Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I appreciate my friend yielding to me, and I appreciate my colleague, Ms. Lofgren's comments. Any law that is based on a lie has a good chance of being a problem. The lie starts with the initial FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Yet, it is not foreign. Now, since I have been here, whether it is the PATRIOT Act or reauthorizing the FISA court, we are told: Look, American citizens have nothing to worry about because the only American citizen that gets caught up through the FISA court is somebody that is dealing with a known foreign terrorist or a known foreign organization engaged in terrorism. You know, just avoid dealing with terrorists, and you are going to be okay. The problem is, I keep hearing, this is a good first step. No, this isn't the first step. This is the last step, and as my friend Ms. Lofgren said, it doesn't go far enough. As my friend Michael Cloud said, under the current bill, they ignored the penalty for lying to the judge, which was a 5-year sentence. Now, under the new law, they can ignore an 8-year sentence. That doesn't really help preserve anybody's rights. This was not done in the committee. It did not have proper debate. The secret court had the bill pulled away from the full committee, so we couldn't debate it. We couldn't discuss it, and it was pulled into a secret negotiation that many of us were not part of. Look, having the Attorney General sign it doesn't work either, and it shouldn't be a special category for Federal elected officials. In fact, what it should be is all Americans. Acting Attorney General Rosenstein, he signed off on one of the applications himself. Obviously, that is not a deterrent. We need to fix the FISA court. This doesn't do it, and I will vote ``no'' until we have adequate reforms that do.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the tribute of my colleague a few moments ago for law enforcement. One of the things that arose out of the evil hatred that brought about 9/11's attacks was people began to appreciate our military again and began to appreciate our first responders again. That was a very welcome development. And it seems that in recent years so much of that respect and admiration has been clouded by false allegations against some law enforcement. So it is great to hear other colleagues talk about the importance of our law enforcement and the role they play. Unfortunately, what many consider to be the greatest law enforcement agency or department in the world has been badly clouded by bad actors within the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I know U.S. Attorney Durham is investigating. We haven't seen any results come from that at this point. We have just seen terribly inappropriate if not criminal conduct from FBI agents in recent years that resulted in no punishment. We had Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, before our committee recently. I questioned him about the FBI agent who falsified information to submit to the FISA court, in essence, changing the information that said Carter Page did work for our intelligence agency to saying he did not, and instead of the director punishing him, he was allowed to resign. That is not hardly cleaning up criminal conduct. The people that swore to applications and affidavits before the FISA court in order to get warrants to spy upon Carter Page--Papadopoulos-- the Trump campaign was obviously the goal. We haven't seen people punished, but the reputation of the FBI and those good FBI agents who do enforce and follow and properly investigate the law, they suffered. It is going to take, obviously, a different director of the FBI in order to clean up the FBI and get their reputation back. Simply allowing people to resign or retire when from all appearances they have engaged in criminal conduct when they are supposed to be investigating criminals, that is not enough. To deny and to turn the other cheek when you find out about improprieties within your department, that is not enough. As Christians, we believe in what Jesus taught about turning the other cheek or loving your enemy, but there is a different role for Christians when they are in government, and that does not mean ignoring criminal improprieties; it means, like Romans 13 talks about, if you do evil, you are supposed to be afraid because the government was not given the sword in vain. It is supposed to punish evildoers. And that is one of the roles. We are supposed to have good oversight in Congress, and the FBI had been allowed to devolve into great problems here in Washington, and not just in Washington, but even working for the District of Columbia. The agent, possibly agents, that helped cover up for the Awan brothers further cast great clouds over the reputation of the FBI, but here again, that is in Washington. Across the country, around the world we have good FBI agents. But when my very dear friend, brother, Philip Haney was found with a gunshot wound to his chest out in California, I wish I were comforted when we got word that FBI agents were being sent to assist Amador County in the investigation. I don't know which agents were sent. I don't know if they were good FBI or FBI like Strzok and Page and McCabe and others who had no problem being political and being dishonest in their jobs. I know Inspector General Horowitz has come out with more information about another investigation, but the manner in which he did a great job of finding so many improprieties and then came to conclusions completely opposite of what the fact findings were is a bit disturbing. We need the FBI cleaned up. We need the reputation back. But it needs to come back not through cover-ups like it appears to me has been going on in recent years, but from actually cleaning out those who have been abusing their authority. We are supposed to be taking up the issue of a couple of provisions. The PATRIOT Act section 215 is coming up, fortunately, for sunset. We should be taking up the issue of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, the FISA court. But when we address that, when it has come up, when we have had private discussions with Federal authorities, those of us on the Judiciary Committee in the past, going back to my first year here, 2005, we have been assured, this is FISA, this is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The purpose is to help us go after foreigners who are known terrorists or are foreigners who have relationships with known terrorist organizations. That is who we are going after. The only time we were assured years ago that we may pick up an American citizen is if they are in contact with known foreign terrorists or known foreign terrorist organizations, otherwise, we don't even pick them up. And we find out now years later, those were lies. The ``F'' in FISA stands for foreign, but what we have come to find out through the FBI dishonesty in pursuing the Trump campaign was that actually they go after American citizens on a regular basis. It is a regular thing. They use the FISA court to spy on Americans, to spy on the Trump campaign, but even more than that, to constantly be grabbing up Americans' phone records. And there was a time when they could say with a straight face, look, all we are getting is the metadata. We don't know who these phone numbers are. They are just metadata that we can run algorithms and see if there are any terrorist numbers in there. Well, we know that is not what has been going on. Maybe that has, but what additionally has been going on, and we saw this with Chairman Schiff, he was able to gather information about people in his own committee, phone numbers, people they had called because the days of being able to say, well, it is metadata, we don't know what all those numbers are; no, nowadays you can know very quickly whose number is where and what metadata. And they are spying on Americans. So I have said before, unless there was a dramatic cleanup, and we have seen no indication from the FISA judges themselves that they have enough pride in their position that they would be offended by fraud upon their courts--I don't have a problem with the FISA courts going away. I mean, we succeeded in winning World War II when we had important national secrets, and we went through Korea, went through the Cold War, the worst of the Cold War years, without having FISA courts. They came into being in the 1970s. And now over 40 years or so later, we find out that the use of the FISA court has devolved into abuse of the FISA courts so that American citizens are routinely spied upon. And they are not foreign. They are American citizens. I would love to see, and I really appreciated--we disagree on lots of things, but Zoe Lofgren from California, most of us would say she is much more liberal, but she has always been concerned about American civil rights. In talking with her yesterday, I am still impressed, she is still concerned about America's civil rights, and we should not have Americans spied on. So I know Congresswoman Lofgren has been working on ways to try to actually clean up the FISA court and make some reforms that would help clean things up. But I am to the point with so many abuses that we have found that we could either do away with the FISA court and go back to the days--and, I mean, as a judge I have handled so many warrants, applications, affidavits for warrants, signed warrants--you had to have probable cause that a crime was committed, probable cause that this person probably committed the crime, and then you had to describe with particularity, that is a requirement of the Fourth Amendment, you have to describe with particularity the thing to be searched and the thing to be searched for. And it is often the case that none of those things are found in FISA applications, affidavits, and warrants, at least from the things that we have seen. So the solution in prior days when there was no FISA court, you would file a motion with the court and ask for an in-camera review, ask that documents be sealed for national security purposes. There was normally a time limit, from the ones I am aware of, a time limit on how long they were sealed. And that was to protect national security, if it involved national secrets, national security secrets. But at least it would seem, and I certainly hope that if we are going to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts that we have an amendment that says, you know, since the ``F'' in FISA stands for foreign, then the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Courts are not going to be granting warrants against American citizens. If someone in Federal law enforcement, especially the FBI, wants to spy on an American citizen, they can go to an Article III Federal District Court to get their warrant. You shouldn't be able to go to this secret star chamber court to spy on American citizens. That was never, ever anticipated as one of the jobs of the FISA courts when they were created back in the 1970s. If we are going clean it up, and the FBI has shown no propensity to be able to clean it up themselves and to police themselves, and the FISA courts themselves have not shown that ability or propensity, and, in fact, many have been advocating since we found out about such widespread abuse in the FISA courts, some have advocated, well, maybe if we just allow or require the FISA courts to appoint an amicus, a friend of the Court to stand in for the interests of the person against whom a warrant is being sought, that should be an adequate reform. Then that was proved to be totally bogus back in December when--after this FISA judge who had apparently insufficient pride in her court to punish people who committed a fraud upon the court--an amicus was appointed who happened to be the person who had been lying for quite some time in saying that Devin Nunes was lying when it turned out Devin was exactly right in the things that he put in his report and that the amicus that the FISA court appointed was the one who had been either lying or just completely ignorant. That is the lawyer that was appointed as the friend of the court. Clearly, the FISA courts are not capable of cleaning up their own messes. They enjoy, apparently, having fraud committed upon them and their courts as long as they get to keep signing warrants against American citizens without the American citizens having the right to come in and contest it. I would love to see, especially if we are going to leave the FISA courts, at least let's have an amendment. And I surely hope that this will become a very bipartisan effort to say it is a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, so we are not going to allow a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to grant warrants against American citizens. If somebody wants those, go to an Article III court. For those not familiar with the Constitution--I realize that there are more and more these days since more schools are having to teach to the federally mandated test, and there are no civics questions I am aware of that are compelled to be asked in the mandated Federal test. We don't have as many high school students, graduates from high school, who know about Article I, II, and III of the Constitution. A recent survey, in recent years at least, indicated that, as I recall, more young people 25 and under can identify the Three Stooges than can identify the three branches of the Federal Government: executive, legislative, and judicial. So Article III is the article dealing with the courts. As my old constitutional law professor, David Guinn, used to say, there is only one court created in the Constitution, and that is the Supreme Court. All other Federal courts owe their existence and their jurisdiction to the United States Congress. In other words, Congress brought them into the world, and Congress can take them out of the world. So I would hope that if we don't eliminate the FISA court because of such broad abuses that would allow, encourage, and not respond to abuses when one administration is seeking to spy on and participate in a coup against another party's candidate, then it is time to eliminate the court, and if not eliminate the court, at least eliminate the ability of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to grant warrants against American citizens. American citizens are supposed to be able to have those civil rights, and they have been taken away by the creation and abuse of the FISA courts. It is time that this Congress, in a bipartisan method, came together and said enough of the abuses. Let's face it: President Trump has been getting Federal judges appointed and confirmed in record numbers. I think, from what I can tell, Attorney General Barr is doing what he can to clean up the Justice Department, and I am sure he would defend Christopher Wray. I just happen to disagree with the job that the Director of the FBI currently is doing. But there are going to be some people who are interested in justice who replace those who have been extremely partisan, as we have seen. I would encourage my friends across the aisle who have seen how helpful the FBI was to a Democratic administration politically just to keep in mind there are changes being made, and it is not going to be so helpful to one party over another in the future. I would hope that colleagues on both sides of the aisle would come together to say: You know what? This really is the time. We have to stand up for American rights. It is one thing under the Constitution to have writs of habeas corpus suspended in a time of war, but it is quite another to prevent writs of habeas corpus, because American citizens don't even know that they are being spied upon by their own government and cases are being made against them through spying by their own government without probable cause, without proper warrants. It is time to fix that, and I hope this will be the Congress that does so. So, we have this article from The Washington Times, Jeff Mordock, yesterday. It says: ``FBI missed chances to stop domestic terror attacks because of lack of follow-up,'' according to the Horowitz report, apparently. In this article, it points out that the IG investigation revealed ``lapses in the Bureau's assessments allowed perpetrators of some of the most deadly attacks in recent history to fall through the cracks.'' That is understandable since the FBI was trying to help prevent Donald Trump from being elected President and then trying to participate in what certainly appeared to be an attempted coup, that, gee, they were just too busy to actually prevent some of these terrorist attacks, according to the article and the IG report: ``Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016; Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who killed three people at the Boston Marathon in 2013; Nidal Hasan, who massacred 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009; Esteban Santiago, who killed five people in a 2017 attack at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.'' `` `The FBI has acknowledged that various weaknesses related to its assessment process may have impacted its ability to fully investigate certain counterterrorism assessment subjects, who later committed terrorist acts in the United States,' '' Mr. Horowitz wrote. The article says: ``The inspector general's report is the latest black eye for the Bureau,'' that is the FBI, of course, ``which has been besieged by allegations of political taint and questions of competence. `` `Anytime there is criticism, of course, it undermines the public faith in the Bureau, and that can never be good because the FBI depends on the public trust,' said Lewis Schiliro, a former head of the FBI's New York field office.'' But further down, it says: ``Even after the FBI discovered lapses in its assessment of potential terrorist threats, field office managers failed to properly implement changes or conduct consistent oversight of counterterrorism investigations, the report said. ``Roughly 40 percent of the FBI's counterterrorism assessments went unaddressed for 18 months, even after Bureau officials discovered investigative lapses, Mr. Horowitz wrote.'' ``The FBI first investigated Mateen in 2013, 3 years before he carried out the deadly Pulse shooting. Agents closed the case months later and did not properly address Mateen's history of mental illness, the report said. ``Agents investigated Tsarnaev ahead of the Boston Marathon bombing. Even after an internal Bureau database flagged Tsarnaev, agents closed the probe after concluding he had `no nexus to terrorism.''' That was interesting, the Tsarnaev investigation. I had the opportunity to question an FBI Director named Mueller about that because Tsarnaev was identified by the Russians. He had been over in an area where some Muslims had been radicalized, making them, as radicals, a threat to non-radicalized Muslims, both Christians, non-radicalized Muslims, Jews, others who were not radicalized Muslims. In fact, Russia had notified the FBI. To the FBI's credit, apparently, from what we found, they did send an agent out to question Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It sounded like basically they asked him if he was a terrorist, and he assured them he wasn't. They went above and beyond and questioned his mother, and she assured them that Tamerlan was a good boy, that he wasn't a terrorist. As I put to Director Mueller: You didn't even go out to the mosque where they were attending and find out information that would have revealed whether they had been radicalized or not. About all Mueller could come back with was that they did go out to that mosque, not to investigate Tsarnaev, but to actually just have part of their community outreach program. And I said: You probably didn't even know who founded that mosque. And he didn't. He didn't know, but it was founded by a man who was doing 23 years in Federal prison for supporting terrorism. But before Mueller came in and purged the FBI of training materials that would allow FBI agents to identify who were the peace-loving Muslims and the small group that had been radicalized that wanted to kill non-radicalized Muslims, he purged them, as I have said before. One of our agents said: He blinded us of our ability to see who was a threat. Thank you very much, Director Mueller. He purged the training materials. There was an advanced course for FBI--I think 700 pages of training--and Mueller ordered all of that eliminated. Fortunately, after he left--and after we had more attacks and more Americans died--eventually, the training was brought back for some FBI agents. But it still needs work. But these FBI agents, they didn't know what to look for because Mueller had eliminated the training materials that would have helped them know what to look for in radicalized attacks. Of course, my friend, Philip Haney, who was found dead with a bullet hole in his chest, he was investigating a group called Tablighi Jamaat. It is interesting that some of the training Tablighi Jamaat did, including for the killers in San Diego, there was certain training that they undergo that I am not going to get into, but if someone is undergoing that training, it should send up red flags, certain parts of that training, at least, that this person may be on the road to radicalization. It is just very unfortunate that our most powerful investigating body had been so purged of people who could recognize radicalization that it put Americans at risk, and Americans died as a result of that effort by Director Mueller and others within the FBI. This article goes on and points out that: ``The inspector general said the Bureau bungled the case of Elton Simpson, who tried to ambush a Garland, Texas, art exhibit featuring cartoon images of the prophet Muhammad, the central figure of Islam. Although agents received information related to Simpson, they determined he was not a significant threat. ``Mr. Horowitz said that even after the FBI sought to address the problem, it failed to conduct the necessary oversight to implement the recommended changes.'' I would humbly submit that when Comey took over from Mueller, he did not improve matters at the FBI when it came to identifying threats against American citizens. Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the issue of the coronavirus. We have heard allegations that our President is just totally out of it, totally uninformed, and totally unprepared to deal with the coronavirus. Sometimes the best way to analyze whether or not a leader is, not out of it, but actually has taken bold steps to protect Americans is helped along by comparing to a prior administration, for example. There is an article by ABC News, Dr. Angela Baldwin: ``How Novel Coronavirus Compares to SARS, MERS and Other Recent Viral Outbreaks.'' Dr. Baldwin points out that: ``MERS, Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Of the 27 countries affected globally, 10 countries are in or near the Arabian Peninsula and 17 countries are outside of the Arabian Peninsula. Only two patients in the U.S. ever tested positive for MERS. ``To date, there have been nearly 2,500 laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS, with a death rate of about 34 percent. ``Influenza is another contagious respiratory illness with symptoms that are similar to SARS, MERS, and COVID-19. It is caused by the influenza A and influenza B viruses. Different strains of influenza are responsible for the flu season that occurs every year. The CDC estimates that there have been 18,000 to 46,000 flu deaths so far this season. ``The swine flu, or influenza A,'' which was the H1N1 virus, ``caused the 2009 global pandemic. An estimated 151,000 to 575,000 people, worldwide, died from the H1N1 virus in 2009. Of those, there were an estimated 12,400 deaths in the U.S. . . . This strain continues to circulate as a seasonal flu virus each year . . . . '' But 12,400 American deaths from the H1N1 virus? I was shocked to read that. I didn't remember reading or hearing that, during the Obama administration, there was such a weak response to the H1N1 virus that we had 12,400 Americans die from the H1N1 virus. So it is interesting. President Trump reacted immediately to the information of a virus of the nature of the coronavirus, or COVID-19, coming from China. He reacted by restricting travel from those areas. And thank goodness he reacted so quickly, even though he was condemned by some Democrats for being racist and for being a xenophobe. All he was trying to do was protect Americans from this virus. So he suffers the indignities, the slings and arrows, being called a racist and a xenophobe, but he didn't care because he was protecting the American people. Had he not reacted so quickly, there is no doubt we would have had many more Americans infected with the virus. He also reacted with regard to our southern border that has been so porous, despite his best efforts. We, no doubt, have been saved from many more cases of COVID-19 arising here in the United States by the efforts of our Border Patrol and the Trump administration. This article points out: ``In comparison,'' talking about in comparison to the H1N1 virus, ``COVID-19 has spread to more than 50 countries and infected more than 85,000 people, worldwide, since January of this year. In the United States, there have been about 70 cases . . . . '' I think there may be more than 100 now, but this article, dated March 2, says, ``two people have died.'' But I believe there are more than that, maybe as many as 10 who have died here in the United States. I wish that we were getting a report out that these are normally our senior citizens who have some preexisting health condition. So we should be encouraging senior citizens and retirement homes, they all should be very careful, because it seems that our seniors are most at risk here and around the world. ``While COVID-19 seems to spread easily, the symptoms tend to be mild, particularly for people who are relatively young and healthy. The SARS and MERS outbreaks had significantly higher death rates. Meanwhile, seasonal influenza remains an important cause of respiratory illness that can cause hospitalization and death . . . . ``As Dr. Robert Glatter, emergency physician at New York City's Lenox Hill Hospital noted: `Make sure you get a flu shot. It's much more likely to contract the flu than the new coronavirus infection.' ``He also warns: `Older persons should also make sure they get vaccinated against pneumonia and shingles, since these are more likely if they develop a viral infection such as the coronavirus.''' But every one of those Americans who has died, 10 or so--I am sure the number will grow--it is a tragedy. It is devastating to the loved ones, and I am just surprised we didn't hear a whole lot about the 12,400 Americans during the Obama administration who died from the H1N1 virus. So, obviously, the media gets much more up in arms over 10 Americans dying from the coronavirus than they did over the 12,400 that may have died in 1 year in America from the H1N1 virus. I was concerned earlier here, an hour or so ago, to hear Majority Leader Hoyer saying, as I understood him to say, next week, the majority here wants to prevent President Trump's travel bans. We are finding out that, because of President Trump's travel bans, lives have been saved. The coronavirus has not spread, as it surely would have, and so the answer next week will be to restrict President Trump's abilities to save American lives by preventing people from coming into this country from areas where the coronavirus is found to be widespread, people coming in without adequate ability to make sure they are not infected. I was very sorry to hear that that is something that we, apparently, are going to take up next week. There is an article here from PJ Media, by Victoria Taft, February 28, 2020, and the headline says: ``Fact-Check: Obama Waited Until `Millions' Were Infected and 1,000 Dead in U.S. Before Declaring H1N1 Emergency.'' That is the virus we were just talking about. Anyway, that is a rather interesting article pointing out the difference between President Obama's response to the H1N1 and the thousands that died as a result of--actually, the other article talked about the 12,400. There is an article here from the Centers for Disease Control, June 25 of 2012: ``First Global Estimates of 2009 H1N1 Pandemic Mortality Released by CDC-Led Collaboration.'' But it points out the ``improved modeling approach which resulted in an estimated range of deaths from between 151,700 and 575,400 people who perished worldwide from 2009 H1N1 virus infection during the first year the virus circulated. . . . '' I don't really have information on how many Americans died. Apparently, that 12,400 was just in the first year, so no telling how many died during the 8 years of the Obama administration. So we have got more work to do, but I don't think it is helpful to blame President Trump for trying to protect American citizens from being exposed more and more to the coronavirus, or COVID-19. On another note, we have heard about the Afghanistan peace agreement. My concerns have been hearing, during the Bush administration, that they took a great deal of advice from former Ambassador Khalilzad, and it sure sounds like he made a mess of the Bush foreign policy with regard to Afghanistan when discussions were being held--what kind of government should we give Afghanistan--and that troubles me. We shouldn't be asking that question. That should have been a question for the Afghans. And though Khalilzad may have been an Afghan, he is an American; and he was listened to, as I understand, during the Obama administration, which explains some of their problems with getting out, as President Obama wanted to do. He said he was going to. He was sure trying, but problems kept arising. I would think if somebody gives advice that didn't help the Bush administration and didn't help the Obama administration, then I deeply regret that anybody in the current administration would be taking advice from that same individual. The Taliban were our enemies. They have never indicated that they want to stop killing Americans. As our allies who fought and successfully defeated the Taliban within 6 months of 9/11, by the end of February 2002, after the Taliban had been identified as our enemy, helping al-Qaida with the attacks on the United States on 9/11, we-- well, I say ``we,'' but, actually, it was our allies who defeated the Taliban. By the end of February, there was no real organized Taliban in Afghanistan. The groups had been devastated. We provided aerial support. We had about 300 special ops people in there embedded with General Dostum's Northern Alliance groups, different tribal groups that we supported, and they outed the Taliban. Some fled to Pakistan, but there was no organized Taliban left. And then the mistake occurred: What kind of government should we give them, and let's occupy Afghanistan for a while. Occupiers have never done well in Afghanistan, and that still remains true. But the biggest problem I have was the advice. I could be corrected, but I am told by people who were around back in the second Bush term that Khalilzad was one of those saying: We need to give them a strong central government. You don't want to have a federalist government like we have in America where States have so much power, States and local government. Let's just have a strong President. And we gave them a constitution that we basically forced on them that made the President all powerful, nearly. The President of Afghanistan appoints the governors, he appoints the mayors, and he appoints the police chiefs. What I hear from some of our Afghan friends is he will often, whether it was Karzai--Ghani is not as bad as Karzai was, Ghani seems to be trying to do better--but sometimes they would appoint people who didn't even live in the province or the city to come in and rule over it. What our allies, who fought with us and for us in initially defeating the Taliban, had begged for is for our help to get Afghanistan to amend their constitution so they get to elect their governors, they would get to elect their mayors, and they would get to select their own police chiefs because the constitution that we gave them is a formula for corruption. Who pays off the president to become the governor or the mayor? That is a formula for corruption. It is easy to see when we gave them that constitution that is where it was headed. As some of our former allies, the former Northern Alliance, have told me: Look, if we could elect our own governors, elect our own mayors like you do in America, and pick our own police chiefs, then, yes, we know--they have been saying this for years--we know you are going to have to pull out at some time. We understand. That is fine. You don't want to be an occupier, and we don't want you to be. But if you leave the president as all powerful and he picks the governors, mayors, and police chiefs, then all the Taliban have got to do when you leave is either knock him off or corrupt him, and then they will control the whole country, and there is nothing we can do about it. In fact, all of us who fought with you Americans and helped defeat the Taliban--actually they defeated the Taliban initially--they are all going to be dead. We are going to all be dead, so that when the Taliban gets strong enough again, they attack you again and you come to Afghanistan looking for allies, we are going to all be dead, and nobody is going to want to be your ally because you allowed us all to die when you allowed the Taliban to take back over. So, I would hope something that we will work toward is helping the Afghans. I said: Well, what makes you think we could help you amend your own constitution? I was told: Well, you guys pay most of our budget. If you say you are not going to pay the budget anymore, then we will amend our constitution. If you force us to do that, we will amend our constitution, and we will get to elect our governors like you do, elect our mayors like you do, and pick our own police chiefs like you do; and we won't have people brought in through corruption or favoritism, and we will be capable. As Massoud said: Look, when you leave, if we get to elect our own governors and mayors and pick our own police chiefs, yeah, the Taliban may be able to take over one or two provinces, but the rest of us will band together again, as we did in 2001 and 2002, and we will kick them out again. But if you leave us where the Taliban can take over complete control and where all the control is in the president of Afghanistan, we are all going to be killed, and you won't have any allies to fight with you and for you when the Taliban hits you again. So, I hope we will quit taking advice from a person, no matter how well-meaning or not, who just proved to be totally wrong in administration after administration. I think that we can do as the President truly wants to do, get out of Afghanistan and save American lives. Mr. Speaker, I want to address one other thing, and that is the comments of the minority leader of the Senate made at the Supreme Court rally. There is an article here from FOX News, Edmund DeMarche, which says: ``The American Bar Association said on Wednesday that it is `deeply troubled' by a comment made by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat, New York, outside the Supreme Court that many said was a direct threat to two sitting Justices. ``Schumer was at a rally over a high-profile abortion case while the case played out inside. Schumer named Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh and, in an impassioned speech, said: `You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You will not know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.' ``Justin Goodman, a Schumer spokesman, responded after Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement on what he called `threatening' comments. Goodman said that Schumer was addressing Republican lawmakers when he said a `price' would be paid.'' Now, I think it is very important to note the difference between a threat and total agreement with Supreme Court Justices. President Trump has disagreed with things the Supreme Court has done or comments that have been made. That is the American way. We can disagree whenever we want to. People in this body, including me, have been very disagreeable with some of the things the Supreme Court has done, and it is very helpful to voice that. As Natan Sharansky points out in his book, ``The Case for Democracy'', he says, there are basically two societies, a fear society and a free society. In a free society he suggests an appropriate test is if you can go into the town square and say anything you want to as long as it is not a criminal statement, but otherwise you say whatever you want to, and if you don't have to worry about arrest or being harmed, that is a free society. A fear society is one where you have to constantly be afraid because the government may decide to swoop you up or people may come beat you up for saying what you say. For many years this country has been a free country, but even in a free country where you can say whatever you want, it crosses the line when you threaten individuals who are in government. I understand this Goodman speaking for Minority Leader Schumer as saying, no, no, he was talking about Republican lawmakers. But if you look back at the quote, there is no mistake about what Senator Schumer said. He said: ``You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.'' This is after he has called out Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, ``and you will pay the price,'' and if there is any question at all about whom the threat was intended to go to, he said: ``You will not know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.'' Now, these are not awful decisions he is threatening over by Republican lawmakers because the Republican lawmakers have nothing to do with the Supreme Court decisions. And he says ``decisions.'' This was a threat to two of our Supreme Court Justices, and that crosses the line from disagreement--as all of us probably in this body have done from time to time and should because the Supreme Court is not perfect. They make mistakes. Dred Scott was, I think, probably the worst mistake the Supreme Court has ever made, but they have certainly made many more since then, not to that level. It is fine in America to disagree with the Supreme Court. It is fine for Senator Schumer to do that, but not when he threatens and says: ``You will not know what hit you--'' of course, the term ``hit'' is an assaultive reference--``you will not know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.'' Now, he could be speaking of this assaultive term figuratively, but regardless of whether it is figurative or literal, it is a threat upon two of our Supreme Court Justices. Then, unfortunately, Senator Schumer has doubled down by his coming after Chief Justice John Roberts. I have certainly disagreed with him plenty of times, but he did the appropriate thing here in defending two of his Justices who were attacked or threatened. He doesn't need to defend them when they are verbally attacked as so often happens in the Senate or the House, but certainly when they are threatened he needed to step up and he did so. For those who wonder, 18 U.S.C. section 115 of the U.S. Code says: That whoever threatens to assault, kidnap, or murder a U.S. official, a U.S. judge, a Federal law enforcement officer or an official whose killing would be a crime under such section--then it goes on and says-- that person has committed a crime can be arrested. So it is a crime just to threaten. I am not sure the term ``hit'' would be adequate to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an assault was threatened, but something was threatened because they would not know what hit them, and that goes beyond the pale. As I understand it, people have been disbarred for making threats of that nature. But we will see what happens. I certainly hope that there will be an apology by Senator Schumer because we ought to disagree with the Supreme Court when they are wrong or when we think they are wrong, but no threats. This should be the last bastion of civility where we can come, we can disagree, we can fuss at each other, we can complain, and we can expose ignorance, but not threaten. There is no place for that in the House or in the Senate. