[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 95 (Wednesday, May 20, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2532-S2533]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Presidential Transition

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the hallmark of American democracy, the 
single greatest feature that sets us apart from every other country in 
the world, is the peaceful transition of power that occurs every 4 or 
sometimes every 8 years on January 20. It is a legacy we inherited from 
our forefathers and one that generations of Americans have fought hard 
throughout our history to protect. It is a remarkable moment. The most 
powerful person in the world bows to the will of the people and sits 
only a few yards away as the next President takes the oath of office.
  Think about the wars that have been fought throughout history over 
who the next leader of a country would be. Yet, in America, dating back 
to 1797, when Washington willingly passed the torch to Adams, the 
peaceful transition of power has defined the American Presidency. But a 
growing body of evidence suggests that the January 20, 2017, 
inauguration of President Donald Trump was an exception to that 
hallowed tradition.
  Since the FBI launched its Russia probe in July 2016, there has been 
no shortage of stories about what did or did not happen in the months 
leading up to that election. For the better part of 3 years, the 
speculation dominated headlines and news feeds, with even the smallest 
details consuming hours of airtime.
  Beyond the Russian active measures campaign, which we know did 
happen, there was a lot of attention focused on the Trump campaign 
itself. Now, almost 4 years later, we know a lot about what happened 
and what didn't happen. For example, we know from the Mueller report 
that there was no crime of collusion or obstruction committed by the 
President or his campaign. But since the special counsel's report was 
completed more than a year ago, we have learned a lot more about the 
outsized role played by some very senior Obama administration officials 
in what can only be described as an insurgency campaign against the 
Trump Presidency.
  To be blunt, these revelations have given the American people good 
reason to be concerned about the outgoing administration, which took 
aggressive, possibly unlawful steps to interfere with initially the 
Trump campaign and then to undermine the incoming Trump administration.
  For starters, there was the Department of Justice inspector general 
report on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which was released in 
December of last year. The inspector general's findings provided 
evidence that the concerns were more than warranted.
  Inspector General Horowitz detailed a series of errors and missteps 
made by the FBI throughout the investigation, including alarming abuse 
of the powers of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This act 
confers extraordinary power on the FBI and the intelligence community.
  In the FISA application for Carter Page, Inspector General Horowitz 
identified 7 errors in the initial application and 10 additional errors 
in 3 renewals. We are not talking about innocent typos or misspelled 
words. This was not just sloppiness. There were significant and 
material errors, plus the deliberate falsification of material 
information about Carter Page's past service to the U.S. Government, as 
well as the omission of important exculpatory information, which 
deceived and misled the FISA Court.
  I would hope we could all agree that lying to a court is serious and 
completely unacceptable.

[[Page S2533]]

  The meticulous requirements Congress mandated in the Foreign 
Intelligence Surveillance Act and the painstaking procedures of the 
FISA Court were created to help instill trust and confidence and 
accountability in the institutions charged with protecting our national 
security, while at the same time protecting our privacy and civil 
liberties. Sadly, much of that trust has been destroyed by these 
revelations uncovered by the inspector general of the Department of 
Justice, and sadly, another recent development has sown even more 
distrust and suspicion of the FBI and the Department of Justice during 
the previous administration, their motives, and the legality of their 
actions.

