[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 16392-16397]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1900
                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Dunn). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I do greatly appreciate my friend across 
the aisle. Mr. Garamendi made some good points. For example, the people 
speak, and we are thankful they do. And that is why, when the 
Democratic House Members and Democratic Senate Members voted to pass 
something known as ObamaCare--it is hard to call it the Affordable Care 
Act because it has come at the cost of some people's lives, their 
doctors, their insurance policies, their medicines they needed--but the 
American people did speak, and they said, ``Not again,'' and they put 
Democrats out of the majority as a result of that bill.
  As I explained to some of my colleagues in the Republican Conference 
who were saying that the Speaker is the one who got us the majority 
back, I pointed out in conference, if you look at the polls, it is very 
clear. No one person got us the majority back in November 2010. The 
Democrats got the Republicans the majority back.
  The polls back then showed that we were not trusted any more than we 
had been so much in the past, as they were, the voters were just upset 
with the Democrats passing a bill they didn't want, that the Democrats 
had not read, and didn't know what it said, and they were going to have 
to pass it to find out what was in it.
  And they were lied to repeatedly. You can keep your insurance if you 
like it. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, and all 
those. Turns out they knew in advance--not all of the people here, but 
the people in the Obama administration who kept saying it, they knew 
they were lying because they knew people would not keep their insurance 
whether they liked it or not; they would not keep their doctors if they 
liked them as they may well not be in the network and probably wouldn't 
be in many networks.
  So it is so true that the people speak, and thank goodness they do. 
And then they have returned, not only Republicans to majorities in the 
House, repeatedly, on the promise of repealing ObamaCare, but also gave 
the Senate the majority twice now on the promise to repeal ObamaCare 
and, unfortunately, the Senate has not delivered.
  We passed a bill here in the House, it was after much wailing and 
gnashing of teeth, and a terrible bill at first that would have allowed 
premiums to continue to go up. Some say, yeah, but you should have 
voted for it; it would give the President some wind at his back.
  But when the American people found out that premiums were going to 
continue to go up, their deductibles would continue to go up, the 
insurance companies would continue to get bailouts after record profit 
years, they were not going to be returning Republicans to the majority.
  So it is still very critical that we keep our promises and we take a 
lesson from the actual planks of the platform that got our great 
President elected: number one, build a wall and secure the border; 
number two, repeal ObamaCare; number three, we would have tax reform. 
Those seem to be the three biggest promises that most all of us made on 
our side of the aisle.
  The reason ObamaCare was not, at least the majority of it, repealed 
was because the Senate could not bring itself to act because there were 
some Senators who decided that, after winning their election, promising 
in the primary and general election that if you elect me, I will be the 
one who can get ObamaCare repealed, they decided to break that pledge, 
break that repeated promise.
  So the thing I am grateful to the President--well, actually a number 
of things, but one is that he continues to say: We are not done. We are 
not through. We are going to repeal at least most of ObamaCare.
  We have got to. People have got to have relief. They have got to. 
They cannot continue on like they are.
  Obviously, we can see now, in hindsight, ObamaCare was designed to 
fail. Unfortunately, the insurance companies did not realize that when 
they signed on to ObamaCare, they were signing on to their death 
warrants; that the designers were counting on insurance companies to 
have people at the top who were so overwhelmed with greed they would 
not see the end coming as it came barreling toward them. They would be 
busy making record profits, getting bailouts, until the American people 
said we can't stand it anymore. The insurance companies had record 
profits and still got bailed out.
  We never thought we would say this, but surely the government would 
be better than these greedy insurance companies; and that would be the 
end of the insurance companies.
  And sure, some of the insurance executives would have taken their 
golden parachute and their millions after record profits and dropped 
out before the industry that made them rich ceased to exist, but that 
day is still coming if we don't act; and the American people would then 
be resolved to have much worse healthcare than the VA because the 
government would be the only game in town.
  I know, from talking to one legislator in England, I was surprised. I 
thought everybody was mandated to be part of the government healthcare 
there. And it was true, but he said that his wife had had cancer, and, 
fortunately for them, they could afford to pay the private insurance 
above the ridiculously wasteful insurance the Britons have.
