[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 146 (Thursday, September 12, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H7697-H7702]
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, there is a lot going on today, a lot going 
on this week. I wish I could say it was all good, but we spent until 10 
p.m. the night before last working on bills that would find ways to 
take people's guns away and, unfortunately, not give them the kind of 
due process that we think the Constitution affords people.
  During my days as, well, a prosecutor and as a felony judge, 
thousands of criminal cases went through my court. I don't remember 
anywhere a criminal defendant bought his gun at a sporting goods store, 
gun store, applied for a gun. That is not the way criminals work.
  And so I didn't see anything in our hours and hours and hours of 
committee hearings trying to amend bad bills with good amendments that 
the majority didn't allow to be passed. We thought they might be 
joining us on some. They said they would look at some, but, basically, 
defeated every amendment.
  Today, we met in the Judiciary Committee at 8 a.m. to take up a semi, 
sort of, kind of, a bit of an impeachment resolution. We had amendments 
that would have made a bad resolution a little better--still not good--
but we had a hard time figuring out, on the Republican side: What is 
this?
  It sounds like--in Texas, we would say we're fixing to do something. 
A lot of times people say, ``I am fixing to do that,'' but it means it 
may get put off and I may not really be serious, because if I was 
really serious, I would do it right now.
  But this resolution--and I have it here--it, in the first paragraph, 
talks about the committee making discovery requests. But the second 
paragraph is really the one that deals with allegations that would be 
an impeachable offense, or offenses--at least, it is supposed to.
  And so it says: ``Whereas, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report 
released on April 18, 2019, found that the Russian Government 
interfered in the 2016 election in `sweeping and systematic fashion.'''
  Okay. But the Mueller report made very, very clear, and those who 
investigated, I thought, made it very clear there was no collusion or, 
to use the legal term, conspiracy by anyone in the Trump campaign with 
the Russian Government--none. That part didn't happen.
  Even though we have networks like CNN and MSNBC, and I don't know who 
all else, but for 2 or 3 years they have talked about the crimes of 
this President and their collusion with Russia.
  Well, when people who have law degrees talked about collusion between 
the Trump campaign and Russia, that immediately sent up red flags with 
me because that is not--``collusion'' is not a legal term that is used 
in talking about crimes; it is conspiracy. And so it immediately begins 
to raise questions.
  Are they really serious about some type of crime? Because if they 
were, they would use words that are used in criminal terminology.
  But here, this is a completely deceptive allegation when it comes to 
President Trump because they take this initial allegation and say 
Mueller found that the Russians really were trying to interfere in our 
2016 election.
  Okay. But it didn't involve anybody in the Trump campaign. That was 
clear.
  So they tried to brush over that and make it sound like, yeah, even 
though there was nobody, President Trump or the Trump campaign who were 
involved at all, but we are going to kind of word this, put it in the 
same sentence so that it kind of sounds like,

[[Page H7698]]

yeah, President Trump was involved with Russia, because then it jumps 
into another gear.
  It says, ``that there were at least 10 separate episodes of President 
Trump using his official powers to''--and here is the word--``thwart or 
attempt to thwart the special counsel's investigation.''