  Last week, the Acting Director of National Intelligence, Richard 
Grenell, provided a declassified list of senior Obama administration 
officials who made requests to unmask the identity of Michael Flynn. 
Masking the name of a U.S. person in foreign surveillance is routinely 
done to minimize the intrusion into their privacy rights.
  I know trying to keep up with the flood of facts about these 
incidents can be a challenge, so let's quickly recap.
  General Flynn was a member of the Trump campaign, and at the 
beginning of the administration, he was named as the National Security 
Advisor. We know his tenure was short-lived. Only a few weeks after 
assuming the post, General Flynn resigned after a storm erupted when 
leaks were published about his conversations with Russian Ambassador 
Kislyak.
  I am not here primarily to talk about General Flynn's case. That is 
in the hands of the courts. But the list of Obama-era officials 
provided by Acting Director Grenell gave us some unsettling details 
about the larger context of the whole Russia investigation. If an 
American citizen is intercepted in connection with foreign 
intelligence, the name of that person is masked when intelligence 
reports are disseminated in order to protect their identity and their 
privacy, but it is not unusual for intelligence officials to request 
that somebody be unmasked. It could be critical to a 
counterintelligence investigation or to understanding the nature or 
context of the intelligence.
  Here, over the course of about 6 weeks between late November 2016 and 
January 2017, 39 separate Obama-era officials made unmasking requests--
39. This list is very odd. It included a range of high-ranking 
officials at the Departments of Treasury and Energy and a number of 
Ambassadors and even NATO officials. It extended to the highest levels 
of the Obama administration--U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, CIA 
Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, the President's Chief 
of Staff Denis McDonough, and even Vice President Biden himself. It 
reads like a guest list for an Obama administration state dinner. It is 
not what you would expect to see for legitimate unmasking requests.
  You have to wonder, why are these high-ranking officials, including 
the Vice President of the United States, unmasking the name of an 
American citizen in foreign intelligence on an eve of the inauguration 
of their successor? Then-U.N. Ambassador Power submitted seven separate 
requests. Director Clapper, then-Director of National Intelligence, 
submitted three. Director Brennan and Secretary Lew each submitted two.
  Somehow--I know this sounds strange, working in Washington, DC--
somehow, once General Flynn's name was unmasked in response to 39 
separate requests from Obama-era officials, that information was leaked 
to the press. In the intelligence community, intelligence is shared 
based on the need to know. What I want to know is, what need did these 
39 Obama-era officials have for this surveillance, which included the 
name of a U.S. citizen? I suspect it was done because--what naturally 
happens next? The more people who know, the more likely the information 
is to leak to the press in service of a narrative.
  While unmasking can be legal if done by the rules, leaking that 
information is not. It is a crime. It is a felony punishable by up to 
10 years in prison.
  As I mentioned, when it comes to understanding this investigation, 
there is a lot of information to sort through. That is why I am glad 
that Chairman Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, 
plans to hold extensive hearings into this whole mater--something that 
the Presiding Officer and I will participate in as members of that 
committee. But I worry that in the process of leaning in, trying to 
connect the dots in a very complex situation, we could lose sight of 
the big picture.
  It appears that high-ranking officials from a political party used 
their positions to gain and leak information on a political rival. We 
are not just talking about one or two rogue operators here; more than 
three-dozen senior officials released that information to the media 
only 8 days before the end of the Obama administration.
  Add to this the rapidly growing list of wrongs we have learned about 
so far: the inspector general report on the foreign intelligence 
surveillance abuse, the infamous texts between Lisa Page and Peter 
Strzok, the first altered and now missing 302 for Michael Flynn, Susan 
Rice's inauguration day email to herself. Well, there is political 
intrigue and manipulation written all over this.
  Here is the point. Our intelligence community and system of justice 
must not be manipulated for political purposes, and they certainly must 
not be used as a tool to disrupt the peaceful transition of power that 
is the very foundation of our democracy.
  On Monday evening, Attorney General Barr was asked about the 
investigation, and he made a comment that I think appropriately sums up 
the entire issue. He said:

       The proper investigative and prosecutorial standards of the 
     Department of Justice were abused, in my view, in order to 
     reach a particular result. We saw two different standards of 
     justice emerge, one that applied to President Trump and his 
     associates, and the other that applied to everyone else. We 
     can't allow this ever to happen again.

  I agree with the Attorney General.
  This entire matter has been riddled with a combination of 
exploitation, abuse of power, and possible criminality. At the very 
best, it highlights dysfunction, but at worst, it looks like a 
coordinated effort by one administration to abuse its power, to sandbag 
and undermine its successor.
  Despite the time and taxpayer dollars that have been funneled into 
the Russia-related probe, it has provided no evidence of collusion that 
we thought and were told was its object. Instead, it has highlighted 
men and women at the highest levels of government using their positions 
for political purposes. This is a far cry from the peaceful transition 
of power our forefathers wanted and provided for.
  When exiting the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin 
was approached by a group of citizens who asked what type of government 
the delegates had created. He famously answered ``a republic, if you 
can keep it.''
  In order to maintain this grand Republic, we must be able to trust 
our institutions, especially law enforcement and the intelligence 
community. We need to respect the choices of the American people in our 
elections, which provides those elected with legitimacy and authority. 
These are essential to a constitutional republic like ours.
  These revelations about actions from Obama administration officials 
undermine that trust, and we must and will get to the bottom of it so 
we can ensure that it never ever happens again.
  I yield the floor
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Blackburn). The Senator from Maryland.