[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19814-19818]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      ROBERT MUELLER INVESTIGATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am here to discuss a very serious issue, 
which are the mounting threats and criticism of Robert Mueller's 
investigation into criminality taking place in the course of the 
Presidential election with interference by the Russians and possible 
collusion with various Americans working with him.
  But I want to start by putting this in a general context, Mr. 
Speaker. Tom Paine said: ``In the monarchies, the king is law; but in 
the democracies, the law is king.''
  We place everything on the rule of law here in the United States of 
America. It is how we control the people who occupy the highest offices 
of government and control vast amounts of resources that belong to the 
people of the United States.
  In the monarchies and in the dictatorships, the people have no 
control over those who occupy government; but in the democracies, in 
the constitutional societies, we exercise control over the people who 
lead the government to make sure that they don't abuse their power for 
improper purposes: for private gain, for the enrichment of particular 
classes, or for the perpetuation of their own political power.
  Now, when we took office at the beginning of this year, Mr. Speaker, 
we received an Intelligence Committee report, signed by 18 intelligence 
agencies: the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, 
and on and on.
  They all told us the same thing, which is that Vladimir Putin had 
attempted to interfere and had interfered in the American election 
through cyber espionage and cyber sabotage in an effort to determine 
the outcome of our election. That took place. We knew that way back 
when we first took office.
  Now, in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which 
I serve on, and in the House Judiciary Committee, which I serve on, we 
were told--and we have been told for months going all the way back to 
the beginning of the year--that we don't need to investigate this 
assault on the sovereignty of the American people in our own election 
because there is an excellent lawyer and law enforcement official in 
charge of the special counsel investigation: Robert Mueller.
  Indeed, Robert Mueller is a man of extraordinary and, perhaps, 
singular qualification. He is a decorated war hero from the Vietnam 
war; a U.S. attorney, who had been the U.S. attorney for both the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the State of California; a former 
Director of the FBI.
  And do you know what?
  Robert Mueller is a registered Republican. He was named as special 
counsel by another registered Republican and another widely heralded 
and highly-qualified law enforcement official: Rod Rosenstein, who had 
been a career attorney in the Department of Justice, and then the U.S. 
attorney appointed by President Bush in the great State of Maryland, my 
home State; and who is presently the Deputy Attorney General of the 
United States, appointed by another Republican: Attorney General 
Sessions.
  So Attorney General Sessions appointed Rod Rosenstein, who is the 
Deputy Attorney General, a Republican; and Rod Rosenstein appointed 
another Republican and a widely admired and highly-qualified law 
enforcement official, Robert Mueller, to take over as the special 
counsel.

                              {time}  1315

  Now, with all these Republicans in charge of the investigation and 
with the Republicans here in Congress saying, ``no, we won't do any 
investigations of our own,'' despite past practice, we have to ask why 
Special Counsel Robert Mueller this week has suddenly come under 
withering fire by our GOP colleagues in the most ferocious organized 
attack on a Federal prosecution and prosecutor I have ever seen.
  Well, the answer, alas, is obvious. They are attacking Special 
Counsel Robert Mueller and his fine team of lawyers and investigators 
because Mueller and his team are doing their jobs and justice is being 
done. There have already been two guilty pleas arising from this 
investigation: one from President Trump's former National Security 
Advisor, General Flynn, who pled guilty to lying to the FBI about 
Trump-Russia; and another criminal confession and guilty plea from the 
former foreign policy assistant, George Papadopoulos, who also took 
full responsibility for his criminal conduct in lying about Trump-
Russia to the FBI.
  And there have been sweeping criminal indictments handed down by the 
Mueller team, the special counsel, against Paul Manafort, Trump's 
former campaign manager, and his associate, Rick Gates.
  Now, for all we know, this might be the end of it. The special 
counsel isn't talking. He is not leaking. He is doing his job. But it 
is also possible that the investigation is just getting started and 
that they are closing in on even higher targets: perhaps Jared Kushner, 
the all-purpose Trump aide and the President's son-in-law, perhaps he 
is within the scopes of this investigation; perhaps Donald Trump, Jr.; 
and perhaps the President of the United States himself, Donald Trump.
  And so the White House has issued its apparently desperate and 
cornered animal orders. The President cries chaos and let's slip the 
dogs of war against Special Counsel Mueller and the rule of law. This 
week, Trump has called the Mueller investigation--an investigation led 
by a Republican, who is named by a Republican, who is named by a 
Republican--he calls this investigation ``the single greatest witch 
hunt of a politician in American history.''
  And I don't want to hear from any of my colleagues, either, GOP on 
the other side, Well, you can't take seriously what the President says 
because he is disconnecting from reality or he is paranoid or he is 
delusional, unless you are willing to try to activate the