                              {time}  1315

  And that is also very troubling language for those of us that have 
dealt with legal terminology in criminal cases. I don't know of anybody 
that has dealt with criminal cases. I didn't hear from anybody on the 
committee that has ever heard of a crime involving thwarting. We are 
familiar with obstruction of justice. But these are the kind of games 
you play with words when you know, yes, there is no evidence a crime 
was committed, but maybe if we use different terminology it will sound 
like some kind of bad crime was committed. And clearly, we are not 
going to be able to remove a President from office with the Senate 
understanding that even the Mueller report, even the Mueller special 
counsel team that had all these people that hated Donald Trump, they 
still couldn't find anything that would be indictable.
  Now, some say, Well, but there was obstruction of justice. We even 
had one, I would say, incompetent law professor come before our 
committee and say she could guarantee that she could get a conviction 
and win on appeal. Well, I have tried enough cases in State and Federal 
court and in the Army that I know--and I have told people that were 
looking for lawyers in my days as a judge--I couldn't recommend a 
lawyer, but I would warn people--if you ever hear a lawyer who tries 
cases who says they can guarantee you a win in a trial, then that 
lawyer is either totally incompetent or is one of the biggest liars in 
the legal profession. I don't know which one this professor was. I got 
the impression she just really didn't know what she was talking about, 
because no one swears, Oh, yes, I can guarantee you, you know, I can 
win this case at trial and on appeal. That is not a good lawyer. That 
is somebody who doesn't know what they are talking about.
  What we have found now after thousands and thousands of interviews, 
subpoenas, documents, millions of documents, there was no crime. And 
the reason there was no obstruction of justice by President Trump or 
anybody that was assisting him is because the President made very clear 
as soon as he heard about some collusion, conspiracy, whatever you want 
to call it with Russia to rig the election, he knew he never colluded. 
He knew that he never conspired, nor did anybody in his campaign 
conspire with Russia to affect the election. That never happened, and 
he knew it.
  But he could see from what these 17 or so people on the special 
counsel's team were trying to do. They were trying to frame him. And 
this guy that was dishonored and was no longer respected by MI6 that he 
used to work for in England and there was information that he was 
discredited, not just his information, but he had been discredited, but 
that is who was hired by Fusion GPS, that was hired apparently by the 
Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to try to dredge 
up dirt on candidate Donald Trump so that they could rig the election 
against Donald Trump.
  And we have gotten to the bottom of it, almost. We know that 
Christopher Steele is the one that didn't just collude, he conspired 
with people in Russia who he ultimately had to admit, yes, it is quite 
possible they could have been working for Vladimir Putin. So 
Christopher Steele, it appears most likely he was the one that was 
conspiring with people from Russia, sounds like Putin's agents, to try 
to destroy Donald Trump.
  And there has been noise made about, oh, gee, you know, Russia really 
wanted Donald Trump to win. That is not the way Vladimir Putin thinks. 
He wants the old Soviet empire back. It really bugs me when educated 
people say, you know, he is such a complicated guy. No, he isn't. He is 
one of the most easily discernable people in the world. He wants the 
old empire back. He is a former KGB guy, and he will do whatever it 
takes to try to get it back. I don't think he cared so much who won the 
election. He wanted to divide America, and lo and behold, he was able 
to see the Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, the Clinton campaign, DNC, 
they were able to take all this information that were nothing but lies 
in the dossier--they have even given dossier a bad name--and divide 
America.
  And at least one political party in America has been totally willing 
to be complicit to help divide America over a bunch of lies in a 
dossier that was created as political fodder when it became very clear 
very quickly to those who had paid for the dossier that it was not only 
not verifiable, the person that gathered the information didn't really 
know the people, the Russians that gave him the lies about Donald 
Trump, and that got taken before a FISA court to get a warrant to spy 
on a campaign; to wit, the Trump campaign. That is scary stuff; when 
one administration can use the powers of the office of President, the 
Intel community, the FBI, the Department of Justice, use all those 
powers to destroy another campaign. And as Newt Gingrich has pointed 
out, if Ms. Clinton had won, we would have never known how corrupted 
and weaponized the DOJ and FBI had become.
  And I know there are some of my friends here in Congress on our side 
of the aisle that think Michael Horowitz is doing a good job, because 
look at all the evidence of wrongdoing, bias, all this that he has 
found. Well, if you look at the most recent report, just like the first 
one, in the first report Horowitz found--and he was a good Obama 
appointee as inspector general there at the Department of Justice, good 
Democrat, good appointee.
  And so he does his digging, finds hundreds of pages of the most 
outrageous political bias--it's actually a personal hatred for Donald 
Trump and absolute love and affection for candidate Hillary Clinton--so 
much overwhelming bias, and every conclusion that these biased, 
prejudiced, bigoted investigators had was 100 percent consistent with 
all of their conclusions. That speaks for itself.
  Now, if half of their conclusions had gone against their bias and 
prejudice, bigotry, then you would say, well, you know, maybe it really 
didn't affect the outcomes of their investigations. But when every 
conclusion is consistent with the bias and prejudice, even though it is 
clear, like in the case of the investigation into the Clinton emails, 
you had Strzok and Page examining emails, and they were making the 
calls on whether documents are classified, knowing full well if they 
said something was classified that Hillary Clinton was being set up 
legitimately to be indicted and convicted. So they wanted Hillary 
Clinton to win. They wanted to do whatever they could to stop Donald 
Trump from winning, and if he didn't win, as they said, they needed an 
insurance policy, you know, just in case he won.