  I remember looking at the numbers back in 2010, when we were debating 
ObamaCare, and seeing at that time that someone who was diagnosed with 
breast cancer at a similar time in the staging of cancer, breast 
cancer, as someone in the U.S., as someone in England, that the 
American had a 20 percent better chance of surviving than the British 
citizen under British healthcare did. That is terrifying to some of us. 
We don't want the kind of healthcare England has.
  So if you have a wife and three daughters, like I do, the chances are 
much better that you will lose one of them if you have British-type 
healthcare.
  I have one guy from Tyler, who lives in Tyler, was from Canada 
originally, said, his father was put on the list to have bypass surgery 
in Canada, and after 2 years of waiting, he died. It kind of sounds 
like the VA and the problems that have been experienced by some of our 
veterans.
  But I would submit, if those who have laid down much of their lives 
for their country in our armed services are treated the way many of our 
veterans have been treated, then you can't expect that American 
citizens that have never offered to lay down their life for

[[Page 16393]]

their country would be treated much better.
  We need to get off the track we are on. We need to return healthcare 
back to the control of a patient and a doctor, and get the insurance 
companies and the government out from between the patient and the 
doctor. We can do that with the kind of thing the President has been 
talking about, health savings accounts.
  Instead of paying $1,000 a month to an insurance company, put $800 or 
$900 in a health savings account; start building this huge healthcare, 
health savings account. And sure, there will be some people who are 
chronically ill or chronically poor. Those who don't have to be 
chronically poor, that could work, as we found out when welfare reform 
took place in the mid-nineties by the first Republican majority in many 
decades; as they found out, statistics showed, and there is a graph I 
saw at a conference in Harvard, for the first time since welfare began, 
1995, after the work requirement kicked in for welfare, up through 
2005, single moms' income, when adjusted for inflation, for the first 
time since welfare began, had an increase--that was incredible--when 
the government encouraged individuals to reach their potential, instead 
of luring them away from their potential with welfare when they could 
have had a job, that people do a lot better.
  It is terribly unfortunate, though, that the lessons learned in the 
mid-nineties, including getting to balanced budgets, over the 
objections of the Clinton administration. President Clinton didn't want 
balanced budgets, but, eventually, the Republican Congress forced him 
when they had enough to override his veto, so he signed them.
  And now, all these years later, when people don't remember, President 
Clinton likes to take credit for having the first balanced budget in 
years. Well, the Republicans took him, figuratively, kicking and 
screaming and, obviously, now, he is proud that they did, though they 
don't get the credit for it.
  Well, we need to encourage people to reach their potential--that is 
the job of government--not luring them away from their potential. We 
should be encouraging the best healthcare that could be had.
  We don't need insurance companies managing all our healthcare. We 
don't need the government managing all our healthcare. We need 
individuals managing their own healthcare.
  If somebody wants to volunteer and say, ``Here's all my income for 
the rest of my life. Government, you manage, tell me what I can have 
and not have in the way of surgeries or healthcare or medicine,'' well, 
we ought to make a place for them to do that. But for the rest of us 
who would rather make our own decisions about our healthcare, we could 
do that.
  But one of the things, and I put it in the bill that I filed back in 
2009--I was encouraged by former Speaker Newt Gingrich, and he said: 
You have got to put your ideas into a bill, get it scored.
  CBO refused to score it for many months. Former Speaker Gingrich 
thought if I had gotten it scored, that it could have changed the 
debate on healthcare.
  But CBO dutifully did the bidding of Speaker Pelosi, scored their 
bills, refused to score mine, and so we didn't have the score.
  And let's face it. CBO, on ObamaCare scoring, their margin of error 
apparently is somewhere, plus or minus, 250 to 400 percent; so why 
should they score anything anyway? But that is another matter.
  But if the health insurance companies and the government don't manage 
all our healthcare, who would do that? Well, we would do that. If 
somebody's chronically poor and cannot provide for themselves, we can 
help them. But for those who can, they should.
  If you put that kind of money in a health savings account, where it 
can never be used for anything but healthcare, not like retirement, 
where you can pull it out and pay a 40 percent tax, leave it in there. 
It can only be used for healthcare.
  Give the individual a debit card that is coded that will only pay for 
medical expenses, medicine, crutches, doctors' appointments. Then most 
people would have enough built up in their health savings account by 
the time they are 65 or 70, they not only would not want government 
participation in decisions about their healthcare, but they wouldn't 
need it, and we could make our own decisions, after consulting with 
physicians. That saves healthcare.