[[Page 19815]]

provisions of the 25th Amendment. We must take the President's word 
seriously.
  And, in the meantime, of course, our friends across the aisle, Mr. 
Speaker, are going along with everything the President says and 
everything that he does, and they are enabling his attempt to defame 
the special counsel, Mr. Mueller, and to attack the work of the FBI.
  The President calls the FBI an agency in tatters, and an onslaught 
has followed in the media. On FOX News, a full-scale campaign against 
the FBI has arisen with lots of people comparing the FBI to the KGB, 
which is amusing because, if that were true, they would like the FBI--
because Donald Trump's best buddy in foreign relations and FOX News' 
beloved kleptocrat authoritarian dictator abroad is Vladimir Putin, the 
former chief of the KGB. But they compare our FBI, the tens of 
thousands of men and women who have given their lives to law 
enforcement in our country, they compare the FBI to the KGB under a 
totalitarian government.
  Newt Gingrich calls Mueller corrupt, Newt Gingrich who was officially 
reprimanded right here, Mr. Speaker, right where we stand today, by 
this body. In a vote of 395-28, he was reprimanded and disciplined for 
violating the rules of this body, and he calls the former FBI Director, 
Special Counsel Mueller corrupt in an effort to undermine and discredit 
the special counsel investigation.
  And now this propaganda campaign comes to the official channels of 
the House of Representatives. Yesterday, Deputy Attorney General Rod 
Rosenstein appeared before the House Judiciary Committee for an 
oversight hearing, and I was appalled and I was amazed at the way our 
GOP colleagues attacked him with a series of completely phony, 
overblown, and misleading accusations.
  They are in full-scale assault mode now. They are in a frenzied wild 
goose chase to find anything possible to discredit Special Counsel 
Mueller and his investigators in his team.
  And guess what, they finally found their villain. This week they 
found their villain, and they pounced on him. It is an FBI agent named 
Peter Strzok, who was working on the Mueller investigation but was 
removed from it this summer when it was discovered that he had sent a 
bunch of text messages to his apparent girlfriend criticizing a number 
of politicians, including Donald Trump, whom he called an idiot, Mr. 
Speaker. I think he was watching one of the Presidential debates where 
he sent a text message to his girlfriend, writing: ``OMG, he is an 
idiot.'' That is the way I am reading the texts that were revealed to 
us yesterday.
  Now, he was probably one of millions of people to send that exact 
same text across the country. It wasn't a very nice thing to say, but 
he said it. He also called Bernie Sanders, the Democratic candidate for 
President, the Vermont U.S. Senator, an idiot. He called Trump an 
idiot; he called Sanders an idiot; and he had even more choice, 
unspeakable words for my friend, the former Governor of Maryland, 
Martin O'Malley, which I don't think I can repeat on the floor, Mr. 
Speaker.
  All right. Mr. Strzok was speaking his mind in these private texts, 
but it raised the potentiality of bias in one of the agents working on 
the team. And so what did Mr. Mueller do when he learned of it? He 
fired him immediately. He got him off of the investigation, removed him 
from the investigation, and put him into a different part of the FBI. 
He removed him immediately from the investigation.
  Unlike President Trump, for example, who took 18 days to fire General 
Flynn after learning that Flynn was a serial liar about his connections 
with Russia.
  So it took President Trump 18 days. Mr. Mueller fired the guy 
immediately because people make mistakes, they do the wrong thing, and 
Mueller said: I don't want him on my team. He removed him, and they put 
him somewhere else.
  Now, that should have been the end of the matter; right? It sounds 
like the end of the story is not a big deal. But, on the eve of our 