  And Horowitz did a grave injustice within the Justice Department, and 
he says there is no indication that all that bias had anything to do 
with the outcomes of the cases. That is just garbage. He is being 
disingenuous. He wasn't doing his job in his conclusions. And I know 
there were a lot of Republicans that said, Yes, okay, but, boy, when he 
investigated, when that report comes out on Comey, it is going to end 
up sending him to prison.
  Well, Comey did leak information that he should not. He did keep 
documents that he was not permitted to keep. He secreted them, kept 
them after he had left government service. He is not allowed to do 
that. And the biggest thing about those and whether or not they were 
felonies that would put him in jail would be: Was this information 
classified and at what level?
  And we find out, you know, on page one and two of the Horowitz IG 
report, the FBI investigated, and the FBI determined that this wasn't 
classified; the FBI this and that. And you have to wait 40 pages to see 
who he means by the FBI. Well, it turns out, the two most important 
people, because they had the most experience in analyzing documents to 
determine their classification level, it was a couple named Peter 
Strzok and Lisa Page. And he has the gall, Horowitz does, to even point 
out--to try to get more credibility to Strzok and Page's work on 
deciding whether Comey should go to prison, because they were 
classified at a high level. He said, Oh, but they had

[[Page H7699]]

more experience, because they did all this work on the Clinton emails 
determining whether those were classified or not.
  For heaven's sake, somebody needs to wake up. Michael Horowitz does 
not need to be doing the investigation. Maybe let him do the 
investigation, but he doesn't need to be doing the reports. In a lot of 
places people would say he doesn't know sic `em from come here when it 
comes to proper conclusions. It is outrageous.
  And he justified not having them re-examined because time was of the 
essence 2 years ago in 2017, back before Strzok and Page were fired. 
But not to worry, because a guy named Bill Priestap was going to rubber 
stamp whatever Strzok and Page decided on classifications.
  There was another unit chief. Didn't give us that name. That tells 
you something right there.
  But Priestap was supposed to have the final decision, apparently 
rubber stamp whatever our experienced Strzok and Page decided when they 
knew full well if they classified things at a certain level that it 
meant Jim Comey was going to prison.
  So they did Comey a favor. And so then Horowitz, he didn't want to 
have them rereviewed for proper classification away from the bias of 
Strzok and Page and Priestap that--you know, there were reports of him 
going to London trying to help out Steele's credibility.
  So Horowitz said time was of the essence, so nobody reconsidered the 
classification that the bigoted bias and prejudice of Page and Strzok 
would not be determinative.
  And I know that people, Republicans, many of them are saying, well, 
look, there is no question that McCabe lied, perjured, he should end up 
going to prison. But I am telling you as a history buff, a historian, 
if you would, it is true. History is often the best indicator of what 
someone will do in the future.