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, first, I want to address a bill that we voted on this afternoon, one of the three bills under the suspension of the rules, H.R. 35, to amend section 249 of title 18, United States Code, to specify lynching as a hate crime act. I was in the Judiciary Committee when we took up the hate crimes act. I know there were people who said because of James Byrd, the African American who was drug behind a truck by three individuals, that that was a poster case that demanded hate crime legislation. Actually, I was quite comfortable if all three of the defendants in that case had gotten the death penalty. In Texas, we do have the death penalty for such a crime as that. Two of the three got the death penalty. One got life in prison. And I felt like the death penalty, from everything I had read, was appropriate. I am someone who has looked two defendants in the eye and sentenced them to death. It is a very somber, serious thing to do, but the crimes justified it in those cases. I was talking to my friend, Congressman Bobby Rush, a man who has been fighting injustice and unfairness, seems like, his whole life. He is absolutely one of the kindest, most decent people to talk to and deal with here in Congress. He is just a real gentleman. This was Congressman Rush's bill. And I mentioned to him after the vote--I did vote ``no'' on this. Now, there are some great findings for the first six pages. But at page 7, we finally get to actually what the act does. It says: Whoever conspires with another to violate section 245, 247, or 249 of this title or section 901 of the Civil Rights Act shall be punished in the same manner as a completed violation of such section, except that if the maximum term of imprisonment for such completed violation is less than 10 years, the person may be imprisoned for not more than 10 years. That is ridiculous. First of all, I have trouble with the Federal nexus of lynching. I would, like in the James Byrd case, prefer that those defendants be tried under the Texas capital murder statute rather than under the Federal hate crimes law. Because under the Texas capital murder laws, the defendants could get the death penalty. And they should have been tried under that and should have gotten it. I have such respect for Congressman Rush. Lynching is more serious than a 10-year maximum sentence. And I would much rather, if somebody is lynched in Texas, they be subject, under Texas law, to the death penalty rather than a 10-year maximum. It sends entirely the wrong message about how serious this is. I couldn't vote for a 10-year maximum when we are talking about lynching. I know there are some States that don't have good criminal laws, that maybe they would prefer the Federal Government try such cases. But Congressman Rush said this was the best he could get an agreement on. But, God bless him, he knows better than most people how serious this is. So on the one hand, I applaud his efforts at trying to bring people to justice who would commit such a heinous act, and I regret needing to vote ``no.'' But I just felt like this is too serious to be handled at such a low level. So I thank Congressman Rush for his efforts. He is indeed a very fine man. It is a pleasure to interact with him here in Congress, but I couldn't vote for that. That is just too serious. I have had a friend I met here years ago named Philip Haney. He was one of the finest, most patriotic, competent people I have ever known in my life, a man of absolute honesty, complete integrity, who cared deeply about the future of this country. He also was a Christian brother, and that certainly affected so much of what he did. Philip studied Arabic culture and language while he was working as a scientist in the Middle East before he became a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002. He was there at the beginning when Homeland Security became a Department for the first time. He was a Customs and Border Protection agriculture officer. He was a scientist by education and training. It was amazing how organized and how brilliant he was. I constantly marveled at his ability to organize facts in his own head and memorize them, remember things so clearly. But after he advanced as a CBP officer, where he served several tours of duty at the National Targeting Center near Washington, D.C., he was quickly promoted to its Advanced Targeting Team, which was an unprecedented accomplishment for an agent on temporary duty assignment. The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force Award was something he was presented in recognition of his exceptional contributions to interagency national security successes. He won numerous awards and commendations from his superiors for meticulously compiling information and reports that led to the identification of hundreds of terrorists. He specialized in Islamic theology and the strategy and tactics of the global Islamic movement. He wrote a book after he left and retired from government service, a takeoff on the Obama administration's slogan, ``See Something, Say Something.'' But, as he experienced firsthand, he saw things that were a threat to this country, he said something, and he was severely punished for it, because apparently the Obama administration had some radical Islamic ties that they did not want anybody, including Philip Haney, to expose. So, he had a book that he wrote, ``See Something, Say Nothing,'' and it documented the Obama administration's effort to obfuscate the role that radical Islam played in numerous terrorist attacks that took place in America from 2008 to 2016. One review of Philip's book described it as an expose of a politically correct Federal Government that capitulates to a subversive enemy within and punishes those who reject its narrative. In 2016, he, as a whistleblower, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by then-Senator Ted Cruz, to allege that the Obama administration had acted irresponsibly concerning Islamic extremism. Philip Haney claimed that the administration had acted in favor of political correctness rather than take actions that may well have prevented the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando and the San Bernardino shooting in December of 2015. He was investigating groups that helped radicalize normal Muslim believers, radicalizing them to the point that they would commit acts of terror, and he found some ties. It was amazing, when he got ahold of a string, how he could trace that string back to its roots. He once said that he did, at the Department of Homeland Security, what he did with bugs: He followed the trail and found the nest. It was amazing how he could do that, and that is the reason he was cited as he was. In fact, this letter from June 8 of 2012 to Officer Philip B. Haney: On behalf of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, I commend your outstanding contributions while assigned to the National Targeting Center-Passenger. Your display of dedication and effort in the fight against terrorism has been exemplary. Your talents and professionalism have contributed to the continued achievements of the NTC-P. You played a key role by providing support to the CBP mission and the NTC lead role in defending and protecting our Nation's borders. A key component of the National Targeting Center-Passenger's success is the invaluable people, like you, who perform the work in our important mission. I am confident to know that CBP can rely upon you to provide expertise to combat threats against our Nation. Additionally, your expertise and experience has been invaluable while assigned to the Advanced Targeting Team. Your research on the Tablighi Jamaat Initiative has assisted in the identification of over 300 persons with possible connections to terrorism. The assistance you have provided in the development of this initiative has been key to the future success of the project. The National Targeting Center looks forward to your continuing support and assistance in the program. Once again, thank you for your unfailing commitment to the success of the National Targeting System mission. Your professional actions and achievements reflect favorably on you and all of the Customs and Border Protection. Thank you for a job well done. Well, that was June of 2012. It wasn't terribly long after that he had been entering information on radical Islamic ties with people in the United States, attempting to come into the United States, with ties to people in the United States. He was documenting all those things. We had a Secretary of Homeland Security who bragged about how Homeland Security could connect the dots, and then he was ordered to start removing these dots, so to speak. He was ordered to start deleting thousands of pages of data that he had carefully researched and identified that would help protect America. That was during the Obama administration. He was scared for his country, that the Obama administration would make him delete, and there was an occasion when he was watching his computer and somebody started deleting hundreds of pages of documents as he watched, hundreds of pages of information that would have helped keep America safe for the future. There was an opportunity the House of Representatives had--we were in the majority--where he could have been brought in as a specially requested agent for the House. Apparently, there were people who were afraid that he had so much information that the Obama administration might come after anybody who was attempting to help or protect him and the valuable information he had. He wasn't brought in. He was told: Oh, go file an IG complaint with the Homeland Security inspector general. I implored him that that would be a mistake because the inspector general at that time at Homeland Security had already been cited for falsifying an IG report to protect the Obama administration. We knew that it was not going to be a fair inspector general investigation. In fact, he became a whistleblower, filed his IG complaint about the Obama administration deleting so much data from its database to help identify terrorists, and, clearly, for anybody who was involved in that effort to purge our computer data on foreign terrorists, his complaint could be seen as a threat to expose people within the Obama administration who were involved in purging or, as one of our intel people--Homeland Security, like DOJ, began to blind itself of the ability to see our enemies. That is why, even though he was investigating Tablighi Jamaat and the manner in which normal Muslim believers were converted into radicals who would be capable of murder, there were a number of things that he noticed that they did to move people in that direction. He identified that the people at San Bernardino who killed, I think it was, 14 Americans there, that, if he had been allowed to pursue his investigation, would have identified those people. We blinded ourselves of the ability to see our enemy, and we also had not been training people. Philip had identified a female in California involved in the shooting. She took on the name of a famous radical Islamic male terrorist. If he had been allowed to question her, he would have immediately known: There is something very wrong here. Why would you take on the name of a male terrorist, historic terrorist? But it had been made very clear in the Obama administration that, if you are too active in pursuit of radical Islamists, it is not going to go well for you. And, in fact, after he filed the IG report, I think it was an effort for some in the Obama administration to protect themselves. We have now seen it occur with the Trump campaign. There was a Grand Jury that was convened to go after and try to destroy Philip Haney's life. His wife, Francesca, was a college professor, and the trauma of being raided, constantly harassed, and questioned, seeing one of the finest, most honest and honorable protectors of America in our history, Philip Haney, she saw him just being savaged. And it ended up resulting in her going to the hospital. Whether it was a full-blown nervous breakdown or not, I am not sure, but it sent her to the hospital to have the United States Government go after a man she knew was a hero for and to the United States. Well, Philip was so meticulous, so organized. They couldn't find anything with which to indict him. They were trying to drag up something, but he had documented well everything he had ever done. It was the way he was. It is who he was. They couldn't find anything to indict him. They had already moved him in basically a closet, kept him from doing the job he was the best at in protecting America. And finally they basically said, we can't find anything. So, look, if you will just agree to retire, then we will let everything go, but you have got to destroy stuff in your possession. Well, he retired, and that is when he wrote the book See Something, Say Nothing. He had been savaged by his own government, his own country that he was trying to protect. And I had commented to him about his book. He had given me a draft to read before it was published. I said, Philip, you don't really name a whole lot of names in this book about where the problems have been. He said, ``I know, this is just the first draft. I will do another that names names.'' And that is what he was working on. After Francesca died about a year ago, he moved to California and was near his sister, Diana. I was so thrilled to get a text from Philip saying basically, I have met someone. She is wonderful. They were soul mates. And I texted him that I had a minister friend that had said, you know, it is interesting, when men who have been in long marriages have their wife pass away, it is not unusual; in fact, it may be average, to have them remarried in 6 months. Of course, he volunteered, women that had been in a longstanding marriage when their husband dies, a lot of them don't ever want to remarry. It is an interesting difference. I wasn't surprised that Philip had found love again. Philip and Denise were going to be married on April 4. It appeared he would be coming back to work for the United States Government and finally be able to put to full use his incredible knack for rooting out terrorists. I was amazed, because when you met Philip, you weren't sure. He was kind of a quiet guy, and you didn't realize at first just how brilliant he was. He could ask questions--and I know he did this with people trying to come into the country--and he got people to volunteer information. I bet they thought, oh, this guy, what a doofus. What does he know? He got them to volunteer information that I doubt I could have ever gotten out of them, no matter how tough a cross-examination I had done. But Phil in his amazing way, he could get information out of people. It was amazing what he was able to do and capable of doing. So he had hoped to be coming back in the next few weeks to work for the Federal Government. But then he got some news last week that he needed to have open heart surgery. The chances of success were very good. Complete success shouldn't be too long of a recuperation time. And he passed that along to the person that he was going to be coming to work for in the Federal Government. Sent him a text, I have got to have open heart surgery next week, but basically hope to be available for work shortly after that. Short recuperation. Philip either talked or texted with his sister virtually every day, and they texted up to the evening last Thursday. And Friday he was found in his car with a gunshot wound and a gun nearby. I think the Amador County law officials are doing a decent job. They seem to be very committed. But his book was going to name names of people that put this country at risk. He was getting married April 4. Finally going to be able to come back to the U.S. Government and use his incredible talents and ability to spot danger for our country and stop it, and he ends up with a bullet in him. So the investigation is ongoing. He is severely missed by those of us who loved him. We had talked back before he filed the IG complaint, I had been concerned about his safety with all the information he knew and the people that could have gotten in trouble. And we had a mutual pact, if it was said either one of us ended up having committed suicide, then the other is going to make sure that truth wins out. He was so organized, though. He had made it clear to his sister that there was something he was going to do and something he was doing, he said you need to come over because I have got everything laid out. If something happens during the heart surgery next week, I have everything laid out. And that is how he was, everything was so organized. I would love to be as organized as Phil. Philip had such a positive outlook on things. He had been through a horrendous time with his wife having been made ill by the raucous Obama administration coming after him to try to shut him up. See, that is a real whistleblower. He testified before the Senate. That is what a real whistleblower does. A real whistleblower does not remain anonymous. They come forward, subject themselves to cross- examination, and supposedly have protection. But that is not what happened in the Obama administration. In fact, the Obama administration prosecuted more people for leaking than every other administration in our country's history added together. They went after whistleblowers. Rather tragic. I can't adequately express it. February 5, 2016, The Hill had an article about Phil. ``DHS Ordered Me to Scrub Records of Muslims with Terror Ties.'' Conservative HQ, George Rasley has done a really nice piece; ``In Memoriam: Philip B. Haney, 21st Century Paul Revere.'' Fox News had an article by Nick Givas, ``Philip Haney, DHS Whistleblower During Obama Era, Found Dead, Police Say.'' Joe Martin, ``Philip Haney: Whistleblower and Happy Warrior.'' What an amazing man. I miss him. I miss getting his cheery text messages. And I know his fiance and his sister and even his brother-in- law misses getting those messages, as well. So there is big news supposedly that the Trump administration is now trying to make sure that people that are working for the Trump administration are actually working for it and not against it. And the truth is, President Trump got some bad advice from people that were not concerned about his achieving the goals he promised he would work toward, but they were interested in stopping him. We found out after the George W. Bush administration there were holdovers from the Clinton years that would tell President Bush, yes, sir, we will take care of it, and then drag their feet and made sure what he wanted didn't happen, and even would leak information to try to stop President Bush from achieving what he hoped to achieve. And we have certainly seen that occur in the Trump administration. In fact, an article mentions Rich Higgins, he had prepared information, basically a memo, on how to move forward and how the Trump administration could protect itself from people that would try to stop President Trump and to make sure that people working for him were actually working for him. But a buddy of Mr. Brennan and Mr. Clapper, named H.R. McMaster, found out about the memo and instead of rewarding Rich Higgins for his brilliant work to help the Trump administration, he had him perp walked out and refused to let him even go back to his office. Because Mr. McMaster, despite his front and his sucking up to President Trump, he was all about stopping President Trump. And for his time there he may have helped on some little things, but overall he was making sure--it certainly appeared to me he was making sure--that President Trump didn't achieve the goals he hoped to, and, in fact, was heard to bad-mouth, say vulgar things about President Trump. So it was good when he was gone. And President Trump has continued to work on efforts to get people that actually want to help him achieve his goals. And naturally deep- state establishment people in Washington, they don't want to see that happen, so they throw up things like, oh, gee, the Trump administration is on a witch hunt. It is not on a witch hunt. It just wants people that will work to help the President achieve his goals. If, for example, you have an inane person working with the National Security Council and in his mind he knows everything that anybody needs to know about Ukraine, and he puts together talking points for the President to use in talking to the President of Ukraine and the President doesn't follow his expert talking points because the President is foreign policy when he gets elected, not what some lieutenant colonel thinks--but you can tell Vindman got a burr in his saddle, so to speak, when the President didn't follow his talking points to a T. He needed to go. It appears he likely leaked information to the so- called whistleblower, not a real whistleblower. A real whistleblower is a man of courage and integrity, like Phil Haney. That is a real whistleblower. A real whistleblower is somebody like Adam Lovinger, who sees that the Department of Defense is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars, multiple payments, to some professor in London named Stefan Halper, who happens to be setting up the Trump campaign so that they can get warrants against it, and the Department of Defense is paying this guy. But Adam's job is making sure the Defense Department was getting their money's worth when they paid, and he couldn't see they were getting any money's worth from this Stefan Halper guy in London. If the left really wants to see somebody prosecuted who was in the U.S. Government who was paying for foreign interference in our election, maybe they should start with the guys that came after Adam Lovinger, a real whistleblower, not like this guy that filed a secret complaint that wasn't firsthand, had no personal knowledge. They just knew they wanted to stop President Trump and didn't mind putting the United States Government at risk by doing so, because, after all, they hated the President. So it is worth looking back a little bit. Here is an article from October 19, 2016, titled ``Obama's plan to make the administrative state permanent,'' by Nathan Mehrens. This is before the election, a month before the 2016 election. He points out that: ``President Obama's cronies are being placed into permanent staff positions in the Federal Government, and the administration is not even bothering to follow its own personnel rules which govern the process.'' Apparently, there were people in the Obama administration that realized: You know, there is a chance Trump could win this election. Even though we are sure the American people will elect Hillary Clinton, there is a chance. There are supposedly around 4,000 people or so that an administration appoints into politically appointed positions, but those people are subject to being fired on the whim of a new President. So, according to this article, the Obama administration started taking people who were political appointees and moving them into career appointments. We have even seen a case in Arizona where a Federal employee commits a Federal crime, is found guilty of a Federal crime, and a court comes back later and said: Eh, that wasn't an adequate basis to fire a Federal employee. Well, once you get into a position like she was in, it is hard to root them out even when they have committed a Federal crime in their job. That was in the VA. We have changed the law with regard to VA to make it easier to fire felons that commit felonies when they are in their job at the VA. The Office of Personnel Management's Director in November 2009 made a big show of a new policy requiring prior approval for these conversions, taking a political appointee and what is called burrowing them into the Federal Government so they will be part of the deep state, hard to ever get rid of, when they are nothing but political hacks. This statement says: I believe we must hold ourselves and the government to a higher standard, one that honors and supports the President's strong commitment to a government that is transparent and open. OPM's responsibility to uphold the merit system is not limited to Presidential election years nor to competitive service appointments. That is why I am instituting a change in OPM policy with respect to hiring political appointees for civil service jobs. They go on to say that in order to convert somebody from political appointee to career civil service status, they have to get the permission of OPM. But as the article says, apparently, some agencies didn't see the need to bother with that permission, and they processed conversions without OPM permission. So we see what is happening. Here is another article, this one is from November 27, after President Trump was elected: Congressional Republicans are warning the departing Obama administration