[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9007-9009]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1800
                 FORMER FBI DIRECTOR COMEY'S TESTIMONY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hollingsworth). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 3, 2017, the gentlewoman from Washington 
(Ms. Jayapal) is recognized for the remainder of the hour as the 
designee of the minority leader.
  Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Raskin for his 
leadership in the House. It has been a great honor to co-chair the CPC 
Special Order hour here every week on the floor.
  Since I have just been elected the first vice chair of the 
Congressional Progressive Caucus, I, unfortunately, won't be continuing 
to do that. But I am still going to be right here for these Special 
Order hours, because I do think that they are an important opportunity 
for Members to talk about issues all at once, and to kind of pick an 
issue, and then to focus on it.
  Obviously, today, we are talking about the testimony from former FBI 
Director James Comey. This was highly anticipated testimony, and I 
would be willing to guess that a lot more people, perhaps, even watched 
the testimony than watched the inauguration. But I think we learned a 
great deal from former Director Comey. I appreciate that he was willing 
to come and testify, and he said some very important things.
  In that testimony, Mr. Comey confirmed that President Trump sought to 
influence the FBI investigation into his campaign's ties to Russia, 
including that of Michael Flynn.
  While the President had claimed that he did not ask former Director 
Comey to drop the investigation, Mr. Comey actually testified under 
oath that Trump's directive was clear, and that this was apparently so 
off-putting that he began to memorialize their meetings. Every single 
meeting he had with President Trump, he would have the meeting and then 
go back to the car and immediately take notes on the meeting, and that 
is troubling.
  That was something that former Director Comey never did with previous 
administrations. And one of the things that stuck out to me in his 
testimony is that he had actually asked--he felt so uncomfortable with 
the interactions that he was having with the President, because I think 
the American people need to understand, the FBI is built to be an 
independent organization.
  The reason that the term of the FBI Director is 10 years is because 
it was a signal from Congress that even though the FBI Director does 
serve at the pleasure of the President--and Mr. Comey was clear about 
that in his testimony today--the President has the ability to hire and 
fire the FBI Director.
  But the reason Congress signaled through legislation that the term of 
the FBI Director should be 10 years was because they wanted to send a 
signal that this body is incredibly important, and the independence of 
this body is incredibly important.
  The fact that Mr. Comey, as FBI Director, felt so uncomfortable about 
these interactions with the President--nine interactions with the 
President. I think he had only two interactions with President Obama 
during his entire term, and yet, in just the first few months, he had 
nine interactions with President Trump. He actually asked Attorney 
General Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein not to 
leave him alone with the President.
  That is really a remarkable, scary thing that he would have to ask 
for that, and it certainly should have raised some red flags and should 
have triggered some action from the Attorney General, or the Deputy 
Attorney General. It did not. He never received an answer to that.
  Mr. Comey also said that he expects the special counsel's 
investigation to look into the possibility that Trump's actions were an 
obstruction of justice. He said that this did fall within the 
investigation scope. So while he didn't directly say that Trump was 
directly under investigation, he did say that the President's behavior 
does fall within the investigation's scope.
  That, frankly, does nothing to dispel any concerns that are out there 
amongst the American people, and many of us in Congress, that President 
Trump's campaign did not collude with Russia.
  Apparently, he did not seem particularly concerned about whether or 
not Russia did interfere in the elections but was more interested in 
whether or not his circle of friends, Michael Flynn, was under threat.
  Former Director Comey also confirmed that Michael Flynn is under 
criminal investigation, and he raised more questions about Attorney 
General Jeff Sessions. As I have spoken about on the floor before, 
Attorney General Sessions should not have been involved in the firing 
of James Comey in the first place.

[[Page 9008]]