  The last 100 years of healthcare, some medical historians say, have 
been the only 100 years in American history where people had a better 
chance of getting well after seeing a doctor than of getting worse.

                              {time}  1915

  Even just over 200 years ago, the man without whom there would be no 
free America, George Washington, he was bled to death. The last bleeder 
was his very good friend, Dr. Craik, who had been with him through so 
many things. He thought he was helping him, and he was bleeding him to 
death, preventing him from getting well.
  But here, 200 years later, doctors are actually curing disease, 
curing things we thought were incurable. We had the best healthcare 
that could ever been found at any time in history anywhere in the 
world, and we have done a great deal to destroy it since the passing of 
ObamaCare.
  People have found out they lost their insurance. They are paying more 
than they ever dreamed they would pay. And, yes, there are some who are 
paying minimal amounts, and some are getting subsidies, but the 
President had to make up some law in order to pay out some of the 
things he did.
  Because of all of the distraction with ObamaCare, perhaps that is why 
the Obama administration dropped the ball on following through 
regarding Russia's efforts to sidetrack American politics.
  This article from John Solomon and Alison Spann, October 22, in The 
Hill: ``FBI Watched, Then Acted As Russian Spy Moved Closer to Hillary 
Clinton.''
  It says: ``As Hillary Clinton was beginning her job as President 
Obama's chief diplomat, Federal agents observed as multiple arms of 
Vladimir Putin's machine unleashed an influence campaign designed to 
win access to the new Secretary of State, her husband, Bill Clinton, 
and members of their inner circle, according to interviews and once-
sealed FBI records.
  ``Some of the activities FBI agents gathered evidence about in 2009 
and 2010 were covert and illegal.
  ``A female Russian spy posing as an American accountant, for 
instance, used a false identity to burrow her way into the employ of a 
major Democratic donor in hopes of gaining intelligence on Hillary 
Clinton's Department, records show. The spy was arrested and deported 
as she moved closer to getting inside State, agents said.
  ``Other activities were perfectly legal and sitting in plain view, 
such as when a subsidiary of Russia's state-controlled nuclear energy 
company hired a Washington firm to lobby the Obama administration. At 
the time it was hired, the firm was providing hundreds of thousands of 
dollars a year in pro bono support to Bill Clinton's global charitable 
initiative, and it legally helped the Russian company secure Federal 
decisions that led to billions in new U.S. commercial nuclear business, 
records show.
  ``Agents were surprised by the timing and size of a $500,000 check 
that a Kremlin-linked bank provided Bill Clinton''--that is the former 
President, and although none of the mainstream media would ever say 
this, Democrat Bill Clinton--``with for a single speech in the summer 
of 2010. The payday came just weeks after Hillary Clinton helped 
arrange for American executives to travel to Moscow to support Putin's 
efforts to build his own country's version of Silicon Valley, agents 
said.
  ``There is no evidence in any of the public records that the FBI 
believed that the Clintons or anyone close to them did anything 
illegal.''
  Yeah, that is pretty understandable that The Hill would say that and 
that the FBI would make sure those records were not available.
  The article goes on. It says: ``But there's definitive evidence the 
Russians were seeking their influence with a specific eye on the State 
Department.
  ```There is not one shred of doubt from the evidence that we had that 
the

[[Page 16394]]

Russians had set their sights on Hillary Clinton's circle, because she 
was the quarterback of the Obama-Russia reset strategy and the assumed 
successor to Obama as President,' said a source familiar with the FBI's 
evidence at the time. . . .''
  ``That source pointed to an October 2009 communication intercepted by 
the FBI in which Russian handlers instructed two of their spies 
specifically to gather nonpublic information on the State Department.
  ```Send more info on current international affairs vital for R., 
highlight U.S. approach,' part of the message to the spies read, using 
the country's first initial to refer to Russia. `. . . Try to single 
out tidbits unknown publicly but revealed in private by sources closer 
to State Department, government, major think tanks.'''
  This isn't in the article, but that might also mean, if the State 
Department Secretary had a server through which classified information 
was sent and it is not very well protected, gee, grab all of the 
information from that server that you can. Shouldn't be hard to hack 
them. That had to have been part of the thinking of the Russians. They 
surely figured out that Secretary of State Clinton was using different 
sources for her emails.