against moving any more political appointees into career jobs. But that is what they had done. It says: ``Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, has asked Acting OPM Director Beth Cobert for weekly reports on all conversions or attempted conversions.'' But I would be willing to bet they didn't get what they were asking for, certainly not all of it. This article is from December 8, 2016. This is from the Daily Signal, Fred Lucas: ``After President Barack Obama exits office, at least 88 of his political appointees will likely remain working in the Federal Government under a Donald Trump administration, according to numbers from the Office of Personnel Management.'' It goes on to talk about ``Federal agencies selected 112 political appointees for career civil service jobs,'' and that is just in December. They had about another 6 weeks to be moving people from political appointee positions into civil service so that when President Trump came in, he would have people in key positions who would hate him, be loyal to people like Sally Yates and President Obama, others, Brennan, Clapper. They could undermine the Trump administration, as they have been doing for 3 years now. In Axios, Jonathan Swan comes out with an article this week that appears to be taking aim at some people who are friends of the President who are trying to help him figure out who it is that is undermining and has no interest in helping President Trump achieve his goals and, in fact, has an interest in destroying them. Three years in, I would think a President should be entitled to people working for him who are actually working for him and not against him, but I am sure there will be more people who I classify as heroes trying to help President Trump make America even greater by getting the people out that are trying to stop what he promised to do. People will come after one of my heroes, Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Barbara Ledeen, and those who are coming after people that are trying to help President Trump, have people who actually like him working for him, not people who can just suck up to him, but people who will actually like him, support his agenda, and want to help, and I think we will be seeing a lot more of that. It is a shame that they have not been doing articles pointing out some of these duplicitous people who say they are loyal to the Trump administration, and they do all they can to undermine it and violate their oaths. I still believe if Durham doesn't end up indicting some people who could go to jail, we won't get the country back. There is no deterrence in what has gone on so far. People abused the FISA court system, repeatedly lied to a Federal judge or judges in the FISA court to get warrants to spy on the Trump administration. If there are no consequences, if people who have made it an instrument of politics to use the intelligence community, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, State Department to try to defeat a Presidential candidate, and then when he gets elected, try to remove him from office, if there aren't multiple people who go to jail for what they have done, the crimes committed, then there is no deterrence. They will be up to it even bigger, but next time, they will have figured out where they made mistakes in getting caught and being unsuccessful, and we will lose the freedom we once had to select our own leaders. But I don't hear of these authors. I don't read any of these authors actually condemning the DNC, the Clinton campaign, the Department of Defense, the DOJ in using and getting help from foreigners to try to combat the Trump campaign and to affect our election. Anybody who would say on this floor that there were no Ukrainians involved in trying to affect our election, they are just ignorant. You know, there is no harm, we are all ignorant of some things, but they are ignorant of the facts. We can start with the op-ed that the Ambassador from Ukraine wrote before the election, trashing President Trump. That is trying to affect our election by a Ukrainian, and we know it had to go a lot deeper than that. I would love to see some of these folks who want to come after President Trump and come after those of us who would like free and fair elections, I would like to see them be more fair on both sides of the aisle, as far as where crimes have really been committed. If we are going to preserve this little experiment in self- government, there needs to be multiple people go to jail for the crimes they have committed. If that doesn't happen, we are in big trouble. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it is an honor to be able to stand in this hallowed Hall and address some things that have occurred that are worthy of attention. Of course, there was applause in the gallery today on the passage of trying to restart the ERA. It is an amendment to the Constitution, and it was started back in the seventies. The amendment to the Constitution had a deadline as part of the amendment. The amendment did not get the required 38 states. The time lapsed. There was, as I recall, an attempt to extend the time, but some States that had been in favor of the ERA backed off. So it is very clear to anyone who pays attention to the Constitution that, when an amendment to the Constitution by its own wording has a time deadline and that deadline is passed, then that amendment has not been ratified, is not part of the Constitution, and any efforts to change the amendment itself, including the deadline for ratification, would require beginning again. There is no more iconic liberal judge on the Supreme Court, not in history, than the former head, as I recall, of the American Civil Liberties Union. She was there back when the American Civil Liberties Union cared deeply about civil liberties and even took on some clients and some causes of people that most of us thought were not worthy of a lot of attention. But they were so committed to civil liberties back in those days, they were more concerned about civil liberties than they were the client. That was in the old days. Now, if it is not a liberal, then they are not concerned about civil liberties and abuses, since the Obama administration was the administration that so far appears to be the most abusive of the FISA courts, committing fraud upon the FISA courts. But in fairness to the administration, it appears the FISA court judges did not have sufficient integrity or pride in their position that they were offended by having fraud committed upon them, because, apparently, the disdain for Donald Trump, then President Trump and his administration was such that it was okay. They were okay to be defrauded as judges, which sure brings the issue of the FISA courts into focus as that issue will be taken up, as I understand it, as will issues over parts of the PATRIOT Act and other provisions that give the Federal Government tremendous latitude to spy on American citizens. So it is an interesting time, though, where you never know where judges are going to come down. If somebody was appointed by a liberal judge, it is amazing; they appear to stay liberal, with disdain for conservatism and the strict language of the Constitution, wanting it to be a liberal, breathing, living document. On the other hand, Chief Justice Roberts has pointed out he doesn't believe there should be Obama judges or Trump judges or Bush judges because you can't characterize them that way. To an extent, he is right about that, because there are some Justices, particularly on the Supreme Court, who have been appointed by conservative Presidents who were liberals in conservative clothing, and they got on the Court and became some of the biggest flaming liberals we have ever had. So you can't tell that someone is conservative if they are appointed by a conservative President, but you sure can tell if somebody is appointed by a liberal President. They have shown that they will stay liberal and not change. So it has been interesting to see that kind of conversion. It appears pretty clear that some of these Justices, including Chief Justice Roberts, got into the position and began to care deeply about what the media and others thought about things they were doing. So, for example, with ObamaCare, he was, apparently, from the reports, concerned that he might go down in history as being too political of a Chief Justice if he struck down ObamaCare. So he took something that was clearly unconstitutional, in effect, rewrote it, and had a very hypocritical opinion. At page 14, I believe it was, he said, clearly, this is not a tax, because if it were a tax, Congress would have called it a tax, and they made clear it was not; and it is only a penalty, a fine, if you don't conform your conduct to the requirements of the legislation. Therefore, it is not a tax. Since it is not a tax, then the anti-injunction law that prevents a plaintiff from filing suit until a tax is not only assessed but paid and keeps the court from having jurisdiction to hear it until the tax is assessed and paid, that doesn't apply, so the court can take this matter up. And now that we take it up, 40 pages later, he said it is constitutional, in effect, because it is a tax. So he had to go through all kinds of mental gymnastics to what, in his mind, would prevent him from being classified as a political Chief Justice; but, as a result, he has become one the most political Chief Justices we have ever had--unfortunately for him and the country. So who knows. Maybe there will be people on the Supreme Court who will decide to rewrite the Constitution as he, in effect, rewrote the ObamaCare statute. But if you are actually going to follow the Constitution the way it is written and you are not going to rewrite the Constitution at the Supreme Court level, then the truth is, when an amendment fails by its own language and is not ratified, then anybody with any sense would understand you have got to start over. Though I have plenty of disagreements with Justice Ginsberg over some issues, she has tried to be a person of integrity. Talking about the ERA, she says: I would like to see a new beginning. I'd like it to start over. There is too much controversy about latecomers-- Virginia--long after the deadline passed. Plus, a number of States have withdrawn their ratification. So if you count a latecomer on the plus side, how can you disregard the States that said, ``We have changed our minds''? So it is interesting. Yes, this legislation passed. Jim Sensenbrenner from Wisconsin appropriately brought up the point that this is actually amending the Constitution; it is amending the constitutional amendment. So, to be appropriate, it is going to require a two-thirds vote in the House, a two-thirds vote in the Senate, and then 38 States, I believe it is, in order to have it ratified. That was overruled to reinforce the fact that what we did today is really not constitutional. If we had tried to ratify it as a new amendment, like Justice Ginsberg was talking about, a new constitutional amendment, then, actually, you would, as Justice Ginsberg said, have to be starting the process all over again, and that does require a two-thirds vote here and in the Senate. So what we did today made people that support it feel good, but it is not going anywhere; and even if it were, hypothetically, it just simply can't pass constitutional muster at the Supreme Court. A majority of the Court appears to believe that the Constitution means what it says. We had one vote today. It was on the ERA. So we didn't do anything terribly effective today as the House of Representatives. Also, I noted before I came over for the vote that, apparently, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, it was reported--I don't know if other members of the majority signed the letter, but there was a letter to Attorney General Barr, and it expressed what sounded like the distress of the committee over Attorney General Barr's action in reining in prosecutors who have simply gotten out of hand. Attorney General Barr has the distinct advantage of having a bigger picture than these four very politically motivated prosecutors who were pushing so hard for virtually the maximum amount of time for Roger Stone to serve in prison. Anyway, if that letter was going to be truly accurate, it needed to say that this majority that has been trying to throw President Trump out of office, that has been using taxpayer funds for a number of years now to try to defeat President Trump in the 2020 election, which voted for impeachment knowing that President Trump was not going to be removed from office--so it seems the logical conclusion is, again, they were using taxpayer funds to campaign against President Trump, hoping they could besmirch him sufficiently, slander his name sufficiently, that it would help them defeat him in November. Whereas, the minority of the committee did not agree with the letter because it appears clear to all of the minority I have talked to that Attorney General Barr is trying to do something and incorporate something called fairness in our legal system, because he has seen you had people in the previous administration who strong-armed salespeople into selling guns to people they knew should not have them and that they would end up in the hands of, most likely, Mexican drug cartels. And that is what the administration wanted to do. They were assuring they would be able to follow the guns and intercede, but that is not what happened. Then we even saw emails that, after this was all exposed, there was an idea that, gee, maybe we can still use the fact that these guns went into criminal hands, even killed one of our own United States agents, a brave soul, Brian Terry, they were hopeful they could still use that to get antigun legislation passed simply based on their criminal activity in trying to get these guns into the hands of criminals who shouldn't have them. So nobody was held accountable for that. Nobody was held accountable for the guns that were forced into the hands of criminals, ultimately, one of which killed Brian Terry. Nobody was held accountable for any of that. Nobody was held accountable for destroying evidence after it was subpoenaed, even with a hammer, even with applications like BleachBit, destroying subpoenaed evidence. Nobody was held accountable for any of that. So across the Nation, it appears maybe a small majority, but a majority, understand and believe that there are two forms of justice in America: one for those high-ranking Democratic officials who are never held accountable at all, and one for Republicans whose lives are attempted to be destroyed and, in some cases, are destroyed. In some cases, they did nothing wrong. In other cases, they agreed to plead to something just because the bully Federal prosecutors have threatened to go after their family and continue to harass them. I saw a former Member of Congress from Pennsylvania who had been blasting the FBI back during my first term, 2005-2006, and he was blasting them because he said--and I had not heard of it before, at the time--but a program called Able Danger had been able to identify a majority of the 9/11 hijackers. The FBI had that information. They did nothing with it. I didn't know if Curt Weldon, the Member of Congress from Pennsylvania, was accurate in what he was saying, but hearing him make these speeches over and over about how the FBI should have acted. They could have prevented thousands of lives from being taken, all of those people from having to jump to their deaths because they didn't want to be burned at the top of the World Trade Center. All of that could have been avoided if the FBI had stepped in and used the information they had to stop 9/11. I didn't know if that was true or not, but I was thinking, you know, Mueller and the FBI have to respond to Congressman Weldon in some way. They have to. This is really serious stuff. I thought they would make a statement and that they would come back with evidence to refute what he was saying, but they never did that. What Mueller's FBI did, though--it had to be with his approval, going after a Member of Congress. It was believed that they got a warrant because they raided his daughter's law office. They alerted the media for the early morning raids so there was plenty of media there and plenty of media at his congressional office. People were apparently warned in advance by the FBI because nobody else knew. They showed up with preprinted signs condemning Curt Weldon, caught red-handed, all of this stuff. It turned out, there was nothing ever done. He told me that, months later, he was contacted by the FBI and told: You can come get all of this material we seized in the raid. They did the raid 2 weeks before the election, as I recall, about 2 weeks before the election. So the FBI, under Mueller, was able to singlehandedly defeat Curt Weldon. It helped the Democrat opponent to defeat Curt Weldon in the narrow loss that he had. So the FBI didn't respond with evidence. They just helped manipulate the election system so Curt Weldon would lose. He did, and he said that they told him to come pick up all of this stuff. They never did present it to a grand jury anyway. That was kind of shocking. So, clearly, Mueller and his FBI were motivated by shutting him up so he couldn't make speeches on the House floor anymore, and that is why the raid was conducted. But in his last most recent visit, Curt was telling me that--by the way, before I wrote about Curt Weldon, I had not seen him nor talked with him since 2006 when he left. I put that in the booklet I wrote titled ``Robert Mueller: Unmasked.'' I wrote about what happened to Curt. At this most recent visit this year, he told me that, as he understands, it turns out the FBI never even got a warrant. They just raided the office without a warrant, like any good dictator would have, the brownshirts. Law enforcement does, in places: We don't need a stinking warrant. We will just go harass and destroy. That is really shocking if there was not even a warrant. But Mueller was irritated, apparently, with Ted Stevens, so the FBI framed Ted Stevens. It turned out, after he was convicted right before his election--he lost narrowly as a U.S. Senator--an FBI agent filed an affidavit and established how they had created a case against Ted Stevens that didn't exist. Actually, Ted Stevens had overpaid for improvements to his home. It wasn't an illegal gift. He had overpaid, at one point telling the contractor: Look, I know I am overpaying, but I have people watching. I have to do everything by the book, so just cash the check--that kind of thing. Anyway, Mueller and his FBI helped defeat Ted Stevens by convicting him right before his election. But then that conviction was thrown out due to the prosecutorial misconduct and, I would say, crimes committed by at least one FBI agent, if not more, and also by prosecutors. They should have gone to prison for what they did, but I can't help but think that between what the FBI did to Curt Weldon, what they did to Ted Stevens, what they have done to other people with whom they disagree, that it had become a very dangerous place where, if you were in the right political persuasion or took the right positions on the right issues, then you could commit crimes, and the FBI would leave you alone. If you were of the wrong political positions, on the wrong issues, they would come after you even if they had to frame you or set you up, as they did Ted Stevens and Curt Weldon, destroying their political careers. So we are at a very dangerous time in this country's history. It used to be that the FBI had the reputation that it was the most trustworthy, effective law enforcement agency body in the world. But that has changed. Unfortunately, we have an FBI Director--an article said, at one time, back in the Bush administration, he had told James Comey, who has lied, obviously committed crimes--and we can debate about how high or low of a level. But he told Comey: Look, if you and Mueller are going to make a move, I want to be with you guys. I want to go where you are going, when you are going. Well, that guy who thought so highly of Mueller and Comey was put in a place he never should have been, and that is FBI Director at a time that needed cleaning up. So I am hopeful that in the days, weeks, or months ahead, we will get a new FBI Director who will be serious about punishing wrongdoing in the FBI, which I believe will help them get back their reputation. The more Christopher Wray appears to do more covering up than he does making accountable, he really needs to go sooner rather than later. They are not going to get their reputation back simply by ignoring things. Of course, the FISA court pointed out in an order, after going for years without having any pride or integrity in enforcing their jurisdiction and being offended by fraud upon the court, it finally came out and said: Okay, this one guy, Clinesmith, had changed the wording, basically going from saying he did work for the U.S. Government or the CIA to saying he did not. So, clearly, 180 degrees opposite of what the truth was, knowing it was false, he submitted it to the court. But that had been clear for months, if not years, and the courts did nothing. It is what keeps compelling me to think maybe we just need to get rid of the FISA court system and come up with a new way, because I am not sure that the court with the judges who have been appointed to be FISA judges, that we can save that system, that Americans can feel comfortable that their privacy and their civil rights are not being violated by an overzealous group, especially when you look at the thousands and thousands of FISA orders. In 2018, out of mass applications for warrants from the FISA court, I think there was