                              {time}  1330

  The indications are that Obama's IG, Horowitz, will find some 
terrible things, but he will do it in such a way that he will give not 
only Comey, Strzok, and Page a get-out-of-jail-free pass, but he will 
do that with McCabe and with anybody else he is investigating, because 
that is his history. He knows which side his bread is buttered on and 
who is doing the buttering, who got him in the position he is in.
  We end up now being told, well, this isn't a formal impeachment 
hearing, the investigation we started today in the Judiciary Committee. 
Then, toward the end of our hearing, we heard from two different 
Democrats who wanted to go on record to make it very, very clear that 
this was an impeachment hearing, an impeachment investigation.
  That is what it is. It is not just a resolution for investigative 
procedures, as it says here on the resolution.
  There was so much fraud involved in this case. I am not talking about 
from anybody with the Trump campaign. I am talking about a guy like 
James Comey who should have known better. He swore and apparently 
verified the application and affidavit information to go before the 
FISA court so he could get a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, all 
while he was lying to the President about him not being under 
investigation and also trying to set the President up by doing little 
memos.
  I hope and pray one of the things that comes out of all this 
Department of Justice, FBI, and intel abuse is a practice the FBI has 
had for years. It is section 302, where FBI agents, after they do an 
interview, they sit down and type up their own version of what they 
think or what they recall a witness said. Most of the ones I have seen 
over the years in my different roles in the justice system appear to be 
very accurate. But it is a problem when every other local and State law 
enforcement entity I am aware of, when they want credibility for a 
statement, they record it.
  I saw it from juries in my court. ``Look, you are telling us this is 
what the defendant said. Why didn't you record it so we could see for 
ourselves, hear for ourselves, see the body language?''
  That is why local governments all over the country have come up with 
billions of dollars altogether so that they can make sure that they get 
video and audio of someone being questioned, so there is no question 
what they say.
  But not at the FBI. Oh, no. They will talk to a witness and then 
write out their own version of what is said. Thankfully, most of them 
do a great job, but it also allows unscrupulous FBI or DOJ officials, 
as now we have seen existed under the Obama Justice Department, it 
allows them to twist the FBI's or the DOJ's version of what a witness 
says and use that, as they have thousands and thousands of times, I 
don't know how many times, to convict people, saying, ``This is what he 
said because I wrote it down in my own notes after I did the 
interview.''
  ``Really? Well, let's see the video. Let's hear the audio.''
  ``Well, we don't do that at the FBI. We only write down our version 
of what is said because we really would rather you hear our version and 
not the defendant's version of what he said, because we get more 
credibility than any defendant.''
  At least that used to be the way it was. But I hope one of the things 
that will come out of all of this is, in order for the FBI to get back 
the credibility they used to have as the greatest law enforcement 
agency in the world, they are going to need to start doing audio and 
video so that we can see what a witness said, hear what they said for 
ourselves, and so that juries can hear that and judges can see and hear 
that. But we don't have that here.
  People like the biased Strzok and Page, who hated Trump and loved 
Hillary Clinton, when you talk about obstruction of justice, I don't 
know how you can be more obstructive than to get a subpoena for emails 
and then BleachBit, take all the stuff off so nobody can ever see and 
then beat up with hammers cellphones and whatever you need to, to 
destroy the evidence. That would seem to be a classic case of 
obstruction.
  Fortunately, for people involved with Hillary Clinton, it was Strzok 
and Page on the job, so they didn't see anything, didn't hear anything 
that might resemble something that should be prosecuted.
  But we end up today with this resolution that the majority passed 
without allowing any amendments, and they used this word ``thwart,'' 
that the President used his official powers to thwart or attempt to 
thwart. Nobody has ever been convicted of thwarting.
  You just can imagine, say the Democrats got exactly what they wanted 
and were able to impeach or charge President Trump with thwarting an 
official investigation. It goes to the Senate. They get what they want, 
and President Trump is removed. Years down the road, they say, ``You 
used to be President. You were removed? What were you removed for?''
  ``Well, I was a thwarter, apparently. I have been branded a 
thwarter.''
  Maybe we ought to put a ``T'' on their head so everybody knows: Here 
comes a thwarter.
  The only thing he was thwarting, if at all, is massive injustice from 
the Justice Department. He knew he had not conspired with anybody in 
Russia, nor had anybody in his campaign.
  The evidence has borne that out. Even Mueller, Weissman, the people 
who hated the President, had to come around to saying they couldn't 
find any evidence of them conspiring with Russia.
  Nonetheless, we still have to go through this hearing today, and I am 
sure there will be other hearings.
  The truth is, President Donald Trump never obstructed or thwarted 
justice. He knew that if there was true justice, this effort to frame 
him for colluding with the Russians would be found false and would be 
found to be a frame-up job. He wanted justice.
  The DOJ could never convict someone of obstructing justice when all 
they did was what they could to ensure that an injustice did not occur. 
They were seeking justice to make sure there wasn't a successful frame-
up. That is not obstructing or thwarting justice. That is seeking 
justice. But there certainly were people inside the DOJ who were doing 
what they could to inflict an injustice on President Trump.

  So here we go into this impeachment exercise that started today.
  I think about those in England who would say, ``God save the Queen,'' 
``God save the King.'' God save this Republic.