  The article goes on: ``The Clintons, by that time, had set up several 
new vehicles that included a multimillion-dollar speechmaking business, 
the family foundation, and a global charitable initiative, all of which 
proved attractive to the Russians as Hillary Clinton took over State.
  ```In the end, some of this just comes down to what it always does in 
Washington: donations, lobbying, contracts, and influence--even for 
Russia,' said Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director for 
counterintelligence.
  ``Figliuzzi supervised the post-arrest declassification and release 
of records from a 10-year operation that unmasked a major Russian spy 
ring in 2010. It was one of the most important U.S. counterintelligence 
victories against Russia in history, and famous for nabbing the 
glamorous spy-turned-model Anna Chapman.
  ``While Chapman dominated the headlines surrounding that spy ring, 
another Russian woman posing as a mundane New Jersey accountant named 
Cynthia Murphy was closing in on accessing Secretary Clinton's 
Department, according to records and interviews.
  ``For most of the 10 years, the ring of Russian spies that included 
Chapman and Murphy acted as sleepers, spending a `great deal of time 
collecting information and passing it on' to their handlers inside 
Russia's SVR spy agency, FBI record state.''
  Inserting parenthetically here, also, we now know, due to the great 
investigating work of Luke Rosiak with The Daily Caller, who apparently 
has done much more investigation into Imran Awan, the Awan family, and 
IT or computer workers, some of whom apparently didn't do any work but 
who were making the maximum amount of money that anybody can make 
working on the Hill for Congress, as I believe Luke testified or 
indicated in a prior meeting, he indicated that actually every time one 
of the Awan family added enough part-time work for Members of Congress 
with their computers, they would add another family member to start 
getting part-time until they built up to the $160,000 or so level.
  But in any event, we now know that, apparently, Imran Awan copied 
dozens of Democratic Members of Congress' servers into one place so 
that all of those servers could easily be accessed by someone who did 
not have permission to access those Congress Members' computer systems 
and servers.
  It is interesting that that was occurring for him as a Pakistani 
native. He became a citizen but, at the time he began working on 
Capitol Hill, was here by visa working for Members, Democratic Members 
of Congress.
  But how interesting that the Russians were doing everything they 
could to get any information, not just classified, but any inside 
information, stuff like you would find in emails, for example. And now 
we are finding all of this out about the Awan brothers, and his wife 
and a couple of people, one of whom quit because he was doing too much 
of the work and not getting as much pay as the others.
  But it is incredible that it was after President Obama left office we 
started hearing all of this screaming about how the Russians were 
trying to affect elections. And who knew about that? Well, Robert 
Mueller, former FBI Director knew all about it because he was the FBI 
as this stuff was being investigated. Wouldn't it be nice if he had 
said something about that previously?
  But if he had talked about it previously, he might not--and I am 
sure, in fact, would not--have gotten an appointment to be special 
counsel to investigate potential ties by the U.S. Government with 
Russia, specifically, the Trump campaign, or the Trump support ring, 
those who were supporting Donald Trump as a candidate. Wow.
  But then again, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein might have 
appointed Mueller, because it turns out he was involved in the 
investigation back then. Wouldn't it have been nice if Rosenstein or 
Mueller had had the moral fiber and the ethical fiber to say: ``You 
know what? The AG has recused himself, but, actually, I was involved in 
this stuff back under the Obama administration investigating all this, 
and I had developed opinions, made statements back in those days--
weren't public.''
  And if Mueller had done the same thing: ``I was head of the FBI. We 
were investigating ties to Hillary Clinton, efforts to get in touch 
with and utilize the Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton.''
  Wouldn't it have been nice if that information had come from Robert 
Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein before Rosenstein 
appointed Mueller, because those two people would not even be involved 
at all, I don't believe, had we known the extent of their involvement 
in the investigation into Russia before, when they were with the Obama 
administration. But they didn't disclose that.
  And I think it is a little insidious, myself, on the very day that 
James Comey testified on Capitol Hill that there were no known ties 
between President Trump and the Russians, the collusion that was talked 
about, there were no ties, no evidence of that, it was the same day it 
was leaked, apparently by Mueller or his staff, that now they were 
investigating obstruction by the Trump administration.