hearing yesterday, we received a dump of hundreds of these private text 
messages between Mr. Strzok and his friend, Ms. Page, and they make, no 
doubt, for titillating, fascinating, engrossing reading as these two 
people make their observations about the Presidential campaign. It's 
like ``Anna Karenina'' or ``House of Cards.'' It is fascinating. It is 
the kind of trivial gossip that people get into sometimes in this town.
  I was amazed to learn that the Department of Justice itself--not 
Mueller, not his team, but the Department of Justice--the formal public 
affairs channel had actually orchestrated this dump of text messages 
that were revealed in the course of an ongoing Department of Justice 
investigation, inspector general investigation. They took this material 
from the middle of an investigation, called up a whole bunch of 
reporters and brought them in to show them these texts.
  Why?
  Well, nobody could really explain it. I asked Mr. Rosenstein 
yesterday, and he couldn't explain what really--he said: Well, it had 
been approved.
  I said: ``Was there any precedent for it? Was there any precedent for 
the Department of Justice revealing material that turned up in the 
middle of an ongoing investigation to reporters?
  He couldn't name any. It wasn't even in the press conference.
  So that took place. That strikes me as very odd that there are people 
in the Department of Justice who apparently are cooperating with this 
effort to undermine the integrity and the strength of the special 
counsel investigation.
  Well, the key thing to understand is that all of those text messages 
are totally irrelevant. The great text message love story saga, which 
was dumped on us, is an irrelevant distraction. Mr. Mueller got rid of 
Mr. Strzok, removed him from the team, end of story.
  Of course, FBI agents, prosecutors are allowed to have a political 
party. Mueller's got one; it is Republican. Rosenstein's got one; he is 
a Republican. That is fine. You can be Republican. You can be Democrat. 
You are not allowed to have your political ideas affect your work to 
the point that you are biased.
  So I take it Mr. Mueller figured that those text messages suggested 
the possibility of bias, not just against Bernie Sanders and Martin 
O'Malley, but also against Donald Trump, and they said: Okay. We will 
remove him from the team. He is gone.
  But yesterday, that is all the Republicans wanted to talk about, this 
great trumped up, fake text message scandal--totally irrelevant.
  The only one who, to his credit, tried to make it relevant was a 
Republican colleague who said this is fruit of the poisonous tree, and 
he repeated it numerous times. He intoned the words, ``fruit of the 
poisonous tree.''
  Well, I am a law professor, so I know what ``fruit of the poisonous 
tree'' means. It is a Fourth Amendment doctrine which says that, if you 
have got an illegal search or seizure by the government, you cannot use 
evidence that is obtained by virtue of an illegal search or an illegal 
seizure against someone in court. If the government tries to use it, 
then the so-called exclusionary rule is activated, and you exclude 
evidence that is derived from an illegal search or seizure.
  But there is no illegal search or seizure, and there is not even an 
allegation of an illegal search or seizure. All they have got is text 
messages between two lovebirds, and that is it.
  I asked Mr. Rosenstein yesterday, I said: Was there an illegal search 
or seizure? Is there an allegation of an illegal search or seizure?
  No, none at all.
  So what is the relevance of all that stuff? Nothing. They found one 
FBI agent who is removed during the summertime for trashing a bunch of 
politicians on both sides of the aisle. They find that guy. They talk 
only about the fact that he called the President of the United States 
an idiot, which we must concede hardly makes him an original critic of 
the President. Okay. They find that one guy, and then suddenly they 
want to use that to claim that bias infects the whole operation, the 
whole investigation.