only one they turned down. Some say: Well, maybe if we have an amicus, a friend of the court who will stand up for the party against whom a warrant is sought, maybe that would help provide enough protection for American civil liberties. But then we saw in December, I believe it was, FISA court, feeling the heat of all of those who have come to distrust FISA courts, appointed an amicus. It turned out the judge appointed the very lawyer who for years had been trashing Devin Nunes and others, who it turns out were 100 percent right in the things they said in their report. So it appeared clear that the FISA court was not serious about making fixes or changes or protecting civil liberties, but also it had gone into the Christopher Wray mode of covering up, hoping people wouldn't notice that so much illegality and impropriety had been going on. We are going to be taking up these issues, the controversial section 215 from the PATRIOT Act and other things. Hopefully, we will take up the FISA court. I am hopeful that we will have bipartisan action because I know from my time on the Judiciary Committee, there have been Democrats-- previously, Chairman Nadler had been a staunch proponent of protecting civil liberties, but that appears to be more, nowadays, only protecting civil liberties if you are a Democrat, but not so much if you are part of the Trump administration or a friend of the President. Hopefully, we can get past some of that and do some good and actually do the job of protecting civil liberties. I have talked to Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren over the years, including more recently, because she, in the past, has been quite zealous for civil liberties. I understand she has a bill. Hopefully, that will be helpful in dealing with some of these issues. But I am still concerned that the abuses may have grown so profound that we may not be able to fix the FISA court system. We may need to do as some have said--I think Rand Paul has talked about just getting rid of it. But we will see where we go. That same kind of duality justice or dual justice has raised its ugly head in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. Jessie Liu was the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and she had some people, it turns out, who were extremely partisan. In fact, in a case involving Imran Awan, an IT technician here, involved with working with computers for dozens of Democrats on Capitol Hill--since 2004, he had worked, like I say, for dozens of Democratic Representatives. And it is one of the things up here on the Hill, if a Member of Congress tells you, ``Oh, this is my computer person. He is great. She is great,'' then others will say, ``oh, I need somebody, so I will hire them.'' Normally, somebody who does that, since you don't need them full time, they work part time. Under the rules, they are allowed to work for multiple offices as long as their income does not exceed the maximum amount allowed--I think it was around $170,000, something like that. You could work for multiple offices and accumulate up to that maximum. You can have multiple part-time employees. Apparently, that is what Imran Awan did, and he had a brother. If you are going to do that kind of work, you have to file financial information, financial statement information. It turns out, he didn't disclose about selling cars or some of the assets or businesses he had, and that is a Federal felony. He also had filed under the requirements here if you buy something, and I think it is $500 or more, then you have to have the serial number, you have to keep track of it, and you have to be able to document where that item is at all times if it costs more than $500. When I came into office in 2005, there was some couch that was on my inventory. Nobody had seen the couch in many years, but I was told you can't take it off your inventory because it is part of your office. Well, if it had cost less than $500 then that would not have been an issue. I have no idea where that couch was or is. It wasn't around when I got here. But Imran Awan, apparently to get around the requirement of keeping serial numbers and keeping track of things that he purchased allegedly on behalf of Congress Members for whom he worked, he would list iPads that cost $799 as costing $499 and then say that an insurance policy for it cost $300, and that way it got around the requirement of keeping information on where those specific items were. It turns out from, what I have read, it appears he and his brother owed six figures to somebody foreign, I believe. And so instead of paying the person back, they put this guy, who was not a computer technician--just had various Members, oh, apparently he told them, this guy is going to help with your computer system, so we need you to put him on part-time for your office. So he had the Federal taxpayers paying their debt to this guy. It turns out he had two wives, and one was saying he had a tremendous amount of money. He is from Pakistan, and when he goes back, he is treated like a king by the secret police there, I believe it was ISI. He is constantly sending all kinds of computer equipment back to Pakistan since he was a Pakistan national. Anyway, he had some ties with some very questionable people. It sounds like maybe the FISA court should have been issuing warrants to look at some of his stuff. He was arrested in July of 2017 over his alleged involvement in double charging House Democrats for House IT equipment, House computer- type equipment, and privately exposing private information online. A probe of him found more than tens of thousands of dollars in computer technical equipment had been stolen. He was indicted by a Federal District Court in August of 2017 for ``conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, making false statements on a loan or credit application, and engaging in unlawful monetary transactions.'' As I recall, he had, I believe it was a cousin who worked at McDonald's. He got him listed on the payroll for different House Members. I am sure they didn't know that he wasn't working. So he helped out the family by bringing in extra income for family members. Each one of those events would have been a Federal felony. Evidence indicates that Imran Awan and his team members were copying data from the computers of House Members to the House Democratic Caucus server and then even to private Dropbox accounts--totally inappropriate and absolute wrongdoing. He and his associates were even tossed off the House computer system because they provided false information to Capitol Police that being a fake copy of the Democratic Caucus' server. But incredibly none of that was used by Jessie Liu's attorneys against him. Instead, the U.S. Attorney's office for the District of Columbia opted to let him plead to a charge of just making a false statement on a loan application, disregarding the many, many felonies that could have been charged and pursued to just find out: Why are you such a hero back in Pakistan? What equipment are you sending back there? Where are you getting it from? How come you committed a felony by not listing your car dealership? Because as our intel people can tell you, Madam Speaker, one of the ways that money is raised for terrorist activity is through bogus car dealerships where cars are stolen and then shipped. We don't know what the situation was with Imran Awan's alleged car dealership because he didn't have a dealer lot anywhere. It is handy, though, no matter who you are, if you can have taxpayers pay back your loans by just listing them on the payroll of people whom you lied to about who is doing the work. The problem, though, if Jessie Liu and these Democrat attorneys in the D.C. U.S. Attorneys' Office had pursued Imran for anything other than making a false statement on his loan, then there would have been a lot of embarrassment for Democratic Members of Congress because they had some guy like that who was cheating taxpayers, cheating the government, and committing crimes working for them. In fairness, it is hard to believe they would have known the kinds of things he was doing and getting away with. Anyway, the Federal judge sentenced him. He filed saying he was broke, and he had no money. One of his wives said she was threatened by the FBI to keep her mouth shut, but she had indicated that he had all kinds of money. He had gold, and he had all kinds of money that he had been able to save while working for all these different Members of Congress. But he said he was broke. He filed something saying he was broke, and he couldn't pay anything. But then it came down to, in order to get probation he had to pay back six figures to the government. Somehow, he magically came up--I can't remember if it was 100 or $200,000--he came up with it. He paid it, even though he alleged he was flat broke. So when we hear about four Federal prosecutors who worked for U.S. Attorney of D.C. Jessie Liu being all upset over the Department of Justice wanting fairness for Roger Stone and not political vengeance, four of them quit. In analyzing who it is and what they were doing and why they quit, I think it is important to see who they are. There have been some good articles written about these people just in the last week. Jonathan Kravis was appointed by former President Obama to be associate White House Counsel where he served in 2009 and 2010. He worked for Williams & Connolly, a lobbying firm for which Kravis had worked. It has a long history of its employees donating large sums of money to Democratic candidates, organizations, and causes. He worked with Adam Jed to prosecute Paul Manafort. They went after him with a vengeance for working for the Ukrainian Government. Manafort was cleared of all charges except two counts of conspiracy to defraud the U.S., for which Manafort is serving a 5-year prison sentence. Kravis and his wife are connected with Codepink that most people around here know is a far left, anti-war organization. Then Adam Jed, himself, apparently did work in 2003 or was a fellow at Humanity in Action group, a far-left-wing organization blatantly against political diversity. He defended the Affordable Care Act contraceptive mandate in the case Little Sisters of the Poor v. Sebelius. That is where the Federal Government was going after these nuns who took a vow of poverty but also a vow to help people, and they believed it was against their religion to help pay for abortions. Mr. Jed had no problem in pursuing these poor nuns. That is his choice, but it does give an indication of where he stood, and it is certainly not anywhere close to the beliefs on the pro-life positions of Donald Trump. Adam Jed also provided oral arguments to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act in the Defense of Marriage Act v. Windsor. He contributed $1,000 to Josh Kaul's candidacy for Wisconsin State Attorney General. Of course, Kaul was a lawyer for Perkins Coie which funneled money from the Hillary Clinton campaign to Christopher Steele who was the British spy who also apparently utilized other foreigners to try to affect the U.S. election in 2016. So, obviously, Adam Jed would have been supporting Kaul who worked for Perkins Coie. I know we don't hear a whole lot about it from the other side of the aisle, but the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC actually paid foreigners to try to affect our 2016 election. I constantly hear about how outrageous it was that the now-debunked allegations that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to affect our election, they don't want to talk about what is slam-dunk proved that the DNC and the Clinton campaign absolutely did pay foreigners to try to affect our election. One foreigner from Italy was involved and a foreigner from Australia. I know people like to say that there were no Ukrainians involved. That is totally debunked. The mere fact that Russia has constantly tried to affect our elections--so has China and so have other countries--does not mutually exclude the fact that there were Ukrainians who tried to affect our 2016 election. Exhibit A to me, Madam Speaker, would be you had the ambassador from Ukraine to the U.S. write an op-ed trying to prevent Donald Trump from being elected President. That is foreign interference within an election. So, anyway, I don't know where they are getting this stuff, oh, that is Russian propaganda. The only Russian propaganda that has been the most effective is propaganda from Russia that wants to divide America, and they have done a marvelous job at dividing America instead of bringing us together. One of the other attorneys who resigned all upset about the treatment of--well, Attorney General Barr wanting them to pull their fangs back in and not try to be so vengeful simply because Roger Stone was a friend of the President. There is no indication the President had hired him to do anything, but they sure went after him because of a connection. Michael Marando prosecuted the Imran Awan case. He is the guy who let him get away with all of this other activity without proper investigation. In fact, there was an inspector general here. She ended up being, I think, president of some international technology organization. She was amazing. She had all kinds of evidence to prove felony cases against Imran Awan, but representatives from the U.S. Attorney's Office, I don't know if it was Michael Marando himself, the FBI, working at their behest, ended up threatening her: Don't you bring your notebook with all that evidence. Then they turned around and later reportedly said: Oh, we interviewed her, she didn't have anything. Yes, when you ordered her not to bring it to show you the cases against Imran Awan. But that is Michael Marando. He laid him off with a wrist slap. I don't see how you can find any other basis other than Marando's political motivation. But he didn't pursue any of these other charges, and the question still exists. As I understand, Imran Awan has filed a lawsuit, and it appears his intention is to try to get back on the gravy train here where he was on Capitol Hill, to get people to sign up to use him. I think there are enough people who got burned that it would probably be hard for him to do. But a lawsuit, of course, when I heard that he has a lawsuit, that means discovery is in order. I am hopeful discovery will bring out all the lies and the crimes that it appears that he has committed. But no thanks to Michael Marando. He certainly didn't do anything that would have hurt Democrats on Capitol Hill but went out of his way to want to destroy Roger Stone. Aaron Zelensky started his career as a special assistant to Koh, who was the State Department legal adviser in the Obama administration, but he has also clerked for what I felt was one of the most liberal judges ever, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. He played a key role in obtaining a guilty plea from a guy who was an adviser at one time, Papadopoulos. This poor guy, he didn't have money. When the FBI and the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office came after him, Mueller's people, he didn't have money to fight. He was being overwhelmed. They intimidated him enough into his agreeing to plead guilty to a minor charge. But Zelensky was handpicked by Mueller when he was selecting people who hated Trump. Zelensky was handpicked to be an investigator in that probe. Before joining the Mueller team, Zelensky worked for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Anyway, these people certainly had a lot of political baggage. They were clearly on a vendetta. They weren't pursuing justice. They were pursuing political vendettas, trying to get at President Trump. There are tens of millions of dollars that were spent investigating what we now know was the Russia hoax. There was no collusion or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, despite what people are trying to allude to now. It wasn't. The evidence wasn't there. Mueller was disappointed. Weissmann was disappointed. All of these left-wingers were disappointed that, despite all the intimidation, all the threats, they couldn't find somebody who could actually implicate any kind of collusion or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. But on Roger Stone's sentencing, when he was convicted, one of the charges was witness tampering. It sure sounds like he was kidding around by saying: Hey, I may have to come over and kill your dog. I mean, who says that if they are not kidding? That is not all that effective of a threat. But when you have a judge who can't stand the Trump administration, and you have a juror who gets on--I would really like to know what kind of questions the jury was asked during voir dire. If Roger Stone's attorneys did not ask the jury panel their feelings about Donald Trump, then it sure sounds like that would have been malpractice. Roger should have a great case against his own lawyers, plus a great case on appeal for their impropriety as his attorneys. But I find it hard to believe they wouldn't ask something about that because there is clearly some type of Trump derangement system. Some very smart, well-balanced people get so angry and frustrated over President Donald Trump that they don't think as straight as they normally would. But to have the foreperson of the jury, the head juror who controls the discussions, shut people down, encourage other people to speak--the head foreperson hates Donald Trump. Anyway, it is amazing the efforts that the Department of Justice, at least the U.S. Attorney's Office, had gone to, to become a tool for injustice. They wanted to max this guy out, the poor guy. Unbelievable. I have sent people to prison for life. I have sent people to prison for 10 years, 9 years. I have had to look people in the eye and order them to be taken to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and put to death. Those are serious matters, and you simply cannot let any type of vengeance or political persuasion affect you. I know in east Texas, we have assistant U.S. attorneys who vote Democrat. But when it comes to enforcing the law, they enforce the law. They don't care what party you are. And it is so tragic, right here in our Nation's Capital, our own Justice Department, in our own D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, you have people who are not nearly as just and fair as you find all over the country in most U.S. Attorney's Offices. Another issue of the local D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office was a guy named James Wolfe. He was indicted by a Federal grand jury on three counts of violating title 18, U.S. Code, Section 1001. At the time he made the alleged false statements to the FBI, James Wolfe was director of security for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and that was a position he had held for about 29 years. As the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence director of security, James Wolfe was entrusted with access to classified, secret, and top- secret information provided by the executive branch, including the United States intelligence community that they provided to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Wolfe was alleged to have lied to FBI agents in December 2017 about his repeated contacts with three reporters, including through his use of encrypted messaging applications. Wolfe is further alleged to have made false statements to the FBI about providing two reporters with nonpublic information related to the matters occurring before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He was sentenced to 2 months in prison, 4 months supervised release for lying to the FBI. He has to complete 20 hours of community service--20 hours a month during his release for those 4 months--and pay a $7,500 fine. You compare what he did with what Roger Stone did. Roger Stone wasn't dealing with any classified information, secret or top secret. He used some bad judgment. But Jesse Liu's attorneys, these four who have now quit--thank God they quit. We need to get some people in there where, when it comes to prosecuting, it doesn't matter what the defendant's political persuasion is. You seek justice. And there are Democratic and Republican attorneys, prosecutors, around the country who are quite capable of doing that. So I sure hope that we will get some better attorneys in the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office. It is amazing. I thought about Sergeant York, that movie. I believe Gary Cooper played Sergeant York. They were in the trenches, and they couldn't see the bad guys to stop them. He ends up using a turkey call that he used back when he was turkey hunting. One after another, enemy soldiers would stick their head up, and he was able to knock them off and eventually capture this huge group. But in order to prevail, they had to get them to stick their heads up. I think that is what this Trump derangement syndrome has done. There are people who have been working pervasively and, apparently, with political vendettas, but they have been able to stay below the radar. Along comes President Trump, and they get so deranged that they expose who they are. So I thank all those political opportunists and zealots who use their position in the U.S. Government, including the Department of Justice, who have now exposed themselves. Vindman is one those people who have exposed his animosity, and it is really good that he is no longer part of the National Security Council. It is good his brother is no longer in the Office of General Counsel. I think we will see less leaks now that he is gone from there. Anyway, we are starting to see those people who have exposed themselves as political operatives, rather than doing justice, or following the orders of