  Now, why would that get leaked the very night that James Comey 
testified there were no known ties, no evidence of any collusion 
between President Trump and the Russians? Well, because if there was no 
evidence to support what Mueller had been appointed to investigate, 
then President Trump would have had every right and it would have made 
sense to say: ``Okay, Mr. Mueller, it sure would have been nice if you 
had disclosed the reasons that you should have been disqualified to 
accept this special counsel job. But even though you didn't, there is 
no reason for you to be special counsel because there is no evidence, 
according to this FBI Director, so we don't need you anymore.''

                              {time}  1930

  But by Mueller or his clan leaking out that now we are investigating 
President Trump for obstruction of justice, that set him up in a 
position that President Trump could not afford to fire him, or else it 
would look like Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre before they had a 
chance to come after him. So, clearly, former FBI Director Mueller who, 
in my opinion, did more damage to the structure of the FBI than anyone 
since J. Edgar Hoover, ran off thousands of years of experience from 
the FBI and spent millions of dollars on programs that didn't work out. 
Apparently he got rid of a lot of people that would not say yes to him 
all the time. He also--let's give him credit--he did purge the FBI 
training materials of anything that offended radical Islamists.
  I would submit there is a reason why when an FBI agent was finally 
sent out to talk to the older Tsarnaev brother after Russia had 
reported twice--actually doing America a favor--hey, this guy has been 
radicalized. Do they look

[[Page 16395]]

at where he had been to see that he had been in areas that were very 
radical and what he was like?
  No. They sent out an FBI agent to talk to him. According to Director 
Mueller, in essence, he indicated he was not a terrorist, so that was 
good enough for them. But they went the extra mile and asked his mother 
if he was a terrorist, and, in essence, she indicated he was a good boy 
and not a terrorist. That was good enough for the new Mueller FBI that 
had purged itself of the ability to know what a radical Islamist looked 
like.
  When I asked about their going out to the mosque to investigate 
whether Tsarnaev had been radicalized, of course, again, they purged 
their training materials, they didn't know what to ask. They didn't 
know whether to ask if he had been memorizing verses of the Koran, what 
verses those were. Kim Jensen, who had a 700-page program to teach FBI 
agents about what to look for in radical Islamists, under Mueller, was 
ordered to destroy all of those. Fortunately, there was an extra copy. 
As I understand it, the FBI is now trying to teach some of the higher-
level agents exactly what a radical Islamist is. But if Mr. McMaster 
has his way, that won't last much longer.
  But, nonetheless, Director Mueller, as head of the FBI, as one 
intelligence official told me, they were blinded of the ability to see 
the enemy--the enemy being radical Islamists who want to destroy our 
Nation, destroy our freedom, and kill us. They don't know what to look 
for, thanks to Director Mueller.
  Of course, as the Washingtonian article pointed out in 2013, 
basically Mueller and Comey were joined at the hip, that if the world 
was on fire, Mueller would be the last one standing beside Comey, 
protecting him, with him, supporting him, whatever. Which, by the way, 
is another reason, if Mr. Mueller had been as ethical and moral as he 
should have been, he should have disclosed immediately: I can't accept 
this special counsel role because James Comey is a friend. He sees me 
as a mentor. We talked, including about his testimony he was going to 
give before Congress. We are just too close, and he is a central 
witness to all of this. I can't do it.
  Unfortunately, Director Mueller did not take that position not 
feeling that he needed to do that, because, after all, it is a great 
job. It pays a lot of money. He can hire anybody he wants to and hire 
good Democratic supporters, as he has. For people who hate Republicans, 
this will be a great job. Apparently it is. He just basically makes up 
whatever he wants to investigate anytime he sees fit, and Deputy 
Attorney General Rosenstein should have been disqualified and not been 
able to appoint special counsel had the Attorney General known what all 
he had been involved in previously. He certainly is not going to fire 
Mueller, as he should.
  Going over to a different article, this is from National Review by 
Andrew McCarthy, October 21. Andrew McCarthy is the former prosecutor 
of The Blind Sheikh that masterminded the first World Trade Center 
attack in 1993 during Democrat Bill Clinton's Presidency.