[[Page 19816]]

  And why are they doing that? Well, look, if they just want to put up 
a propaganda smoke screen, that is within their First Amendment rights 
to do so and within their rights under the Speech or Debate Clause. The 
problem is that there is mounting fear and anxiety that this is trying 
to set the stage for President Trump to fire Robert Mueller, perhaps 
the most admired law enforcement official and prosecutor in the 
country, that they are setting the stage to fire him with all this 
trumped-up stuff about a bunch of texts between some lovebirds. That is 
it. That is all they have got.
  After all this time, that is what they are using to try to discredit 
Robert Mueller and his team, who, at the time of his appointment, they 
described as unimpeachable, beyond reproach, and so on. But now that he 
is doing his job and it looks like the momentum of the investigation is 
leading to the very top of the U.S. Government, they may be looking for 
a reason to fire him.
  Well, this is an emergency, a constitutional emergency if this is 
going to happen. This is why we are blowing the whistle on it.
  I am delighted to be joined by a great legislator, someone whose 
career is woven into the fabric of the U.S. House of Representatives. 
He is the minority whip of this body, and I am just delighted to yield 
now to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

                              {time}  1330

  Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding and for taking this 
opportunity on the Special Order. I think, as an aside, I need to 
apologize to him for making him wait so long for this Special Order.
  I also want to tell the American people, Mr. Speaker, that the 
gentleman who has taken this Special Order is probably the 
constitutional expert not only in this body, but one of the 
constitutional experts in our country. He is a great legislator 
himself. Although he is new to this body, he is not new to being a 
legislative leader at all. He has been a legislative leader in our 
State for many years. He is a wonderful teacher and somebody who has 
great political courage and is willing to stand and say that the 
emperor has no clothes. He is willing to call attention to the fact 
that our democracy is at risk, that our due process is at risk.
  He used the phrase ``trumped up.'' What an interesting phrase that is 
that we have used for many years. I don't know that it has had as much 
relevance in years past as it now may have.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, Mr. Raskin, for leading this Special 
Order. Our system of government, as he has pointed out, is based on the 
rule of law. We are a government of laws, not of men.
  What that means is that it is not personalities, not dictators, not 
kings that rule our land. It is the law, the law of our Constitution, 
the law of our legislators, and the common law that we pursue as 
interpreted by our court systems. Its foundation is the constitutional 
principle that all are equal under the law. No one is exempt.
  The appointment of a special prosecutor earlier this year to look 
into the possibility of the administration or Trump campaign officials 
colluding with a foreign adversary or obstructing justice falls into a 
long tradition in our country of using independent counsel to 
investigate those in the most senior offices of our government.
  Our Founding Fathers would say that is a check and balance; that is a 
protection against the usurpation of democracy.
  The choice of former FBI Director Bob Mueller to be that independent 
investigator was an extraordinarily wise one; a decision greeted with 
support from across the political spectrum, precisely because Mr. 
Mueller is so widely respected for his independence and his commitment 
to the law above all else.
  And, parenthetically, although it is not necessarily relevant, he is 
a Republican. He is not, however, driven by the politics of left or 
right or Republican or Democrat. He is a man of the law, a man who 
seeks the truth, a man who has dedicated his career to assuring that we 