  He had recused himself from all things related to the investigation 
into the campaign's ties to Russia because of his involvement with the 
Trump campaign, and so that was good. We thought that was a very good 
move that he made to recuse himself, but then he immediately went and 
was directly involved in the decisionmaking around the person who was 
leading the investigation, in fact, involved in the decision to fire 
the person who was leading the investigation.
  Mr. Comey also hinted that Jeff Sessions had more contact with the 
Russians than maybe we even knew about. He could not speak to that in a 
public setting. He said that is for a classified setting, but, 
obviously, that raises a lot more questions, and the American people 
certainly deserve the truth.
  One of the biggest takeaways from the testimony was this: President 
Trump gave many changing reasons as to why former Director Comey was 
fired. And former Director Comey spoke to this today. He said, at 
first, it was because it was the handling--it was because of Comey's 
handling of the Clinton emails. Then it was that he had lost the 
support of the FBI agents, something that James Comey responded to, and 
said: ``Those were lies, plain and simple.''
  Actually, Mr. Comey spent quite some time really acknowledging the 
work of the organization, the FBI organization, and the agents, and 
everything that he has done. I certainly got the impression that he 
felt very deeply upset by any indication that perhaps it was because 
his agents didn't want him to be there.
  What Mr. Comey pointed to is that eventually the President, in his 
own words, admitted that he fired James Comey over the Russian 
investigation, and then, right after that, actually said to the 
Russians that the pressure has now been taken off now that Comey has 
been fired. Those are all incredibly disturbing.
  And I am sad, Mr. Speaker, that the Republicans--some Republican 
colleagues, not all, but some--have tried to dismiss the President's 
actions as ``mistakes made by a new President who is learning how to do 
his job.'' Speaker Paul Ryan went so far as to say: ``He is new at 
government. Therefore, I think he is learning as he goes.''
  This is just 1 day after the Speaker said that it is obviously--that 
was his word--not appropriate for the President to ask for Mr. Comey's 
loyalty. So which one is it, Mr. Speaker? It is unacceptable to excuse 
the President's actions simply because he is not a career professional, 
especially when we are talking about something of this magnitude--the 
magnitude of interference in our election process in the United States 
of America by a foreign government.
  We do not have any information still about all of the ways in which a 
President of the United States, this President of the United States, 
may be indebted to some foreign government because of their actions 
with the election.
  It has been repeatedly reported that the President does not sit for 
briefings, does not read the reports that are provided to him, does not 
stick to speeches on policies that are written for him, and, frankly, 
shows very little interest in participating in the administrative 
responsibilities that most Presidents go through in order to learn what 
is a very big job.
  Yes, the job of the President of the United States is a very big job, 
and anybody who gets into that job, just as I do in this body as a new 
Member of Congress, we try to learn the rules. We go to the people who 
know the most. We ask them to give us briefings. We suck up as much 
information as we possibly can so that we understand both content and 
process.
  But, unfortunately, this President has not done any of that, and he 
has made many unforced errors. Frankly, he has put our national 
security at risk by giving secrets away to Russia, insulting key allies 
who have now said that they won't share information with us because 
they don't trust that we are going to be able to keep it secret.
  NATO and our allies in the European Union, where I just came back 
from, everybody around the world is unsure of what leadership, if any, 
to expect from the United States of America.
  Angela Merkel said it the best when she said: We can't rely on 
anybody else anymore. And she said: We, as a European Union, have to 
just come together and rely on ourselves.
  And while that is great for the European Union, I am glad that there 
is something that has happened here that has drawn the European Union 
together. It is an incredibly important entity for the world and has 
been doing remarkable work. But what I would hope, Mr. Speaker, is that 
countries around the world know that the United States is going to 
continue to take global leadership, is going to continue to demonstrate 
that global leadership, and, most of all, is going to be trusted to 
make relationships and respect the rules of those relationships.
  The American people are aware that the President's background is not 
in politics. However, the White House is not ``The Apprentice.'' Had a 
new employee in The Trump Organization made as many errors as have been 
made in this administration, he would have been fired a long time ago.
  The American people deserve better. And not only do we demand that 
the President not intervene in any negative way in Director Mueller's 
investigation--and we are very pleased that Director Mueller has been 
appointed. I believe that was an incredibly important step that 
Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein took to appoint somebody with 
the credibility that Mueller has--but we hope that this investigation 
will continue, because I think it is important for the American people 
to understand that this is not an independent investigator, or 
prosecutor. This is special counsel.
  So that still means that anything that Director Mueller finds in his 
findings, his reports, they do get run up the chain of command at the 
Department of Justice. So if you watched yesterday's Senate 
Intelligence Committee hearings, you might have seen Senator Kamala 
Harris discuss this and ask Rod Rosenstein if he could assure that 
there really would be independence, that neither Rosenstein nor Jeff 
Sessions would get involved in trying to change or influence, in any 
way, whatever Director Mueller comes up with.
  She was not given that assurance yesterday, unfortunately, and so we 
still don't know. But we have to hope and believe that the President 
and this administration will preserve the independence of the special 
counsel and will take all of the findings and the recommendations as to 
what they are presented and not try to change them.
  I really believe, Mr. Speaker, at this point, that while the special 
counsel is an important step forward, I join my colleague Mr. Raskin 
and many others in this caucus, in our Democratic Caucus, in calling 
for a special commission, an independent commission, similar to the 9/
11 Commission, filled with citizens--not with Members of Congress but 
with respected citizens--and people with expertise, as well as those 
citizens, to actually come together and think not only about the 
immediate impact of how we get to the bottom of what has happened, but, 
really, how do we prevent this going forward?
  What we are talking about is the sanctity of our democracy; we are 
talking about whether our elections can be free of influence from other 
countries; we are talking about if an American citizen casts a vote 
here in the United States for the President of the United States, that 
that vote is not being influenced by a foreign government who has 
hacked our elections, or worked in collusion with a campaign for the 
President of the United States; and that ultimately, whoever we select, 
whether it is this President or any President in the future, that that 
President must be responsible to the American people.
  That is what democracy is about. We don't want any President, now or 
in the future, to ever be in a situation where there is information 
that can be used against them, where they could be blackmailed, 
leveraged, or where they are actively colluding with any government 
outside of this country.
  These are our elections. It is what makes this country great. It is 
why so many people from all around the world

[[Page 9009]]

look at America with tremendous gratitude, with tremendous respect, 
even awe for the way in which we have constructed our democracy. That 
is part of what goes on in this Chamber, and we need to know that the 
election of the President of this great country is always an election 
that the American people have faith in, and that democracy is 
preserved.
  Mr. Speaker, I think what James Comey's testimony showed us today is, 
we got a lot of answers, but we didn't get enough answers. There is 
still more information that we need to find. There is more information 
that the Senate Intelligence Committee needs to find. There is more 
information that the President may have to provide, and there is more 
information that the American people are going to demand in order to 
ensure that we get to the bottom of where we are, that we get an 
independent commission established, and that we allow Director Mueller, 
in his investigation, to proceed without any interference.
  That is the least that we have to be willing to do, and we have to be 
willing to put country above party as we try to ensure that we 
understand exactly what has happened. The American people deserve that.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back.

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