  Andrew McCarthy says: ``Not only the Clintons are implicated in a 
uranium deal with the Russians that compromised national security 
interests. Let's put the Uranium One scandal in perspective: the cool 
half-million bucks the Putin regime funneled to Bill Clinton was five 
times the amount it spent on those Facebook ads--the ones the media-
Democrat complex ludicrously suggests swung the 2016 Presidential 
election to Donald Trump. The Facebook-ad buy, which started in June 
2015--before Donald Trump entered the race--was more leftwing agitprop, 
ads pushing hysteria on racism, immigration, guns, et cetera, than 
electioneering. The Clintons' own longtime political strategist Mark 
Penn estimates that just $6,500 went to actual electioneering. You read 
that right: $6,500. By contrast, the staggering $500,000 payday from a 
Kremlin-tied Russian bank for a single speech was part of a 
multimillion-dollar influence-peddling scheme to enrich the former 
President and his wife, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. At the 
time, Russia was plotting--successfully--to secure U.S. Government 
approval for its acquisition of Uranium One, and with it, tens of 
billions of dollars in U.S. uranium reserves.
  ``Here is the kicker: the Uranium One scandal is not only, or even 
principally, a Clinton scandal. It is an Obama administration scandal. 
The Clintons were just doing what the Clintons do: cashing in on their 
`public service.' The Obama administration, with Secretary Clinton at 
the forefront but hardly alone, was knowingly compromising American 
national security interests. The administration green-lighted the 
transfer of control over one-fifth of American uranium mining capacity 
to Russia, a hostile regime--and specifically to Russia's state-
controlled nuclear-energy conglomerate, Rosatom. Worse, at the time the 
administration approved the transfer, it knew that Rosatom's American 
subsidiary was engaged in a lucrative racketeering enterprise that had 
already committed felony extortion, fraud, and money-laundering 
offenses.''
  It is not in the article, but it does raise the question: Gee, I 
wonder if the Obama administration or Director Mueller of the FBI, 
knowing all these things apparently, did anybody bother to tell 
Secretary Clinton about the situation and that the entity that they 
were being courted by was actually tied to felony extortion, fraud, and 
money-laundering offenses?
  I thought the Obama administration was pretty close-knit. It seemed 
like they would have surely told Secretary of State Clinton who had 
access to classified information. We know because she put it on her 
server that wasn't classified.
  But it looks like somebody would have told the Secretary of State: 
Hey, this outfit that is courting you has ties to the people paying 
your husband half a million dollars for one speech, paying $145 million 
or so to the Clinton Foundation, these folks are bad folks.
  Surely somebody in the Obama administration would have told them. 
Well, we don't know, and, certainly, Director Muller is not going to 
investigate any inappropriate actions that he or James Comey or Deputy 
Attorney General Rosenstein took or didn't take.
  The article goes on to say: ``The Obama administration also knew that 
congressional Republicans were trying to stop the transfer. 
Consequently, the Justice Department concealed what it knew.''
  That being from congressional Republicans who were trying to stop the 
transfer.
  In fact, ``the DOJ allowed the racketeering enterprise to continue 
compromising the American uranium industry rather than commencing a 
prosecution that would have scotched the transfer. Prosecutors waited 4 
years before quietly pleading the case out for a song, in violation of 
Justice Department charging guidelines. Meanwhile, the administration 
stonewalled Congress, reportedly threatening an informant who wanted to 
go public.
  ``Obama's `reset,' to understand what happened here, we need to go 
back to the beginning. The first-tier military arsenal of Putin's 
Russia belies its status as a third-rate economic power. For well over 
a decade, the regime has thus sought to develop and exploit its 
capacity as a nuclear-energy producer. Naively viewing Russia as a 
`strategic partner' rather than a malevolent competitor, the Bush 
administration made a nuclear-cooperation agreement with the Kremlin in 
May of 2008.
  ``That blunder, however, was tabled before Congress could consider 
it. That is because Russia, being Russia, invaded Georgia. In 2009, 
notwithstanding this aggression, which continues to this day with 
Russia's occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, President Obama and 
Secretary of State Clinton signaled the new administration's 
determination to `reset' relations with Moscow. In this reset, renewed 
cooperation and commerce in nuclear energy would be central. There had 
been such cooperation and commerce since the Soviet Union imploded. In 
1992, the administration of President George H. W. Bush agreed with the 
nascent Russian Federation that U.S. nuclear providers would be

[[Page 16396]]

permitted to purchase uranium from Russia's disassembled nuclear 
warheads, after it had been down-blended from its highly enriched 
weapons-grade level.