their Commander in Chief, we are seeing them exposed. We are seeing them moved out. I am hoping, in the days ahead, there will be a lot more of that occurring. I think justice will be served better so the American people can feel more like--and not one party or another. People need to be able to feel, as a whole, regardless of the political persuasion of some prosecutor, that justice is being pursued and done, as it is being done in so many Federal districts all over the country. It has been a problem here in Washington, D.C. When that happens, we will all be better off. Madam Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, under the new rules of this Congress, since the rules have been changed that only allow one Special Order per week, and despite for years my having encouraged members of our conference to sign up for Special Orders, it is our chance to get messages out that we feel need to be out. As I have said for years to our conference, you need to sign up for the Special Orders because you don't want my face to be the face of the party. And I am very encouraged, we have got more people signing up now. But under the Speaker's new rules, as of this Congress, only one per week per person, so I am pleased, Mr. Speaker, to be here for my one Special Order of the week. And what a week it was. Wow. The impeachment proceedings came to the conclusion that most everybody who had studied the situation knew that they would; no matter how long it got drug out, it was going to be this conclusion. The State of the Union address Tuesday night; most people, or at least around here, most people know the Constitution requires a State of the Union report or address, but it doesn't require that it be done orally. And originally, the very first were provided in writing. But it is an opportunity for us to come together, even though it has not been quite as homogenous a body as it has been at times when it comes to the State of the Union. It has just been interesting. You know, some call it Trump Derangement Syndrome, some call it PTSD, President Trump Stress Disorder. But apparently, he causes stress, in some cases derangement, so people that normally think straight just have trouble reaching the same wise conclusions that they used to. So that has been an interesting thing to observe. But here we are, end of the week of impeachment, end of the week after a State of the Union address. I was honored to have my friend, Nigel Farage, who has been fighting for about a decade, actually, to make the point that President Trump has been making here in America; that unless our country is strong, we cannot take care of other countries' disasters and problems or assaults on freedom around the world. We can't. We have to make sure we are strong first. And the example that has been given before of being on a jet plane, and the instructions, for good reason, say that the adult must put the mask on in the event of a loss of cabin pressure, which means there will be a loss of oxygen. So put your mask on first, so that you will be conscious and helpful to your children and others who are not able to put the mask on themselves. If we are not strong, if we don't take care of the United States of America, as our oath should require us to do, then we are not able to be that shining light on a hill. We are not able to be that hope for freedom. There are a lot of countries around the world that don't care for the United States. Some of it is simple jealousy. But some call the United States imperialist pigs, which is no reflection on the United States. It is a reflection on their ignorance of what imperialism means, as well as exactly what the history of the United States is. We have gone and fought and sacrificed our greatest treasure, American lives--you are hard-pressed to find any place in history where a country sacrificed that precious treasure, in our case, American lives--for other people's freedom. And we don't require that they learn our language; that they begin to get permission from our government here in order to conduct affairs in their own country. We are not imperialists. We are not seeking a hegemony. That is not the case at all. We are about freedom. We have so many friends in France. We have, of course, a painting over here. It is the only painting in the whole Capitol full length of a foreigner, and here it is. It has been here in the House for so many decades, a friend of George Washington that is over here on my right, Lafayette. We have had great help from the French. In fact, they helped ensure the final victory at Yorktown with their ships and their military. The French military was there at the surrender, where Cornwallis cowardly said he was ill and couldn't come out and surrender, so he sent out a subordinate. We owe the French people a great deal. Historians have wrestled with how, after the American Revolution, we came about having freedom without the thousands of heads being separated from bodies, as occurred after the French Revolution that began 10 or so years after we got our Constitution. The French Revolution ended up ultimately resulting in an Emperor named Napoleon. Before Napoleon even took charge, so many people were killed, so much bloodshed. Historians have wrestled with that. How did the American Revolution result in freedom without the tremendous beheadings and hangings that occurred in other places like after the French Revolution? What made the difference? I believe those who point to the First Great Awakening around the 1730s and 1740s, a recognition of Biblical principles and of just who Almighty God was and is and this desire for freedom that our Creator has provided. Some say, well, if we are endowed with it, why doesn't everyone have freedom around the world? Well, like anything you inherit, if you are not willing to fight for it, there will be evil people who will take it from you, and you won't have it. Thank God for all of those who have served in our military and fought for freedom. Some historians say the big difference, they believe, between the results of the American Revolution and the French Revolution was that the American Revolution was about liberty, and the French Revolution was about revenge. As long as this country has been about liberty, it has soared, and people have done well. Of course, in the second century of our country, there was another great awakening in the decades before the Civil War, and some would indicate actually the second great awakening, an awakening of something Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams, of course, Frederick Douglass knew better than anybody. But how can you be a Christian and follow the teachings of Jesus and at the same time put brothers and sisters in chains and bondage? They are inconsistent. They are incongruent. You can't have those two things working together. Sure, slavery is talked about in the Bible, and it has always been around, and it grieves me greatly. We heard a year ago, at the National Prayer Breakfast, there are now more slaves in the world than there have ever been at any time in the world's history. Tragic. Some say, well, that points to our own disgusting history here in the United States, like Columbus coming over and establishing slavery. Again, a lot of people don't know their history, but there were Indian tribes that had captured and enslaved other Indian tribes. I used to say Native Americans, but we have had so many Native Americans testify before our committee, and they normally say I am an Indian from the such and such Indian Tribe, so that has been a revelation. Nonetheless, slavery has existed since the fall of man. It is an evil that exists in this world, and I am glad we were rid of it in the United States. It is tragic that it took a Civil War and the loss of a half-million lives, but, again, it took a second great awakening. And that was about liberty; it wasn't about revenge. We get to the 20th century, helped in two world wars. We haven't had a great awakening in over 100 years. I think it shows in the activity here in this body, and I think it shows in activities across the country. I think it is something that would serve us well and help refine the country if we were to have a third great awakening. Instead, we see tremendous partisanship. I really appreciated the majority leader explaining for our Speaker what she really meant by things she had said. Of course, she had said that the State of the Union Address had no connection with reality. She said the speech was a pack of lies. She said the President was selling a bill of goods, like a snake oil salesman. And I appreciated our minority whip, my friend Steve Scalise, asking about that. It certainly appears there were a lot of truthful things. Just to highlight some of the President's guests, this should have been a feel-good event across the aisle. And I wasn't a personal fan of President Obama, but when he would tell a story that touched the heart, as there were so many of those stories in the State of the Union, how could you not be moved? How could you not applaud and stand and cheer for some of those heroic situations? So I thought it was like a good movie. You laugh, you cry, you cheer. And there were those events. I have run into this myself. One lady told me she was so sensitive to the Holy Spirit after she finished saying some really nasty things about me. She said, when you came up, the Holy Spirit left, and I realized she was completely consumed with hate. So, yes, you can't be consumed with that kind of hate and still feel the presence, as you say you have, of the Holy Spirit. If you can set those kinds of feelings of hate aside long enough, then it is easier to find areas of mutual agreement. Stephanie and Janiyah Davis from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she was the fourth grade student who loves art and math. For too long, she has been assigned to low-performing schools. Her mom, Stephanie, is a hardworking, single mom who tried to apply for a tax credit scholarship. But since the Governor had vetoed the school choice legislation, Janiyah remained among the estimated 50,000 students on a wait list. As was announced here in this body--I was sitting right up there--she was getting a scholarship. How could we not all cheer this child with so much promise having the chance to pursue her dreams and get the best education, just like children of Presidents of both parties have here in Washington as they send their child or children to private schools? Why not give a poor minority a chance that the President's children have? Juan Guaido from Caracas, Venezuela, of course, he was the interim President of Venezuela. I thought it was inspirational to have him here and allow us to pay tribute to whom many of us believe is the actual, legitimate Venezuelan President. But as the President pointed out, the U.S. is supporting the Venezuelan people in their struggle for freedom and democracy. Kelli and Gage Hake from Stillwater, Oklahoma, Kelli was at home with her 1-year-old son, Gage, when she learned that her husband, Army Staff Sergeant Christopher, had been killed while serving his second tour of duty in Iraq. He was killed by the explosive devices designed and produced under the auspices of a guy named Soleimani, whom President Trump had ordered taken out. Such an irony, too, he was killed. It shouldn't have been a partisan thing over someone being killed by a drone strike because I am not aware of any of my friends across the aisle who expressed any concern when President Obama had a father and son, two American citizens, killed without arrest or trial with a drone strike. I don't remember anybody on the other side of the aisle being upset or expressing that outrage that President Obama had father and son killed--the son, apparently, a minor--had them both taken out by a drone strike. But I could understand why President Obama would do that. This al-Awlaki, he was an American citizen. As I pointed out before, it is a flaw that has occurred in our citizenship system, where there was no act of Congress. We can't find that there was even an executive order. But somewhere along the way, despite the language during debate of the 14th Amendment that made clear, no, they were not anticipating that if you were--and they didn't say alien. They said foreigner or a diplomat here. Well, of course, your children are not going to be American citizens, and they weren't for years. But somewhere, in the decades following the adoption, the ratification of the 14th Amendment--and like I say, I can't even find an executive order--some bureaucrats apparently in the State Department, I guess, just decided it would be easier to start bestowing citizenship on children of people who were here illegally, or as the ratifiers of the 14th Amendment called them, foreigners. They didn't even care if they were legally here or illegally here. They certainly did not anticipate that children of foreigners here would be American citizens. Like I say, I have been trying to find out who made that decision to start giving citizenship to people who are born here. Our friend Judge Andrew Napolitano, I have heard him say on FOX News before that, basically, people need to get over it. It doesn't matter who you are. If you are born here, you are an American citizen. But he was just ignorant of the fact that if you are a diplomat's child born here, you are not an American citizen. So those were the two areas. If you are a foreigner's child, a diplomat's child, you weren't to be an American citizen. But it would be very interesting if we could ever find out who made that call and how do we go about curing it now. But I think the President is right. If that was done by just some bureaucrat's decision, no act of Congress, no executive order, just somebody just started giving out American citizenship to people who were born here to foreigners, then you should be able to retract it with a President's executive order overruling whatever desk jockey or bureaucrat decided it was too difficult to assess whether somebody was here legally or not, and so just start giving out American citizenship. But the name al-Awlaki, he is one of many people that we know--at one point, I only knew a couple. I wasn't willing to give those names out because they were given to me in a personal request not to give them out until others were known so that that person's identity wasn't in jeopardy of being learned. But al-Awlaki, his parents came over on a student visa. He was born here. They take him back to Yemen. They teach him to hate America. Apparently, there may have been people in the Bush administration; certainly there were in the Obama administration. They apparently thought he was being a double agent and helping the U.S., when, actually, he was fomenting violence against Americans here and abroad. So it is understandable that President Obama or people in his administration who had tried to work with al-Awlaki, they wouldn't want him coming back and having a big trial where he revealed the different people he had worked with in different administrations, so the answer is take him out with a drone strike. Never mind his minor son is in there. We don't know if he was guilty of fomenting violence or not, but he was a juvenile, as I understand it. We hear all these allegations about President Trump but not so much about the murders ordered by President Obama, whether we call them murders or killings. I don't think they actually meet the criminal requirements of being murder because they were people normally that he took out by order of a strike. They were enemy combatants who were killing Americans. So I didn't have a problem with him protecting American interests in doing what President Obama did, nor do I have a problem with President Trump protecting our country doing the same thing. Again, I appreciate the majority leader saying: No. No. When the Speaker was talking about all the lies, just the whole speech was a pack of lies. He was selling a bill of goods like a snake oil salesman. The whole speech had no connection with reality. He was explaining that she actually wasn't talking about all these people who were introduced. I look forward to the Speaker pointing that out. Jody Jones from Farmersville, California: On December 17, 2018, Jody's brother, Rocky Jones, was shot and killed by an illegal immigrant in California. The criminal alien who had committed this brutal murder was previously arrested for violent crimes and twice deported. The criminal alien was arrested in December 2018 for the sixth time, but because of California's sanctuary State policy, he was released from jail. A few days later, he went on a 24-hour reign of terror, injuring several people, robbing a gas station, leading law enforcement on a high-speed chase, and killing 51-year-old Rocky, who was known as a kind and gentle soul. He left behind a precious daughter and four brothers. I don't see anything in any of these that should have been considered lies. These are touching stories. I realize we have a disagreement here, as many do across the country. I think there is a bill proposed with a new way forward where we even provide airfare to people who have been deported to bring them to the United States. I think the Trump administration is doing a good job getting rid of people who are criminal threats to this country, and I applaud those efforts. I think it is part of our keeping our oath to our Constitution that we take here. Our devotion is not to citizens of the world. It is like President Trump has pointed out: We can't help the world if we are not strong as a nation. That is what Nigel Farage has been successful in promoting, a removal of the U.K. from the European Union. You have got some bureaucrats making decisions who are not residents of England, and yet they are making decisions that have adversely affected the lives of the British people, and I can understand them being upset. Yes, there are those who say, if we had a one-world government, then there is no need for war, the same argument that was made for the European Union: Look, if we are all one country, then we can't have another world war started between Germany and France or anybody else because we are all one government. Orwell would probably acknowledge that as a great basis for creating Big Brother that watched over everybody, which seems to be where we continue to move in this country, into a great socialist, communist, progressive society. As Whittaker Chambers quoted Dostoevsky: The problem with communism is not economic. The problem with communism is atheism. I will never forget, before the fall of the Soviet Union, going into the only authorized seminary, Christian seminary in the whole Soviet Union at a place called Zagorsk. As you turned in the gate, there was a big building there, and the building had a picture of Lenin's face, and it said, in Russian: ``Lenin is with us.'' The message was clear: You may be going into this Christian seminary, but just understand, this is a communist country--or a socialist country, as they called themselves--and here, it isn't Christianity that is good. It is important you know Lenin is the one who is with us. It was interesting visiting Lenin's tomb in those days. The rumor was that his ear had deteriorated to the point that they replaced it with a rubber one. I never knew if that was true or not, but his ear didn't really look real. But, nonetheless, that was their message: This dead Lenin is with us and not some God you Christians think you should worship. But we are moving toward a time in this country, unless it is interrupted--and I think the election of President Trump helped interrupt it--where Christians are really the only identifiable group in America where it is politically correct to condemn them, to belittle them, to persecute them. And we are still seeing that grow. It is interesting that it grows at a time when anti-Semitism continues to grow here, as in Europe. We had, from Scottsdale, Arizona, Iain Lanphier. I didn't realize his great-grandfather was going to be right there and that he was a 100- year-old Tuskegee Airman, one of those heroic airmen who were segregated but had incredible courage, incredible ability, and they flew missions that were just incredible. They showed such courage in helping protect freedom even though they were fighting segregation, or had to deal with it back then. What a heroic group. This young man is the great-grandson of Tuskegee Airman Charles McGee. Of course, Iain wanted to be, and still wants to be, a member of the United States Space Force. Those were all inspirational. Now, I know, and I think the majority leader referred to it, they disagreed with Rush Limbaugh being recognized. He is an incredible man, an extraordinary man. I recall back when I was on the bench as a judge in Texas seeing that the Republican majority elected in November of 1994 recognized Rush as an honorary member of their class. They paid tribute. Without him, they didn't think Republicans, for the first time in 40 years, would have gotten the majority back. Of course, Newt Gingrich was leading that charge from a congressional standpoint. But he is an amazing guy. Even when I get really frustrated and depressed about some of the things going on here, I can listen to Rush, and he has such an amazing sense of humor. So it has been interesting. As his producer--Bo Snerdley is his radio name--can verify, as he has to me many times--I love the guy--he can personally testify that Rush Limbaugh is not a racist. James can verify that, has verified that. Anyway, I know Rush. I just think the world of Rush and what he has tried to do. I thought now that he has been diagnosed with stage IV cancer, it was a great tribute. We see it here in this body. We have people in