remain a land of liberty under law.
  We have already seen a demonstration of that commitment in the prompt 
firing of a subordinate investigator for an act that was not illegal, 
as the gentleman from Maryland, our constitutional scholar, has pointed 
out, but, however, threatened to impugn the objectivity of the 
investigation.
  In other words, he removed somebody who he thought might undermine 
the credibility of this investigation because he is so committed to 
this investigation being objective and unquestionably fair. Mr. Mueller 
has made it abundantly clear that he will not tolerate any hint of bias 
in this investigation.
  So far, it appears that his investigation is bearing fruit, having 
uncovered serious crimes and secured three indictments as well as 
guilty pleas from two key subjects. Guilty pleas.
  This was not a question of: We had a trial and somebody convinced 12 
people that he was guilty.
  This was a case where the individual said: ``I am guilty. I did what 
was alleged. I know that it is illegal, and I should bear the 
consequences.''
  That included, of course, the National Security Advisor--who was 
National Security Advisor, I think, for 25 days, or close to that 
number--Mr. Flynn.
  As the investigation has advanced, Mr. Speaker, we have seen 
troubling statements from the President and his advisers seeking to sow 
uncertainty about the legitimacy of the special counsel's activities 
and undermine confidence in him.
  But it is not so much the confidence in him that is critical. It is 
confidence in the law. It is confidence in the process. It is 
confidence that, in fact, we are a nation of laws, and whether we are 
President or peasant, we will be held accountable if, in fact, we break 
the laws.
  What is being done to undermine this process threatens the 
independence of the investigation and those who are undertaking it. It 
is dangerous to our democracy and to our freedom.
  Now, in recent days, we have heard calls by the President and his 
allies to launch a counterinvestigation of the special prosecutor's 
investigation. Those of us who know history know that that is so often 
the defense of those who seek authoritarian power, of those who believe 
they are above the law, of those who believe they can intimidate others 
so that they will never be held accountable for wrongdoing.
  This preposterous suggestion has but one purpose: to cast a shadow of 
doubt over the findings of Mr. Mueller's inquiry by attempting to frame 
it in a partisan way.
  In fact, Mr. Mueller was appointed by a Republican-appointed Deputy 
Attorney General. It is tactics like this one that we see so often 
overseas in countries ruled by dictators and those seeking to become 
dictators. This willful effort to erode confidence in any institution 
that must be seen as impartial is harmful because if nobody and nothing 
is impartial, if everyone and everything is tainted by politics and 
interest, then no one can possess the moral authority to hold 
accountable one who wishes to be entirely unaccountable.
  That, Mr. Speaker, is the reason I think that the President has also 
attacked the fourth estate, the newspapers, the broadcasters, the 
people whose duty it is to bring facts to the people so that they, the 
people, can make a rational judgment in a democracy, for it is in their 
hands that the power ultimately resides; and if you undermine those who 
give them the facts, then you undermine their ability to make 
decisions.
  This ultimately is what the special prosecutor's work is all about: 
accountability, ensuring that every person is held to the same high 
standard of behavior under the laws of our Nation.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues in both parties--this is not 
about party. This is about country. This is about patriotism. This is 
about the rule of law. If we lose that respect for law, we will lose 
our country. It will be a different, lesser country.
  I urge my colleagues, from both parties, from every ideological 
corner, let us not forget the most fundamental

[[Page 19817]]