[[Page H7700]]

  We are in a lot of trouble when we have caught the Justice Department 
red-handed trying to impose a massive injustice, conspiring to do so, 
even having an Acting Attorney General who we found out from the emails 
this week--and some of us knew this because we knew from other 
information that Rosenstein, the Acting Attorney General, did not just 
once say sarcastically: I will wear a wire. I can get into the White 
House. I will wear a wire and record the President.
  Then, they could try to remove him under the 25th Amendment for not 
being competent. They formulated a response to act like he was being 
sarcastic when everybody there knew he was not being sarcastic.
  Apparently, from what I understood, the reason he brought that up is 
because others there in the meeting were mad at him. They said: You 
have been helping the President instead of helping us get the 
President. You wrote that memo that gave him a basis to fire Comey. 
Whose side are you on?
  That is the kind of context where Rosenstein says: Look, I will wear 
a wire if you want.
  He wanted to show that he was an Obama team player, a Sally Yates 
team player, a Loretta Lynch team player, that he was not a Trump team 
player: I will even wear a wire and go in.
  That wasn't the only place he brought it up. He brought it up at 
another meeting, such that McCabe went back and told people: You know, 
Rosenstein brought it up again. He still says he is willing to wear a 
wire.
  That is because Rosenstein was trying to convince them he was a good 
team player and would go set up and try to frame the President to help 
remove him from office.
  That is not all that has gone on this week. We had the vote today. 
The House has voted to eliminate the tiny, little part of ANWR where 
Jimmy Carter said that drilling would be allowed.
  Now, this is Jimmy Carter who says everybody is supposed to wear a 
cardigan and turn your temperature in winter way down, wear a sweater, 
you know, shiver a little bit. It is okay because we are going to save 
energy.
  Even he said it is right that part of ANWR, that tiny, little part of 
that huge area, nothing is there, so it is not going to affect any 
wildlife, really, so that can be an area that can be drilled.
  Since then, Democrats have done all they could to put it off-limits. 
Sometimes you see these pictures of all this wildlife, this beautiful, 
pristine area. Well, if that is what you see, that isn't the part of 
ANWR where drilling would be allowed.
  We can get a little perspective on the size. There was another poster 
up here somewhere. It has a map of how big Alaska is, and then it has 
the size of ANWR. Then there is a red dot that you can't see more than 
a few feet away that is the tiny, little part, comparatively, where 
drilling would be allowed.
  There are people here in this body who are absolutely wonderful 
people, friends on both sides of the aisle. Some of my Democratic 
friends, I know they would never lie to me. They are honest people. We 
just have disagreements on things.
  One of the most honorable people I ever knew in this body was 
chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee back initially when 
Democrats took the majority in January 2007. He wanted socialized 
medicine. We disagreed on that. But I knew the man's heart. He wanted 
to help poor people.

