was wrong. No. What they did, and I put the story--I 
have got a lot of examples. I was doing an op-ed so people would know 
some about Mueller that I know and had found out and read about.
  Anyway, I started an op-ed. I let my friend Sean Hannity know: I am 
doing an op-ed on Mueller, and normally papers only want 500, 800 
words, max, for an op-ed, and I am already at 2,000.
  Sean said: Just do it.
  And, you know, it doesn't make me a dime in my case as a Member of 
Congress, but I felt like the story needed to get out. So Sean said: 
Well, yeah, we can put it up on the Internet. People can download it.
  It ended up being 48 pages, but one of the things I brought out was 
Curt Weldon's situation.
  So I will read from the story that I included. This was from an 
article by WND: ``Each of Weldon's 10 previous reelections had been by 
sizeable margins. Polls showed he was up by five to seven points in the 
fall of 2006. Three weeks prior to the election, however, a national 
story ran about Weldon based upon anonymous sources''--they had to have 
come from the FBI--``that an investigation was underway against him and 
his daughter, alleging illegal activities involving his congressional 
work.''
  A week after the news story broke, alleging a need to act quickly 
because of the leak--and, see, this is typical for Mueller and his 
crime team. They leak information and then tell the judge: We have got 
to do something quick because this information is getting out.
  Yeah. You leaked it.
  Just like when they used this dossier. I used to have respect for 
dossiers. Now it is a pejorative. But it was prepared by a foreign 
agent named Christopher Steele, hired by the Clinton campaign, using 
Fusion GPS, using others like Nellie Ohr, wife of FBI top official 
Bruce Ohr, and they used this guy's dossier. Information from 
Christopher Steele's dossier, as fabricated as it was, was provided to 
a reporter who did a story about it.
  It was one of the other frauds upon the court. They tell the court: 
See, not only do we have this information from Christopher Steele, a 
foreign agent that is untrustworthy--unfortunately, they didn't tell 
the judge that. They knew it, but they didn't tell it.
  And they said: And look here. Here is a story that also has this 
information that corroborates Christopher Steele--not bothering to tell 
the judge, actually, that is Christopher Steele corroborating 
Christopher Steele. And he didn't even--he just talked to people in 
Russia.

                              {time}  1415

  So, you got a foreign agent using foreign agents. Who knows who they 
worked for. Maybe Putin. So a foreign agent using foreign agents in 
Russia, as he worked for the Clinton Foundation, Fusion GPS, to prepare 
opposition research that was not true against the opposing campaign for 
president.
  So they didn't bother to tell the judge then here in Curt Weldon's 
case. It must have been somebody from the FBI leaked that they were 
going after Curt Weldon that helped them get the media involved and a 
judge to sign off on a warrant.
  And, gee, when they show up early in the morning at 7 a.m., before 
business on a Monday morning--local TV and print media had all been 
alerted about the raid--well, who would have done that, but the FBI 
agents or maybe Mueller or one of his minions. They leaked to the 
media: They are all out there and they were in position to cover the 
story.
  Within hours, Democratic protestors were waving ``Caught Red-Handed'' 
signs outside Curt Weldon's district office. But it turns out there was 
no follow-up, there were no questions, no grand jury investigation, 
nothing.
  That is why they later called Curt Weldon's family and said: Hey, all 
that stuff we got in our raid, you know, you can come get it. 
Apparently, we didn't use it in a grand jury investigation.
  No, they just used it to defeat Curt Weldon.
  So, it shouldn't be a surprise when Mueller's report said: We didn't 
have evidence of a crime by the Trump administration or Trump campaign 
regarding collusion or any of that, but we didn't exonerate him.
  Well, no, that is not your job. Of course, you don't exonerate 
somebody.
  But as special counsel--it sure seemed just like Comey, these guys 
that were all in tight. You know, Comey, there was a great article some 
years back about basically he and Mueller are joined at the hip.
  What a great gift for Mueller, though. He is begging President Trump 
to appoint him again back to being director of the FBI after Comey was 
fired based on Rosenstein's memo. And the President said: No, I am not 
going to give you a job.
  Twenty-four hours later, he grabs a job that will allow him to go 
after the man who wouldn't hire him as FBI director.
  Mueller, if he had any sense of decency, he would have told 
Rosenstein: Look, you and I, Rosenstein, Rod, we were involved in the 
original Russia investigation when we know Russia was trying to get 
uranium illegally. We really shouldn't be involved in this Russia 
investigation. It may bleed over. And the President is supposed to 
investigate. He wouldn't hire me yesterday. That will look bad.
  But you would have thought a man of decency would have recused 
himself, which Mueller did not do. There are so many reasons for both 
him, Rosenstein, and certainly Weissman--they were all involved in that 
original Russia investigation on uranium that they put a lid on so that 
the sale could go through, because, let's face it, the Clinton 
Foundation wouldn't have gotten that $145 million from the people 
profiting from the uranium sale of U.S. uranium, ultimately to Russia. 
It wouldn't have happened.
  But Mueller not only did not recuse himself, he accepted the job and 
immediately went about hiring people that hated Trump like he did. That 
is not the mark of a real man of justice, a real person of justice.
  And he had a policy, when he was FBI director, the 5-year up-or-out 
policy, that caused us to lose, as was previously reported, thousands 
and thousands of years of experience. Why? If you got people 
experienced, they can tell you when you are screwing up, doing 
something wrong as FBI director. He just wanted young people who would 
salute the flag and do whatever he said. Very unfortunate.
  So he brought down Ted Stevens. He brought down Curt Weldon. And what 
about Dr. Steven Hatfill? I mean, the story was that President Bush 
called him in--There is no evidence that Hatfill had anything to do 
with this anthrax. Why are you still after it? Are you sure he is the 
guy? And Mueller said: I am 100 percent certain; is what was reported.
  And that is because, as the saying goes, normally Mueller--well, I 
guess the saying is: Often wrong, but never in doubt.
  He tells President Bush: I am 100 percent certain. Yes, Hatfill is 
the guy.
  He wasn't the guy. And that is why it cost the government a $6 
million or such settlement for destroying his life.
  If you look at Scooter Libby, Scooter Libby was framed, let's face 
it. And there is a great story explaining all that, in fact, how Judith 
Miller was manipulated. That poor person suffered as a result of trying 
to do the right thing. But she was ultimately persuaded that Scooter 
Libby said something he didn't. And she later, as it said, when Miller 
read Plame's own memoir, in there discovered that Plame had worked at a 
State Department bureau as a cover for a real CIA role. That discovery, 
in Miller's words, left her cold. The idea that the bureau, in her 
notebook, meant CIA had been planted in her head by Fitzgerald or the 
FBI. It was a strange word to use for the CIA. Reading Plame's memoir,

[[Page H3098]]

Miller realized that bureau was in brackets because it related to her 
work at the State Department. In other words, she shouldn't have 
testified against Scooter Libby. She was set up and manipulated and, as 
a result, a good man's life was destroyed.
  But you will find, Mueller never apologizes when he always gets his 
man. It is just sometimes it is wrong. It needs more investigation. Not 
the Trump administration, but Mueller.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________