principle that binds us together as Americans and as public servants: 
That all are created equal; that all of us, all Americans, are equal 
under the law.
  That doesn't mean we are the same, but it means, in the eyes of the 
law, we are equal as we stand to be held accountable, or to be held 
innocent, or not involved, or not owing somebody else for wrongdoing. 
We need to uphold it by our words and by our deeds.
  The special prosecutor's work must continue unimpeded, and it must 
continue to be respected. Yesterday, in the Judiciary Committee, that 
was not the case. To defend the indefensible undermines respect for 
law.
  I want to thank my friend again, Mr. Jamie Raskin, from Montgomery 
County, Maryland, for this Special Order. As I said, he is a great 
constitutional scholar and teacher, a great legislator. More 
importantly than that, he is an individual who loves his country and, 
throughout his life, has fought to make the country all that the 
Founding Fathers meant it to be.
  I thank him for coming to this floor and for his efforts to ensure 
that Mr. Mueller's investigation can continue to be seen as impartial 
and with its objective unquestioned, and that is accountability, 
accountability and justice, and equal justice under the law. That is 
our bedrock. That is our touchstone. That is our guiding star. That is 
what Professor Raskin, Congressman Raskin, Citizen Raskin is talking 
about today, and we all ought to thank him for that.
  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. 
Hoyer) very much for his kind words and for his patriotism. I thank him 
for also pointing out the critical importance of civic equality to this 
discussion because civic equality implies that none of us is above the 
law.
  Of the many dangerous things I have heard uttered over the last 
couple of weeks with respect to this investigation, perhaps none is 
more sinister or disturbing than the suggestion that the President 
cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice because the President 
himself oversees the whole government.
  Well, at that point, we may as well hang it all up and go back to 
monarchy because the governing principle of our Constitution is we have 
no kings here. We have no kings here. So I thank Mr. Hoyer for that.
  James Madison wrote that the very definition of ``tyranny'' is the 
collapse of all powers into one. We are trying to defend the separation 
of powers and we are trying to defend the rule of law against all of it 
being drowned in a political agenda.
  Mr. Speaker, I am joined now by my very distinguished colleague on 
the House Judiciary Committee. I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee 
(Mr. Cohen).
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I am a little late and I don't know exactly 
what has been discussed. I serve on the Judiciary Committee with the 
gentleman, and what we have seen in the Judiciary Committee is scary.
  I am honored to be a Member of the United States Congress. I am 
honored to be an American citizen. I see a threat to the independence 
of the United States Congress in upholding its oath and looking out for 
the best interests of its people and to our country.
  I have Republican friends, as the gentleman does, on the other side 
of the aisle, and I know that they, in representing their constituents, 
are not fond of the totalitarian Russian Government and philosophy that 
threatens NATO countries like Lithuania, and Estonia, and Latvia, and 
Ukraine, and Georgia, with the power of the Russian military.
  They do not like democracy. They do not like America, and they do not 
like what we represent. They don't like freedom of the press. They 
don't like freedom of religion. They don't like freedoms of elections. 
They don't have really free elections. They say they do, but they kill 
their opponents or they put them in jail on trumped-up charges, and 
they count the votes. There is nothing good about Russia in regards of 
democracy, and even within their constitution after they formed a 
country after the Soviet Union fell apart.
  Our Republican colleagues are like sheep, following the President in 
attacking the FBI; in attacking the Justice Department; in attacking 
heroic Americans who have risked their lives in the FBI, and heroic 
Americans like Robert Mueller, who served in Vietnam and risked his 
life and was wounded there, I believe. And they threaten them and talk 
to them as if they are complicit with the Clinton campaign and trying 
to do something to harm President Trump.
  Mr. Mueller is a Republican, appointed first by a Republican, Bush, 
and then later by a Democrat, Obama. He is as fine a human being as I 
have come in contact with in my 11 years in Congress, and maybe as fine 
a human being as I have come in contact with in my 68 years on Earth.