                              {time}  1345

  That is why he didn't want to pass the cap-and-trade bill, because he 
knew it would cause the price of energy to skyrocket. And he knew it 
was a tough blow to the Nation's poor, to our senior citizens on 
Medicare, but especially on Social Security, a fixed income. If you 
start skyrocketing the price of energy to those folks, it is 
devastating.
  That is why John did not want to pass the cap-and-trade bill. He 
wanted to do everything he could to help poor people. That was his 
nature. He knew if you start doing this kind of stuff for the rich with 
energy prices--gasoline, electricity, propane, and those things going 
up--it is an inconvenience, but for those on a fixed income, it is 
absolutely devastating.
  America, under the Trump administration, has been allowed to gather 
up more of our own blessed energy sources. The economy gets better. 
More people are working now than ever. Unemployment is the lowest it 
has ever been for minorities since they started recording those 
numbers. It is fantastic. Energy prices have come down low, and it has 
been stabilized because we are finding so much of our own energy and 
using it.
  We disagree about a lot of things on both sides of the aisle. I don't 
know anybody who serves in this body on either side of the aisle who 
doesn't want a clean environment. But those who know our history of the 
world know that, if you have a struggling economy, the number one thing 
that suffers, besides the people, is the environment.
  In China, that government, as big and totalitarian as it can be, they 
know if people get laid off and are not working, they could have 
another revolution, and they don't want that. They are more concerned 
about people being busy and working and having money than they are 
about the environment.
  In India, they are scared to death of too many people not being able 
to work or have income.
  We get all of this pollution from the other side of the world. I 
heard today that 85 percent, somebody said, of the pollution that we 
have in our atmosphere is coming from these other countries. When those 
countries' economies are struggling, there is more pollution. That is 
just the way it works, because you just can't help afford to clean up 
the environment like we are and have been in the United States.
  We need a vibrant economy to continue to clean up our environment. We 
have lakes that were dead, now brimming with activity and with 
wildlife. These are good things. In Texas, it seems like our air gets 
cleaner every year.
  I asked my staff to find a picture, as best they could, that would 
reflect what we are talking about in ANWR in that tiny--well, 
relatively speaking, tiny area of ANWR where drilling would be allowed. 
This is from Google Maps. This isn't actually the area, but it looks 
like most of the area where drilling would be allowed.
  From time to time, there will be wildlife across this area, in the 
area where drilling would be allowed, but they can't stay because they 
can't live there in that area. There is just not enough to sustain life 
there.
  As Jimmy Carter figured out, it is an ideal place to drill, and that 
is why they designated it for that. But we have been waiting over 40 
years to use that as a place to even further reduce our cost of energy, 
which will also allow us to export energy, which means European 
countries don't have to be blackmailed or extorted by Russia.
  There is one country that hopes the Democrats are very, very 
successful--well, of course, the OPEC nations. But Russia is probably 
the most hopeful that the Democrats are successful in preventing us 
from getting the energy that we have been blessed with in this area 
where you don't have caribou or things, wildlife, like you do in other 
parts of ANWR. They don't want us to drill because they know we will be 
able to get energy to Europe. And we won't blackmail Europe. We won't 
extort Europe the way that Putin often has, countries that he supplies 
natural gas to.
  If we export that, we can help give more freedom to the world. We can 
bring down our own prices even further. Why wouldn't we do that?
  This picture was near the proposed exploration area. It is from 
Google Maps. It is taken on Dalton Highway, just south of Prudhoe Bay. 
It is facing east towards the coastal area of the Arctic National 
Wildlife Refuge. So it is not right in the refuge, but it is a very 
fair representation of the coastal areas found within the refuge.
  It is actually a more accurate depiction of the proposed exploration 
area than the images that we have been seeing around here about the 
mountains and rainbows and all the herds of animals. This is much more 
representative than any of those types of pictures.
  I want to touch on one more thing about the Russians meddling in our 
election.
  Sean Hannity had a great article 1\1/2\ years ago, February of 2018. 
In there, he quotes from President Obama. President Obama said: ``There 
is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could 
even rig America's elections. There's no evidence that that has 
happened in the

[[Page H7701]]