this body who have made arguments staunchly against the things we really believe in, and we find out they have got cancer. In our Thursday morning Prayer Breakfast, we pray for each other. It doesn't matter about party. Sometimes in that Prayer Breakfast you hear testimonials from people and you had no idea the things they have gone through, but we set aside the political things to pray for each other and care about each other. So I have been a bit burdened to see people so angry about Rush Limbaugh's recognition for the things that he has been amazing and done. I think the slurs about him being a racist, they are absolutely absurd. Talk to James. Rush did not hire James because he was Black. He hired him because he is an amazing guy, and he has been helpful to Rush. But, like I say, I love James. He is just great guy. I am so pleased the President recognized Rush. I got up to the gallery up there, Rush was there, and it meant a lot to me to hug Rush Limbaugh and encourage him, and I will continue to pray for him as well. I am just sorry that people can't take a step back when somebody is going through what Rush is and at least drop some of the outrageous slander. We also had retired Brigadier General Charles McGee. He is the great- grandfather of Iain Lanphier. I know comments were made that the whole speech was a pack of lies, but these were extraordinary people. As their stories were told, there was cheering. There were tears. It was just a feel-good time. It should have been for all Americans, when we could see the things that brought us together and made us strong, and yet there were people who were not about to stand up and acknowledge and applaud some of these folks. That is really tragic. And it wasn't just Rush Limbaugh. Paul Morrow, a United States Army veteran, but he started a successful contracting business. Today he is building a new concrete plant in an opportunity zone in Montgomery. Carl and Marsha Mueller from Prescott, Arizona, as far as I know, no relationship to Bob who cost us $30 million or so when he knew immediately that his investigation was a sham. There was no collusion or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, even though there are people who continue, after 2 years and 30 or so million dollars, establishing no conspiracy or collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, people still keep wanting to bring up that as if the lie is truth. But Bob Mueller--I regret the damage that he has done to the name ``Mueller.'' These folks were wonderful. Kayla was a devoted humanitarian aid worker. I knew the story. My heart broke for these people. It is just horrendous to think about what al-Baghdadi did to their daughter, a loving, caring, dedicated person of faith trying to help others, and al-Baghdadi repeatedly raped her. It is more than a parent should ever have to deal with to think about. But we also heard those stories about Boko Haram after they attacked a Christian school. I was invited over there. We didn't have people from the Obama administration that appeared to want to help initially, even though there was a hashtag, #bringbackourgirls. That didn't bring back anybody. But then I secretly met with dozens of the mothers of girls who were kidnapped and were enslaved and being raped, that was a very emotional evening. But I asked their pastor privately, I said: ``Where are all of the fathers?'' And he said: ``That is part of all of this tragedy. The fathers know their daughters are being raped daily. They don't feel like they should be sleeping in a bed comfortable when they were not able to protect their daughters.'' So they have gone to the bush, jungle, rainforest, whatever you want to call it, and they are living out there and many have already died out there. There was a quote from a Catholic bishop and I was told when I was over there: ``Yeah, the Obama administration is saying that if you want some real help with Boko Haram''--not just a hashtag--``but you want some real help that will make a difference and stop Boko Haram, you have got to do a couple of things. You have got to legalize same-sex marriage, and you have got to start funding abortions, and then we will be able to be of more help to you.'' Of course, that kind of reminds you of asking Ukraine to help with the investigations into corruption. But, anyway, President Obama obviously wasn't impeached and nor did anybody that I am aware of think we should have tried to impeach him because he wasn't helping these Christian girls the way we could have by helping take out Boko Haram, even with drone strikes, or more. I understand there was some intelligence provided to the Nigerians, but according to the people I met with, they weren't getting the help because they weren't going to change their laws to adopt same-sex marriage or legalize abortion. But what a tragedy. And I don't know, maybe people, some of the ones that didn't stand and applaud for that couple that has endured so much, maybe it was that they didn't want to applaud because al-Baghdadi was killed, even though he was responsible for the killing of so many Americans, so many Christians, so many Jews, and actually, Muslims as well. Maybe they did not approve of a terrorist thug like al-Baghdadi being killed. And I know President Obama had said that ISIS is not true Islam. Well, it was a radical form of Islam. Al-Baghdadi had a Ph.D. in Islam, so I always kind of felt like he at least knew something about Islam, perhaps more than people who did not have a Ph.D. in Islamic studies. I was very grateful that President Trump took the actions he did to eliminate the person who could do the kind of things that he did to Carl and Marsha Mueller's daughter. But, again, I would have thought that we could have celebrated the taking out of just a thug, an enemy combatant, a person who wanted to see America destroyed, that we might have had more community, or camaraderie in relieving the world of somebody that did so much damage to people in it. We had Deputy Chief Raul Ortiz. I mean, the guy is a hero. I have met him before. It was good to see him here. He is with the U.S. Border Patrol. He joined them in 1991. He had served in the United States Army, and he has got a lot of responsibility down on the border trying to protect our country, because there are people trying to come in with drugs, that are killing Americans, they are enslaving Americans, or people who don't like us. Fortunately, the majority of people coming in, they do like America and want to live here, but we can't know who wants to help and who wants to hurt unless we have a secure border and can control who comes in. Tony Rankins from Cincinnati, Ohio, had suffered from PTSD, post- traumatic stress disorder. He had become addicted to drugs. Anyway, Tony's story kind of reminded me of a friend from Texas, Curtis Brown, who is a Christian and who has been able to conquer some of these same demons, is doing great in helping others. So I have great appreciation for Tony Rankins and what he has overcome. And now the company he started, R Investments, today he is working in an opportunity zone in Cincinnati, but the new job has helped him overcome his drug addiction. But there is more that has to be done to keep someone from falling back into drugs. It is a daily battle, and people should be applauded for being able to do that. I regret that we didn't have more stimulating applause and recognition. Robin and Ellie Schneider--Ellie was the one born at 21 weeks and 6 days, one of the youngest babies to survive in America at the time. It is an amazing story. How could you not applaud that little child in her mother's arms. It was very touching, very moving. It wasn't a lie. These weren't lies. These were real American stories that, again, should have made us all laugh, all cry, and all cheer over the good things. Ivan Simonovis from Caracas, Venezuela, he was the chief of police there in Venezuela's capital city. He was esteemed as the nation's top cop. But he was imprisoned in 2004 for protecting protesters. He was held in captivity for nearly 15 years by Chavez and the Maduro regimes, but he escaped in 2019, got to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and was welcomed in the United States. That ought to be a story we could all cheer for on both sides of the aisle. That is a good thing. I regret we were not even more laudatory for a guy who had overcome all of that. I guess for some people, if you applaud his escaping Venezuela in the Chavez and Maduro era, maybe it was thought that applauding that might be some recognition of just how brutal socialism, progressivism, and communism becomes. Natan Sharansky, it was my privilege to have a long conversation with him and Sheldon and Miriam Adelson years ago. The guy is brilliant. He served 12 years, though, in a Russian gulag because he wanted freedom of speech. As Natan points out, you have fear societies and you have free societies, and you can test which you are in. Are you free to say absolutely anything you want to in the town square without fear of harm or arrest? If you are able to do that, you are in a free society. And, unfortunately, for Natan, he was in a fear society. And that is where communist systems go. They don't feel they can allow widespread Christianity. They suppress. They keep people in fear. It is amazing, too, as I have traveled around the United States, it seems like some of our best citizens who understand the threats against America, they are from the former Soviet bloc countries, and they say: We are hearing all of this great stuff about socialism. We heard all of that before, and we know that it leads to a loss of freedom. It leads to our lives being dictated by people above. It leads to the loss of parental rights because the government is going to tell you what you are allowed to talk to your children about. I was shocked to find out years ago that in the Soviet Union, they made very clear--I heard the presentation--that these children do not belong to the parents. The parents are temporary caretakers. And if they ever found out that a parent has ever said anything negative about the Soviet Union, the Soviet Government, those children will be removed and they will be put in the hands of other temporary caretakers who the government likes and who will not say anything negative about their government. That is, as Sharansky would say, a fear society. And I fear we have moved in that direction dramatically. Joshua Smith from Paducah, Kentucky was up here. His 16-year-old brother, Channing, committed suicide last September in Tennessee. He had suffered from cyber assault on social media by students in his high school. Joshua described Channing as ``the sweetest kid on Earth'' who loved playing musical instruments. But he was bullied, cyberbullied. The Williams family from Fort Bragg, that was so touching. And I was surprised. How could you not cheer this father coming back into the lives of his wife and two children? I mean, most of us were moved to tears. Some were not. I don't really understand how everybody was not totally moved by what went on there. Anyway, I was pleased that the majority leader clarified the Speaker's comments about those being, as she said, no connection with reality, a pack of lies, selling a bill of goods like a snake oil salesman. I was glad he clarified that she wasn't really talking about all of those human-interest stories, and things that should have brought us together. But unfortunately, they didn't, as they should have. For those who love justice, I am hopeful that now that this 3-year pursuit of impeachment is behind us, now we are told: Oh, that is just the beginning. We are not stopping impeachment. We are going to keep going forward. A court was told: Oh, yeah, we are going to keep going forward with impeachment. We are not done. We are going to keep trying to find something. Really, this kind of sounds like basically, since it has been made very clear as of this week the Senate is not going to buy into some bogus group of allegations that are not impeachable offenses, which makes clear, then, you are pursuing it, apparently using taxpayer dollars, to try to besmirch a candidate for November 2020, to try to defeat him by using taxpayer dollars to make all kinds of allegations that you know will not result in removal from office but you are hoping will result in his defeat in November. It is amazing the effect President Trump has on people. You can call it Trump derangement syndrome or whatever, but for so long as we have had deep state people, they felt like, as unelected bureaucrats, they were supposed to be in charge. It appeared pretty clear to me Lieutenant Colonel Vindman was offended. You could tell by his body language and the things he said. He was really bothered that President Trump didn't do exactly what he told him to do in his talking points. How dare the elected President of the United States who embodies foreign policy--President Obama, agree or disagree, when he was President, as he had said before, elections have consequences. So many of us disagreed with his foreign policy. He was President. He could have whatever foreign policy he cared to pursue. But you have people like Lieutenant Colonel Vindman who didn't think that President Trump should do what he felt appropriate. He felt he should do what Lieutenant Colonel Vindman thought was appropriate. After all, he saw himself as the be-all and end-all resource on all things to do with Ukraine. From the things we found out he said to the Ukrainian leaders, it struck me from his testimony, my gosh, he is being more loyal to Ukraine and the Ukrainian President than he is to his own oath of office and his own Commander in Chief. He is advising them not to listen to his Commander in Chief, which is totally consistent with his activity in Moscow, apparently, when he was overheard belittling America and doing so to Russians. Anyway, hopefully, he won't be there much longer. But just think about it: If we hadn't gone through impeachment, then we wouldn't have known about all these people who are unelected bureaucrats who thought they ought to be in charge of everything. So looking for a silver lining, I think there is a great silver lining because these people have now raised their heads and made themselves known that they think, as bureaucrats, they should run everything, and they will do everything they can to undermine the President of the United States. Now we know who they are so we can start getting rid of those people. That will be a good thing for the country. We had Christopher Wray, the Director of the FBI, before our Judiciary Committee this week. I was hoping when he was appointed Director of the FBI that he would come in and would clean house here in Washington, and he would help restore the FBI's sterling reputation that it had built over time. It seemed that he had a habit, though, if you pointed out problems in the Washington FBI office, he would defend by saying: You are basically casting aspersions on these 37,000 fine employees of the FBI. That is why I had to make clear to him this week that we are not casting any aspersions on anybody around the country who are part of the FBI because I have known too many FBI agents. I still do. I know, as a felony judge, they would never have come and lied to me in seeking a warrant. They would never have created an untruthful document by changing information, like we are told Clinesmith did. I still have some concern they may make him the one fall guy. In my opinion, if you seek to get a warrant to spy on a Presidential campaign that you don't want to win, Mr. Speaker, and you take information that says that Carter Page was an agent for our intelligence sources and spying on Russia, and you change that to say he was not so it helps you get a warrant to spy on a campaign you don't like, to me, he ought to be in jail for committing a fraud upon the FISA court. I think he ought to be in jail for any other crimes that were committed in the process of seeking to provide false information to violate American citizens' civil rights. I hope Carter Page is very successful in his legal efforts. Instead, we find out, the one guy I thought, oh, well, they will make him the fall guy, when there are a lot of people who probably should be going to jail. But under Christopher Wray's leadership, what have they done to Mr. Clinesmith? They let him resign, retire early, go get employment elsewhere, and make a good living somewhere else. Really? As I said to Christopher Wray: You are in law enforcement. You have to know how important deterrence is, and when somebody does acts like he did, in essence, there is no punishment. It is just one of many things that seems to indicate to me that Christopher Wray thinks the way to get the FBI's reputation back is to cover up much of the problem, not punish people. They need to be punished publicly so that it is a deterrence to any other FBI agents who might be tempted to act similarly as Clinesmith or Comey or McCabe or Strzok. These are people who ought to be required to answer for their wrongdoing. Yes, I still have significant problems with Inspector General Horowitz. He did a lot of investigation, but it is very clear that Strzok and Page had tremendous bias. His original report, in effect, said there is no indication that it affected the outcomes. How about the fact that every outcome was consistent with their bias? Not one single outcome was inconsistent with their bias for Hillary Clinton and their hatred for Donald Trump. When it is 100 percent consistent, then it means it is time to do something. Christopher Wray needs to go, too. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend, also from Texas. He has made wonderful points. For those of us who have studied history--especially in my case, spending my life studying history--you know one thing if you really understand history: Weakness is provocative. There was no better display than in 1979, November 4, actually. I was at Fort Benning, in the Army there. We took notice when our Embassy was attacked, and we had a very weak President who went about begging Iran to let our people go without any threat. We just wanted diplomacy. Iran then and now does not understand the weakness they perceive from diplomacy unless there is a hammer behind it. We are here today to vote on two amendments. One, of course, has already been discussed, titled ``No War with Iran Act.'' The other is titled ``Repeal of Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002.'' Some of us have been wanting a new AUMF since we got here. During the Obama administration, it was clear we weren't going to get that. I appreciated Chairman McKeon allowing me to come up with language to try to make it a little better, but he made me stay in a back room to write the language so the Democrats in the Senate didn't know it was me who was doing the language. That might have created a problem. We made some amendments, but we needed a new AUMF. Where were my friends across the aisle when, out of no vital interest, as our own Secretary of Defense said on television, our President decided to attack Libya, the President of Libya who had blood on his hands from the 1980s and 1990s, but he had opened his doors and let us tell him what weapons they could have and not have? He was not a threat. Look, we need a new AUMF, but the message that this will send to Iran is: Not only is this group trying to throw this President out and weaken him every which way they can, but now they are going to take away any power to kill somebody like Soleimani, which he just did. If he was still alive, it appears clear there would be Americans dying. Look, let's vote this down. Let's work together on a new AUMF that doesn't send word to our enemies that ``President Trump is too weak to do anything,'' because he is not. Quit sending that message.