                              {time}  1345

  Mr. Rosenstein said glowing things about him yesterday and how heroic 
he is and how strong he is, how dedicated he is, how patriotic he is, 
and how honest he is.
  For the Republicans to be trying to take this man down and to take 
down others who serve in the FBI, the only reason they are doing this 
is because they are finding information in their charge that implicates 
the President of the United States in activities that are questionable 
as far as his oath of office and border on treason. Because of that, 
they attack the FBI, which is the top layer or the cream of the crop of 
law enforcement.
  And the President goes out and talks about our wonderful first 
responders, but the top of the line he is against because they question 
him.
  That is when your country no longer exists, when it is all about the 
leader, not about institutions, and not about other individuals who are 
doing their jobs in a proper manner.
  FBI Director Wray said nothing but good things about Robert Mueller. 
I think Robert Mueller's job is in jeopardy from this President, who 
likes to fire people, which is what he did on television, and he still 
thinks he is on television. It is a big performance art. It is all 
about performance art, and the star is Donald Trump. He acts and he is 
the show; and the show goes on, and there is nothing else.
  To fire Mueller is part of the show, to question what he has done in 
arresting Manafort and Gates, guilty pleas, I think, from one of the 
gentlemen he arrested--was it Papadopoulos?--and then a guilty plea 
from Flynn. They don't plead guilty unless they are guilty.
  Mueller is doing his job. He is trying to protect America. I think he 
is the man of the year and will be the man of the year next year. He is 
the one person between us and a kleptocracy and group of oligarchs, but 
kleptocrats who are using their positions in government to benefit 
themselves financially and to build up their wealth.
  This tax bill we are talking about is part of the same thing. It is 
oligarchs. No inheritance tax, meaning they get hundreds of millions of 
dollars--hundreds of millions of dollars--and the President goes and 
says to a middle class family earning $75,000: You will have $2,000 
that you can spend any way you want, or you can even save it.
  $2,000 is tip change at Orange Julius to those people, the big money, 
hundreds of millions and hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars 
as the inheritance tax being repealed and the AMT being repealed and 
other changes.
  And then they said: Oh, well, we only reduced the tax on the 
wealthiest from 39 percent to 37 because they weren't going to get to 
deduct as much of their State and local taxes, and it was going to hurt 
them more.
  Well, there are people who aren't in the top bracket who aren't going 
to get to reduce their State and local taxes, and they gave them nada. 
They gave all of it to the wealthiest.
  And that is what this is about. This is about the wealthiest people 
taking this country over and an oligarchy, and Trump is representative 
of them. It is about him. It is not about institutions. It is not about 
the Constitution. It is not about people. It is not about the First 
Amendment.
  So many of the people who support him are good, hardworking, decent

[[Page 19818]]

American people who don't want to be in bed with Russia and don't want 
to give up our democracy and don't want to give up our free elections 
to hacking and to internet social media games, and that is what we have 
had.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for having this Special Order.
  Mr. Speaker, I have a bill I took over for Mr. Conyers with Mr. 
Walter Jones, a Republican, that says you can't fire Mr. Mueller 
without cause and gives a redress in court. Sheila Jackson Lee has 
another. We have to be aware and alert. And if this happens, the people 
have to let their Representatives know, and particularly the Republican 
Representatives know, that they won't stand for it and they won't have 
another Saturday Night Massacre, because Rosenstein said Mr. Mueller 
has done nothing to be fired. He probably would not fire him, which 
means Rosenstein will be fired, and that is the end of the rule of law, 
and that is what makes us different from other countries, makes us 
different from dictators and autocrats.
  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership. I 
thank him for invoking the critical Watergate analogy, the Saturday 
Night Massacre with the firing of Archibald Cox and other Department of 
Justice officials who refused to cover up for the President's crimes 
and misdeeds. I thank him for his legislation that would try to empower 
the special counsel not to be fired without a court's say-so at least, 
to build another check and balance.
  I thank him, also, for invoking what is also taking place in 
Washington right now, which is this massive assault on the American 
middle class through this so-called tax cut bill, this tax scam, which 
would actually raise taxes for tens of millions of Americans while 
transmitting billions of dollars up the income and wealth ladder.
  Ever since we have arrived here, the whole government has felt like a 
money-making operation for a person, a family, a small group of 
billionaires in the Cabinet, a handful of people in the country like 
the Koch brothers and the Mercers. We cannot allow either this assault 
on the basic middle class economics of the country to go through or 
this assault on the Constitution and the rule of law, which we 
witnessed so vividly yesterday in the House Judiciary Committee.
  I want to thank the gentleman for his service and for being one of 
the first to blow the whistle about what is taking place here.


                             General Leave

  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks 
and to include any extraneous material on the subject of this Special 
Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Maryland?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from 
engaging in personalities toward the President and Members of the 
Senate, whether originating as the Member's own words or being 
reiterated from another source.

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