past or that there are instances in which that will happen this time.''
  That was at the height of the 2016 election.
  He goes on to say: ``And so I invite Mr. Trump to stop whining and go 
try to make his case to get votes.''
  President Trump did nothing. It turns out they knew that the Russians 
were trying to meddle in our election. So why wouldn't Obama try to 
stop the Russians from meddling in our election? He did nothing.
  There is speculation that he knew Hillary Clinton was going to win, 
and he was afraid if they started admitting what they knew was true--
that Russia was trying to meddle in our elections--and then Hillary 
Clinton won, it might make her victory look suspect if they talked 
about the effort they knew Russia was engaged in to affect our 
election.
  But the truth is that Putin wants to divide America as much as he 
can. Divide and conquer is what he hopes to do. And he has been 
successful.
  The Russians that they had who gave their lives to Christopher 
Steele, the discredited former MI6 guy, that he provided to Fusion GPS 
that apparently the Clinton campaign and the DNC had hired, it has done 
what they wanted. It has done what Putin wanted. It has adversely 
affected the President of the United States. It has divided our 
country, and it has pitted family against family.
  Someone once said that the last phase of a civil war involves guns, 
but we have been in a nonfirearm civil war for a while now. And this 
Mueller investigation--the whole Russia dossier, the lies in there 
about candidate, now President, Trump--the Russians, just like Putin 
wanted, have been successful in dividing this country.
  As of yesterday, being 9/11, we can disagree, like John Dingell and I 
did, but I loved the guy. He was a brilliant, caring, honorable man of 
integrity. We have those on both sides of the aisle. You have some that 
you have got to be careful on both sides. But there are people on both 
sides of the aisle; and we can work together because they are honest, 
honorable people, and we can disagree when we need to.
  I need to touch on, before we finish the week here, of course, we 
have seen in the news Afghanistan peace talks with the Taliban broke 
down. The Taliban continue to kill Americans, and they are going to 
continue to kill Americans. It is who they are. It is what they are.
  In my trips to Afghanistan and other places, I made friends with some 
of those Muslims who were part Afghan, Muslims who were part of the 
Northern Alliance. It is no longer called the Northern Alliance. But 
these were Muslim friends of the United States. They just wanted their 
freedom. They are Muslims, but they did not want ruthless totalitarians 
like the Taliban running their country.
  The enemy of our enemy were people we could work with. Unfortunately, 
our intelligence was not sophisticated enough, plugged in enough, so 
that a day or so before 9/11, when Ahmad Shah Massoud, sometimes called 
the Lion of Panjshir because he was such a hero--he was a great 
warrior, soldier; he was a great politician, beloved in Afghanistan. 
The Taliban wanted to kill him, but he had good security.
  The Taliban, they may be crazy, they may be haters and want to kill 
all Americans, but they are not stupid at all. They knew that if the 
United States figured out that the 9/11 attack had originated in 
Afghanistan with al-Qaida and the Taliban, that the United States would 
come to Afghanistan, and we would look for an Afghan leader that the 
people would rally behind, who could lead the country to destroy the 
Taliban. And they knew that would most likely be the Lion of Panjshir, 
the hero of the Afghan victory over Russia, Ahmad Shah Massoud.
  A day or so before 9/11--I think it was around 36 hours or so 
before--they had gotten Massoud to agree to an interview. His security 
people checked out the reporter, known reporter, the cameraman there, 
let him in, and, when they start the interview, the cameraman blows up 
the bomb in his camera and kills Massoud.
  If our intelligence people had been on top of their game, they would 
have known something was about to happen. Something was about to happen 
for them to kill Massoud now, this national hero.
  Ahmad Shah Massoud has a brother, Ahmad Zia Massoud, and I think of 
him as a friend. I hope he thinks the same way. He fought with and 
under his older brother. His brother used him as a diplomat, but he was 
one of many of the Northern Alliance.
  The movie ``12 Strong'' shows General Dostum that we got after 9/11, 
getting around October, got other tribal groups to agree to fight with 
Dostum as the leader. Some of them weren't happy, but they agreed. And 
we provided air cover, and we provided weapons for them.