  ``The Russian commercial agent responsible for the sale and 
transportation of this uranium to the U.S. is the Kremlin-controlled 
company `Tenex,' formally, JSC Techsnabexport. Tenex is a subsidiary of 
Rosatom. Tenex, and by extension, Rosatom, have an American arm called 
`Tenam USA.' Tenam is based in Bethesda, Maryland. Around the time 
President Obama came to power, the Russian official in charge of Tenam 
was Vadim Mikerin. The Obama administration reportedly issued a visa 
for Mikerin in 2010, but a racketeering investigation led by the FBI 
determined that he was already operating here in 2009. The racketeering 
scheme as Tenam's general director, Mikerin was responsible for 
arranging and managing Rosatom/Tenex's contracts with American uranium 
purchasers.
  ``This gave him tremendous leverage over the U.S. companies. With the 
assistance of several confederates, Mikerin used this leverage to 
extort and defraud the U.S. contractors into paying inflated prices for 
uranium. They then laundered the proceeds through shell companies and 
secret bank accounts in Latvia, Cyprus, Switzerland, and the Seychelle 
Islands--though sometimes transactions were handled in cash, with the 
skim divided into envelopes stuffed with thousands of dollars in cash. 
The inflated payments served two purposes: they enriched Kremlin-
connected energy officials in the U.S. and in Russia to the tune of 
millions of dollars; and they compromised the American companies that 
paid the bribes, rendering players in U.S. nuclear energy--a sector 
critical to national security--vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow. But 
Mikerin had a problem.
  ``To further the Kremlin's push for nuclear-energy expansion, he had 
been seeking to retain a lobbyist--from whom he planned to extort 
kickbacks, just as he did with the U.S. energy companies. With the help 
of an associate connected to Russian organized-crime groups, Mikerin 
found his lobbyist. The man's name has not been disclosed, but we know 
he is now represented by Victoria Toensing, a well-respected Washington 
lawyer, formerly a Federal prosecutor and counsel to the Senate 
Intelligence Committee.

                              {time}  1945

  ``When Mikerin solicited him in 2009, the lobbyist was uncomfortable, 
worried that the proposal would land him on the wrong side of the law. 
So he contacted the FBI to reveal what he knew. From then on, the 
Bureau and Justice Department permitted him to participate in the 
Russian racketeering scheme as a `confidential source'--and he is thus 
known as `CS-1' in affidavits the government, years later, presented to 
Federal court in order to obtain search and arrest warrants. At the 
time this unidentified man became an informant, the FBI was led by 
Director Robert Mueller, who is now the special counsel investigating 
whether Trump colluded with Russia,'' which we keep hearing there is no 
evidence of.
  ``The investigation was centered in Maryland, Tenam's home base. 
There, the U.S. Attorney was Obama appointee Rod Rosenstein--now 
President Trump's Deputy Attorney General, and the man who appointed 
Mueller as special counsel to investigate Trump.
  ``Because of CS-1, the FBI was able to understand and monitor the 
racketeering enterprise almost from the start. By mid-May 2010, it 
could already prove the scheme and three separate extortionate payments 
Mikerin had squeezed out of the informant.
  ``Equally important: According to reporting by John Solomon and 
Alison Spann in The Hill''--which we were just speaking about--``the 
informant learned through conversations with Mikerin and others that 
Russian nuclear officials were trying to ingratiate themselves with the 
Clintons.''
  It goes on and on, Mr. Speaker, but it is clear this definitely needs 
investigation. It needs investigation as to the propriety of the 
actions of Robert Mueller, FBI Director. It needs investigation into 
the propriety of the actions by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
  We need a special counsel. If the current Attorney General considers 
himself recused, there is only one person who has the power to make 
that appointment, and that is the President of the United States, from 
whom the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein derive 
their power to appoint special counsel.
  The President needs to appoint somebody to investigate this mess, 
because I guess former Secretary Clinton knew with authority when she 
said the Russians were clearly trying to hack and to influence this 
election. Yes, they sure were.
