[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 57 (Monday, March 31, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2085-S2086]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           U.S. Supreme Court

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am here for the 35th time to call 
attention to the rightwing scheme to capture our courts and justice 
system, now out to target and persecute Trump political enemies and do 
Trump political favors.
  We have heard a lot about weaponization of the justice system from 
Trump and his allies. That is for two reasons. One, it is a handy 
narrative for Trump and MAGA cronies to paint him as a victim, not a 
convicted criminal who only dodged proper sentencing and further 
criminal charges because of sweeping Presidential immunity granted by a 
Supreme Court stacked with rightwing Justices he appointed. Two, it is 
a tactic. For would-be autocrats, accusations signal intentions. You 
accuse the other side of doing what you are plotting so that when you 
are caught doing it, you have set it up to look like offsetting 
penalties. Accusations signal intentions, and sure enough, now there is 
real weaponization of the justice system unfolding before our eyes.
  I am going to take a minute and drill down into one episode. It 
begins with a climate fund, duly created and appropriated by Congress, 
maintained after the funds were disbursed at a private bank, and 
overseen by EPA.
  But MAGA's dear leader claims, falsely, that climate change is a 
hoax. That is his catchphrase for the truest things he doesn't like. So 
this climate fund became a MAGA target. There is a problem, however: 
The Constitution limits the President's veto power over congressional 
spending, both with a time limit and the right of Congress to override, 
and the time limit to veto these funds had been over for years. The 
funds were properly appropriated back in August 2022 when President 
Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act. The grants were awarded in 
April 2024, giving recipients legal rights to the funds. And then they 
were distributed to the bank as fiscal agent for the recipients, all in 
regular order.
  Enter Trump's corrupt Justice Department through two colossal Trump 
suck-ups: the Acting Deputy Attorney General, Emil Bove, and Ed Martin, 
the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
  Martin is an activist MAGA type, a lawyer for January 6 attackers, 
who had criticized this fund even before he was appointed interim.
  Bove and Martin cooked up asking Martin's U.S. Attorney's Office to 
freeze the climate fund by opening a criminal investigation so they 
could assert that the ongoing investigation justified the freeze. Their 
problem: They couldn't point to a crime. Oops.
  The career criminal division chief, an experienced veteran prosecutor 
at the U.S. Attorney's Office, pointed out that launching a criminal 
investigation without evidence of a crime--what prosecutors call 
predication--is a violation of prosecutorial ethics and Department of 
Justice policy.
  That warning from the career prosecutors to MAGA Martin is red flag 
one. But the MAGA U.S. attorney didn't listen to that warning from his 
career staff. Instead, he demanded that the career criminal chief 
resign. He forced her out. Well, that is another big red flag--red flag 
two.
  With the criminal division chief out of the way, Martin still 
couldn't find one staff prosecutor in his office to pursue the matter.
  Now, you remember in the Nixon Saturday Night Massacre, they had to 
fire all the way down to Robert Bork, who became notorious for 
ultimately doing the dirty deed for Nixon, but here, no Bork. No 
prosecutor would sign from this big Federal prosecution office. That is 
red flag three.
  Martin then proceeded in his own name alone. That is red flag four. 
As a former U.S. attorney, I can assure you there is almost always a 
career attorney's signature on every pleading filed. And bear in mind 
that Martin is not some rare legal whiz. He had never spent a single 
day as a Federal prosecutor before he got this gig, and here he was 
fumbling around by his lone MAGA self.
  So--no surprise--when Martin presented his request to the Federal 
magistrate judge, the judge denied the petition. That is red flag five, 
and it is a massive, flapping red flag to anyone who has served in a 
U.S. Attorney's Office.
  Federal prosecutors never want this to happen, so they triple-check 
and backstop every application to ensure that they are ironclad.
  In my U.S. Attorney's Office, a Federal judge shooting down one of 
our warrant applications would have set off internal reviews. That 
should be what is known in the medical field as a never event. It is a 
shocker, particularly with the U.S. attorney presenting the petition in 
person.
  Even that series of disasters didn't stop this scheme. Somebody 
started shopping the case to other U.S. Attorney's Offices, hoping that 
some other office would try again in a different district.
  Well, shopping a case around U.S. attorney's offices, after the 
matter has been shot down in court, that is red flag six.
  It seems that no other U.S. attorney's office has been willing to go 
before any court with this hot mess, but somehow, a Federal prosecutor 
down in Florida--Florida--ordered Washington-based FBI agents to start 
questioning EPA employees about the grant program. Well, we are going 
to find out more about that.
  But meanwhile, in a related case, a different Federal judge blew up 
the EPA Administrator's administrative effort under Trump's Executive 
orders to freeze these funds, and they defended the freeze with the 
same pretext that there was fraud that needed to be prevented. Well, 
the judge asked: Tell me about the fraud. Show me some evidence.
  There was none. The judge noted in her decision that, for all the big 
talk, the administration could produce--her words--``no evidence to 
support that claim.'' So a second Federal judge shoots down the scheme. 
We are up to red flag seven.
  Compounding this prosecutive fiasco, both Martin and EPA 
Administrator Zeldin unleashed a barrage of public comments, flooding 
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[[Page S2086]]

zone with public accusations of fraud, the same accusations of fraud 
that the career U.S. attorney staff rejected and the magistrate judge 
determined to be unfounded and the judge said DOJ and EPA had offered 
no evidence to support.
  Well, that is a problem. Unfounded accusations of fraud are what 
lawyers call ``defamatory per se.'' And derogatory public comments 
about the subject of an investigation is trouble under multiple 
Department of Justice policies. The administration officials' public 
comments were out of bounds. I have been a U.S. attorney. You don't get 
to do that.
  Discovery in civil litigation will likely ultimately reveal the 
depths of the misconduct, the potentially unlawful motive, and their 
potential liability for their misconduct.
  We are not at the end of this yet, but what we see is real 
weaponization--not MAGA phony claims of weaponization, part of a 
political propaganda campaign to excuse the criminality of the dear 
leader.
  Here, all these red flags of actual weaponization are flying: 
internal warnings that the case had no merit, removing officials for 
disagreement, proceeding without a career attorney, getting shot down 
by a magistrate judge, case shopping after the disaster, hunting for 
FBI agents to harass career civil servants for managing properly 
congressionally appropriated funding, making derogatory public 
comments--and all without evidence.
  Compare that to the Federal criminal cases against Trump. There is no 
record of internal warnings being ignored that the cases had no merit. 
There is no removing of officials for disagreeing with the case. No 
pleading was ever filed without a career attorney signing, just signed 
by a politico. No application was ever shot down by a judge.
  Indeed, the Mar-a-Lago warrants were judicially approved. Despite 
very aggressive lawyering for Trump, no finding of a prosecutor's 
violation of Department policy was turned up; no matter had to be case 
shopped to other districts after falling apart in one district; no 
harassment by FBI agents with no court pleading to back them up; and no 
derogatory public comments ever made outside the pleadings the 
government filed.
  Red flag count in the Trump cases: zero. Red flag count in this sorry 
episode: seven.
  If Trump's corrupt DOJ will go through all of this just to grab 
properly appropriated climate funds, imagine what they are capable of 
with really bad stuff. We are in store for lots more actual 
weaponization in the coming months and years under this corrupt 
administration.
  So easy for me to say that this will be continued.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that with respect 
to the Whitaker nomination, the motion to reconsider be considered made 
and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of 
the Senate's action.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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