                              {time}  1400

  We have 300 or so, as I have understood it, special ops, Special 
Forces, CIA, in there, and only our guys could call down bombs and 
direct them at specific targets.
  Between the weapons we provided the Afghans, the bomb support from B-
52s 40,000 or so feet up, the Northern Alliance, our Afghan Muslim 
allies, they destroyed the organized Taliban, within--some say, maybe 
it was March, but February, March of 2002. Without a single American 
casualty, we defeated the Taliban.
  Then I think it was a mistake. We were considered heroes. We came in. 
We helped get rid of the Taliban that a majority of Afghanistan did not 
want running the country. And then we came in and started what appeared 
to be occupying. And that probably could have been okay if we could 
have helped them get a new government going and then get out.
  Condoleezza Rice, as I have heard from others, relied on 
recommendations to use a guy named Zalmay Khalilzad, a Pashtun. You can 
be Pashtun and not be Taliban. He is not Taliban. But you can't be 
Taliban and not be Pashtun, as I understand it.
  And anyway, she relied heavily on him. I talked to a guy who said he 
was part of the inner circle, and the decision was: What kind of 
government are we going to give Afghanistan now that we have destroyed 
the Taliban? Unfortunately, that shouldn't have been our decision, but 
there were people who said, Look, this is a Tribal country and nothing 
would fit this area better than to have strong local and state or 
province governments, and then it is a Federalist society where the 
national government is kind of an umbrella, but the real power is in 
the provinces and the local government.
  That is not what we did. The wrong people were listened to. And we 
pushed a constitution through that gives the power to the President, 
almost making him a dictator. The President is elected in Afghanistan, 
but then he appoints the governors. He appoints the mayors. He appoints 
the police chief. It just cut the local folks and the province folks 
out of governing themselves.
  And as my friend Massoud said: You know, look, we know you are going 
to end up having to pull out some day, so please help us get an 
amendment to our constitution that allows each province to elect its 
own governor and allows each city and town to elect their own mayor. 
Let us pick our own police chiefs, not somebody that Karzai, and now 
Ghani who is President would pick, but let us pick our own leaders.
  And the reasoning I thought was very sound. He said, when America 
leaves Afghanistan with this strong central government where the 
President has all power, all I have got to do is either knock off or 
corrupt the President, and they are right back in charge of 
Afghanistan.
  The Taliban hate Americans, so they are going to come kill a bunch 
more once they take back over Afghanistan. And then you are going to 
have to come back and Americans die all over again for nothing.
  If you will simply allow us to have that local provincial power so we 
elect our own leaders and not have them appointed from Kabul, then, 
yeah, maybe the Taliban gets one or two provinces, but the rest of us 
can rise up like we did before and defeat the Taliban again, and you 
don't have to have Americans die like you have for all of these years.
  That made sense. But the only trouble is, the guy that helped get 
Afghanistan this ridiculous constitution that has created basically a 
totalitarian Presidency, that is who was negotiating with the Taliban. 
There are rumors that he wanted to be President of Afghanistan at one 
time himself, but

[[Page H7702]]

regardless, this guy, he gave the Bush administration bad advice. He 
gave the Obama administration bad advice.
  They were trying to cut a deal with the Taliban. The Taliban, you can 
cut a deal with them and then they are going to cut your throat the 
first chance they get.
  It makes no sense. But we have people from the Bush administration 
through the Obama administration. Khalilzad is still being listened to, 
and he wanted to do this deal with the Pashtun brothers, the Taliban.
  We don't need to be dealing with our enemies. We need to be dealing 
with our allies. And this was one of the great dangers, by rejecting 
those who lost family members, risked their own lives to help us take 
out the Taliban, eliminate the organized Taliban originally, without a 
single loss of American life, why wouldn't we want to put them in 
positions of power? They can get elected, if we just--I said to 
Massoud: What makes you think we could help you amend your 
constitution?
  And he said: You are still paying for most of our government 
operations. If you threaten to pull out all of that money prematurely, 
yeah, we will change the constitution. But we need your help to do it, 
so you don't have to keep losing American lives here in Afghanistan.
  It made so much sense. But, unfortunately, the deep state just 
continues to be deep and Khalilzad has been part of that from the 
beginning. He seemed like a nice guy when I met him in Iraq back in 
2005. He seemed like a nice guy. He is just the wrong person to be 
listened to.
  Americans have continued to be killed while he has been wanting to 
have peace talks with the Taliban, not with the northern or former 
Northern Alliance people who risked their lives and lost family members 
fighting with us and for us. Oh, no, we are not going to deal with 
them. We are going to leave them. And all of the former Northern 
Alliance, they know that when we leave and we cut a deal with the 
Taliban or leave things so that the Taliban can take right over again, 
they are all going to be killed.
  Then there isn't going to be anybody in Afghanistan who will be able 
to stand up and fight against the Taliban. On top of that, even if 
there were, they wouldn't want to cut a deal with us, because they will 
have seen the way the Northern Alliance risked lives and lost lives to 
help us defeat the Taliban.
  What do we do? Do we leave them high and dry? Do we allow the Taliban 
to come in and kill them when we go? No. No. We need to be talking to 
our friends who fought with us and got rid of all of the organized 
Taliban by February or March of 2002 before we became occupiers, more 
or less.
  There needs to be a Federalist system there, and we need our friends, 
our allies who fought the Taliban and don't want them back in positions 
of authority. And I think President Ghani would be willing to do that, 
but, you know, deep state just keeps getting deeper. We need to 
negotiate with our friends, so they are in a position to help our 
enemies not get back in control to kill Americans again.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________