  It appears they were doing more to influence the Clintons and the 
Obama administration than they were even the American people: $500,000 
to Bill Clinton himself and only $6,500 to the ads to try to affect the 
American people.
  So this really does need to be investigated. I know Congress really 
hasn't gotten into it in any depth, but if Congress is to do that, it 
has got to take a page out of Judicial Watch's notebook, and that is 
you have got to be willing to go to court and demand people produce 
evidence, produce people.
  We can't just continue to be obstructed the way we have allowed the 
IRS Director to do after he has obfuscated, lied to Congress, and I 
believe perjured himself, after Lois Lerner appears certainly to have 
committed crimes, to me, and we have let her get away with such 
apparent criminal activity.
  But in the few minutes I have left, in addition to this scourge upon 
the United States that we find out was going on during the Obama 
administration, there is a tremendous irony that is playing out, and it 
is reflected in the article by J.E. Dyer, October 10.
  The article is titled: ``NFL meltdown blows the dam on MSM's 
centralized media model.''
  I thought about this. I did not realize, but Colin Kaepernick first 
began to kneel down after he apparently has also supported a group that 
wants to kill cops and thinks cops should be killed, the people who are 
protecting us and allowing us to continue safely in our way of life and 
our freedom.
  He doesn't have that respect. He knelt. He had nothing but contempt 
for America's police and for those protecting America. He did not 
appreciate America, which was bringing him millions of dollars. Just 
contempt. Apparently, his belief is there is racism in America, though 
he was adopted by, as I understand it, a White family.
  But he started this, and the American people didn't like it. After 9/
11 particularly, they realized: You know what? We owe so much to first 
responders and to law enforcement that have been willing to lay down 
their lives for us against enemies, foreign and domestic. And they 
continue, as police around the country, law enforcement, continue to be 
willing to lay down their lives for Americans and our way of life, our 
freedom. We appreciated that after 9/11.
  After my 4 years in the Army, when we were sometimes ordered not to 
wear our uniform because of hatred for people in uniform after Vietnam, 
I didn't think we would ever come to a day when people would again 
appreciate our military. But that also came out in amazing ways after 
9/11.
  As evil and hateful as the actions were that day in an effort to kill 
as many innocent people as these radical Islamists could, we saw the 
good in Americans. We saw the good in first responders. We saw the good 
in our military. We saw men and women willing to evidence the greatest 
love, as Jesus said, willing to lay down their lives for their fellow 
Americans.
  Yet, during the last administration, somehow the President normally 
took the wrong side. He spoke up before the evidence was in and often 
derided the wrong people. I just can't believe that our President for 
those last 8 years set us back so many years in race relations. It is 
incredible. I thought we were beyond that, but we got set back many 
years.

[[Page 16397]]

  Huge numbers of Americans didn't appreciate the way the Obama 
administration set us back in race relations. For the first time, we 
had a President and First Lady who had not normally been proud as 
Americans. The First Lady said she was finally proud of America.
  I have been proud of America all my life. I was not proud of the 
activities of some Americans. Americans have been a force for good in 
the world since it came into existence. This article points out that, 
actually, that started something, because then other NFL players, as we 
have heard, didn't even realize what Colin Kaepernick was actually 
kneeling for. It is interesting to hear their explanations. They are 
not sure. They just have contempt for something, so they kneel during 
the national anthem.
  It has so affected many Americans that many of us are not watching 
the NFL like we used to. It used to be a priority. I was always glad to 
get home from church and turn on the NFL, maybe see the Dallas Cowboys. 
I haven't been doing that. It hasn't been a priority. Colin Kaepernick 
started that.
  Now, as this article points out, the one thing that allowed the 
mainstream media to bundle all kinds of programming that they forced 
cable companies or dish companies to take was the NFL. It was the big 
breadwinner that forced cable companies and satellite companies to take 
programming they really didn't want. But if you wanted the NFL, you had 
to take what the networks were bundling.
  Now that the NFL is not turning into the cash cow it once was, and 
viewership and attendance drops, and, therefore, advertising dollars 
are plummeting, it may just be that that act of taking a knee back when 
it first started ends up leading to the liberal mainstream media not 
force-feeding Americans liberal pablum that they have been able to do 
for years. Wouldn't that be an ironic result of one player taking a 
knee?
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair will remind Members to refrain 
from improper references to the President.

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