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it has been an interesting day. I was down in the Senate earlier today. We have reciprocity with the Senate, so we can go onto the Senate floor. It is a very interesting experience, seeing a President who committed no crime, not even perjury, like President Clinton, having an attempt to remove him from office. An article today by Brent Bozell says: ``One favorite tactic of our `objective' media during the impeachment of President Donald Trump is to find a clip of the President's legal experts such as Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz expressing an opinion during the 1998-99 impeachment of Bill Clinton and then show a contrast with the present day. But this is just as easily demonstrated with the press. ``It is not surprising that Democrats and Republicans favor or oppose impeachment based on the party of the President in the dock. It should be surprising that our supposedly nonpartisan journalists flip to whichever talking points are in use by the Democrats. That makes the press a gaggle of hypocrites. ``Back in 1998, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift spoke for the vast majority of the press from her chair on `The McLaughlin Group.' Before the House voted to impeach Clinton, she warned, `If the Republicans want to go ahead and do this, I think they disgrace themselves in a more profound way than President Clinton has by abusing the machinery of impeachment, knowing full well that the Senate will hold a sham trial and they will be, in effect, delivered of this ridiculous conclusion.' ``Over and over again, these network `news' stars lamented that the House impeachment vote and the Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton were a `sham' and a horrible `distraction' from the people's business. They said small-minded Republican Clinton haters were obsessed with sex, and never mind the actual charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.'' Obstruction of justice, of course, being a crime and perjury being a crime, whereas obstruction of Congress is more in the nature of maladministration, which the Founders made clear should not be a basis for impeachment. ``Then there was NBC's Matt Lauer, who brought on former House Speaker Jim Wright, who resigned in disgrace in 1989 over a corrupt scheme of selling crates of his books to lobbying groups.'' As I recall, there were restrictions on getting paid for speeches, so groups would buy thousands of his books that would sit in crates and go nowhere, in many cases, from what was said back then, as a way of getting around that. But he spoke with moral authority in response to Lauer. ``Lauer said: `Speaker Wright, let me start with you. When you resigned 9 years ago, you had been battered by the right. You called for an end to what you called `mindless cannibalism.' Nine years later, we are hearing terms like that again and others swirling around the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Have we learned nothing in 9 years?' '' As the article says, one thing we all do know is Matt Lauer learned absolutely nothing from Bill Clinton about sexual harassment in the workplace. Rather interesting. There was an article a week ago from Paul Sperry. Like I say, I was down at the Senate earlier today, and I know the President's lawyers were asking people and their staff, Republicans, not to use the name people have referred to as being the whistleblower. I have never named the whistleblower. I have named people who I believed were critical fact witnesses, and some in the media lambasted me and said: You named the whistleblower. Well, I thought we didn't know who the whistleblower was. How do you know who the whistleblower was when I named him if we don't know who the whistleblower is, if you don't know who the whistleblower is? Anyway, hypocrisy knows no bounds when it comes to some in the Washington media and some here in Congress. But in any event, the request is not to mention the name of the person, the leftwing activist who has been undermining and trying to destroy the Trump Presidency since President Trump got elected, commonly referred to as the whistleblower. But the article by Paul Sperry says: ``Sources told RealClearInvestigations the staffer with whom'' this leftwing activist trying to destroy the Trump Presidency, also called the whistleblower, ``was speaking was Sean Misko. Both were Obama administration holdovers working in the Trump White House on foreign policy and national security issues. And both expressed anger over Trump's new `America First' foreign policy, a sea change from President Obama's approach to international affairs. `` `Just days after he was sworn in, they were already talking about trying to get rid of him,' said a White House colleague who overheard their conversation. `They weren't just bent on subverting his agenda,' the former official added. `They were plotting to actually have him removed from office.' '' Sean Misko ``left the White House last summer to join House impeachment manager Adam Schiff's committee, where sources say he offered `guidance' to the whistleblower, who has been officially identified only as an intelligence officer in a complaint against Trump filed under whistleblower laws. Misko then helped run the impeachment inquiry based on that complaint as a top investigator for congressional Democrats.'' That is in the Democrats' part of the Intelligence Committee. The probe culminated in Trump's impeachment last month, and ``Schiff and other House Democrats last week delivered the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate and are now pressing the case for his removal during the trial, which began last Tuesday'' of last week. ``The coordination between the official believed to be the whistleblower and a key Democratic staffer, details of which are disclosed here for the first time, undercuts the narrative that impeachment developed spontaneously out of what Trump's Democratic antagonists call the `patriotism' of an `apolitical civil servant.' ``Two former coworkers said they overheard'' the leftwing activist trying to destroy Trump, sometimes called the whistleblower, ``and Misko, close friends and Democrats, discussing how to `take out,' or remove, the new President from office within days of Trump's inauguration. These coworkers said the President's controversial Ukraine phone call in July 2019 provided the pretext they and their Democratic allies had been looking for. `` `They didn't like his policies,' another former White House official said. `They had a political vendetta against him from day one.' ``Their efforts were part of a larger pattern of coordination to build a case for impeachment, involving Democratic leaders as well as anti-Trump figures both inside and outside of government. ``All unnamed sources for this article spoke only on condition that they not be further identified or described. Although strong evidence points to'' the leftwing activist trying to destroy President Trump, also known as the whistleblower, ``as the government employee who lodged the whistleblower complaint, he has not been officially identified as such. As a result, this article makes a distinction between public information released about the unnamed whistleblower/CIA analyst and specific information about'' the leftwing activist trying to destroy President Trump, also known as the whistleblower. ``Democrats based their impeachment case on the whistleblower complaint, which alleges that President Trump sought to help his reelection campaign by demanding that Ukraine's leader investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter in exchange for military aid.'' The article goes on: ``The whistleblower's candor is also being called into question. It turns out that the CIA operative failed to report his contacts with Schiff's office to the intelligence community's inspector general who fielded this whistleblower complaint. He withheld the information both in interviews with the inspector general, Michael Atkinson, and in writing, according to impeachment committee investigators. The whistleblower form he filled out required him to disclose whether he had `contacted other entities'--including `Members of Congress.' But he left that section blank on the disclosure form he signed. ``The investigators say that details about how the whistleblower consulted with Schiff's staff and perhaps misled Atkinson about those interactions are contained in the transcript of a closed-door briefing Atkinson gave to the House Intelligence Committee last October. However, Schiff has sealed the transcript from public view. It is the only impeachment witness transcript out of 18 that he has not released.'' I think I will pause here at this point. I have continually heard down in the Senate the House managers referring to what is basically a travesty to have a trial without any witnesses. No. Here is the real travesty. The real travesty was the violation of House rules, not allowing Republicans to have the witnesses we requested. When those weren't agreed to, then under the rules--and, of course, the Democrats are in the majority. They could have changed the rules. They didn't, so we were entitled to a minority day of witnesses to testify, and that was refused as well. That was the real travesty, when there was no allowance for Republicans to get down to real facts, get down to the bottom of the allegations against the President. That was truly a travesty. But in the committee of jurisdiction, the Judiciary Committee, we were only allowed to have some law school professors come in and give us their opinions. Two were quite clearly hateful of President Trump. One tried to sound as if he was reluctant to talk about impeachment when he had been busy twittering about impeachment since President Trump had first been elected and sworn in. It was a very disingenuous hearing, but we had to sit there and listen to the pontificating from people who clearly adjusted their opinions to address their disdain for President Trump. But that was the only live witnesses we were allowed to have. Instead, we took in all these depositions, all the transcribed depositions. That is what we took in. Those were our witnesses. That is what the House Judiciary Committee and this House Chamber was supposed to have considered in voting on impeachment. We were told, no, we have all this testimony, lots of witnesses, before the Judiciary Committee vote. We have all these transcripts if you want to read them. We had all of these transcripts, lots of witnesses. You want to read them. And then people had the gall to go down the hall to the Senate and say: They are not allowing any witnesses. Well, either there were no witnesses that the Judiciary Committee was able to consider, other than professors--and I thought Professor Turley was outstanding. He and Alan Dershowitz are normally quite liberal, but they care deeply about civil rights, and they care deeply about the Constitution, and they don't let their political persuasions affect what they believe about the Constitution. I admire that in them, even though, like I say, we have some strong disagreements on other things. But there in the Senate, down the hall, they have all that mass of, what we were told here, was overwhelming evidence. They have got all of those transcripts down there. It is part of the evidence in the Senate, part of it, so either there was no evidence, no witnesses in the House, or there is plenty of evidence from which the Senate can consider and vote down this travesty called an effort to remove President Trump. In this article it says: ``The investigators say that details about how the whistleblower consulted with Schiff's staff and perhaps misled Atkinson about those interactions are contained in the transcript,'' as I mentioned. ``Schiff has classified the document `secret,' preventing Republicans who attended the Atkinson briefing from quoting from it. Even impeachment investigators cannot view it outside a highly secured room.'' Anyway, it goes on. It is pretty ridiculous. The article says further on: ``At the time, the CIA operative worked on loan to the White House,'' and they are talking about the leftwing activist trying to destroy President Trump, also known as the whistleblower. He was ``. . . on loan to the White House as a top Ukrainian analyst in the National Security Council, where he had previously served as an adviser on Ukraine to Vice President Biden. The whistleblower complaint cites Biden, alleging that Trump demanded Ukraine's newly elected leader investigate him and his son `to help the President's 2020 reelection bid.' '' The thing is, there is no such thing. What basically the House managers are saying is, if somebody is running for President, it doesn't matter how corrupt they have been. It doesn't matter how corrupt they and their family have been, you can't question them if they are running for President because that might be considered political. Well, if there was corruption--and everybody knew there was plenty of corruption in Ukraine--and, apparently, no entity more corrupt than Burisma, the natural gas company that made Hunter Biden a member of the board, it is kind of important to find out what was at the heart of all this. It is interesting, the leftwing activist that was trying to destroy President Trump, also known as the whistleblower, and Sean Misko and Abigail Grace, they reportedly have been quite close to the National Security Council. And it was Misko and this leftwing activist trying to destroy the President, also known as the whistleblower, who had been, as the article points out, overheard in the early days of the Trump administration trying to conspire on ways to take him out and get rid of him as President. But the truth is, it had to--these three, Misko, Abigail Grace, and the leftwing activist that was trying to destroy Trump known as the whistleblower, they had dealings with Ukraine. They had dealings with Biden, and it is certainly worth noting that even in the inspector general's report, there was mention of the name, by name, of this leftwing activist trying to destroy Trump, also known as the whistleblower, as being a guest, being associated with Vice President Biden. So if Vice President Biden, say, hypothetically, were involved in any bribery or plot to enrich family, then there is a good chance they would at least be witnesses, if not complicit. So there are plenty of reasons besides disagreeing with President Trump's America First policy to try to stop any investigation into corruption by Vice President Biden because it may implicate them or at least make them witnesses to some of the stuff. I still was blown away when I got to a Natural Resources Committee hearing one day and the person in charge of the tens of millions, hundreds of millions--whatever it was--dollars that the U.S. was providing to Puerto Rico for hurricane assistance, and the person in charge of doling out this money in Puerto Rico was the same person who had been finance minister in Ukraine when they had all of this money--a billion or whatever it was--that they were dealing with from the Obama administration. It was amazing. And I asked: ``How do you do that?'' I mean, didn't Ukrainians want--it wasn't the defense minister but finance minister-- ``Didn't Ukrainians want a finance minister who was Ukrainian?'' ``Yes,'' she says. In essence, she said: They swore me in as a citizen of Ukraine the same way they swore me in as finance minister. How do you get jobs like that? You hear that the United States is going to send a billion, or hundreds of millions of dollars somewhere, and you run and get in front of that so you can get a job making sure the right people get all of that money. How does that happen? You can get a job handing out that money in Ukraine. You can get a job, same person, run over to Puerto Rico, ``I want to be in charge of the money here in Puerto Rico.'' That is amazing. I am sure there were other people who would have loved to have had those jobs. How does this same person get that job in Puerto Rico and Ukraine? Maybe it is kind of like Strzok and Page. We saw in the Horowitz inspector general report from the Department of Justice--another great Obama holdover--he pointed out in his 60-or- so page report about Comey: Yeah, he says, you know, Comey, he took home material that was a violation to take home. He leaked it, got it into the press. Of course, he was trying, as he said, to get a special counsel appointed, which his conspiracy worked out well. He got a special counsel appointed, his running buddy, Bob Mueller, whom he had said in an article some years back something like: It is great knowing that if he were on a railroad track and a train were coming, that Bob Mueller would be right there with him. Yeah, well, that is interesting, but nonetheless, Horowitz pointed out that the reason that Comey probably wouldn't be prosecuted, shouldn't be--you know, we referred it--was because the information he leaked and that he took--some would say stole--but he took was classified at such a low level, it was really more of a violation of his employment agreement and the policy manual. Well, how did it get classified at such a very low level? Well, on page 1 and 2 of the Horowitz report, he is talking about the FBI did this. They reviewed this. The FBI did this and that. Well, you don't know until you get over to page 42 or 43 of this 60-or-so page report when he finally reveals--when he says the FBI on pages 1 and 2, he is talking about two people, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. He has the gall to put in there that, in essence, the reason they were so good at doing this classification of the Comey stuff--if they classified it at a higher level, Comey would be prosecuted and go to jail, so classify it at a low level so he wouldn't--but they were so good at classifying the emails of Hillary Clinton, that is why they were so qualified to do this for the Comey material that was withheld, taken home, stolen, whatever you want to call it and leaked. So it is kind of the same thing here. Gee, these folks are experts. Why? Because they told us they were. That is what Strzok and Page said. You know, we are the best at reviewing and classifying. But this article from Paul Sperry goes on, and says about this that: ``Two NSC coworkers told RCI''--and I guess that is RealClear Investigations, doing this article--``that they overheard'' the leftwing activist trying to destroy President Trump, also known as the whistleblower, ``and Misko--who was also working at the NSC as an analyst--making anti-Trump remarks to each other while attending a staff-wide NSC meeting called by then- National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, where they sat together in the south auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, part of the White House complex. ``The `all hands' meeting, held about two weeks into the new administration, was attended by hundreds of NSC employees.'' That has got to change. The President has got to dramatically cut the number of people who are part of the National Security Council. You can't have security with that many people part of the National Security Council. The article points out: ``They were popping off about how they were going to remove Trump from office.'' This is back right after Trump took office. And this is a quote from the person that disclosed this to Paul Sperry. ``No joke,'' he said, or she, whoever it was. ``A military staffer detailed to the NSC, who was seated directly in front of'' the leftwing activist trying to destroy Trump, also known as the whistleblower, ``and Misko during the meeting, confirmed hearing them talk about toppling Trump during their private conversation, which the source said lasted about one minute. The crowd was preparing to get up to leave the room at the time. ``After Flynn briefed the staff about what `America First' foreign policy means,'' the leftwing activist trying to destroy President Trump, also known as the whistleblower, ``turned to Misko and commented, `We need to take him out.' And Misko replied, `Yeah, we need to do everything we can to take out the President.' ``Added the military detailee, who spoke on condition of anonymity: `By ``taking him out,'' they meant removing him from office by any means necessary.' '' Of course, that's this person's impression. Maybe they meant something else by ``taking him out.'' That was his impression, or her impression. ``They were triggered by Trump's and Flynn's vision for the world. This was the first `all hands' staff meeting where they got to see Trump's national security team, and they were huffing and puffing throughout the briefing any time Flynn said something they didn't like about `America First'. ``He said he also overheard'' the leftwing activist trying to destroy President Trump, also known as the whistleblower, ``telling Misko, referring to Trump `We can't let him enact this foreign policy.' '' And I have got to say, that sounds remarkably like colonel, lieutenant colonel--I gave him a promotion there for a moment-- Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Reviewing his testimony, as I am going through, I am going: Holy smoke, this guy is more loyal to Ukraine and the Ukrainian President than he is to the UCMJ, to his own Constitution, to his Commander in Chief. So I was not at all surprised when I found out the President of Ukraine, he noticed the same thing I did, and offered Lieutenant Colonel Vindman--three times he offered him the job of Minister of Defense in Ukraine. This is just amazing. This guy clearly did not like President Trump, and you could tell he was really offended. He was the expert on Ukraine, he knew what American foreign policy was supposed to be, but he was totally ignorant of the Constitution that basically allows every President--as President Obama said, elections have consequences. When President Trump got elected, he was the new foreign policy, and anyone in the administration who didn't like President Trump's foreign policy needed to leave. If they couldn't follow it, if they couldn't work with it and implement it, then they needed to be honest and honorable, instead of being destructive to our Constitution and our country and resign or ask for reassignment somewhere else. Or in Vindman's case, go ahead and take the job of defense minister of Ukraine. But, of course, if he had done that, then he wouldn't have looked very good when he came to testify because he wouldn't have been wearing a uniform like he doesn't wear to work, but he needed to hang around to try to destroy President Trump. Of course, there are articles about him potentially being the one who leaked the conversation to the leftwing activist trying to destroy President Trump also known as the whistleblower. In any event, this article says: ``Alarmed by their conversation, the military staffer immediately reported what he heard to his superiors. `` `It was so shocking that they were so blatant and outspoken about their opinion. They weren't shouting it, but they didn't seem to feel the need to hide it.' ``The coworkers didn't think much more about the incident. `` `We just thought they were wacky,' the first source said. `Little did we know.' '' ``A CIA alumnus, Misko had previously assisted Biden's top national security aide Jake Sullivan. Former NSC staffers said Misko was,'' the leftwing activist trying to destroy President Trump, also known as the whistleblower ``closest and most trusted ally in the Trump White House.'' They were `` `very tight and spent nearly 2 years together at the NSC. . . . Both of them were paranoid about Trump.' `` `They were thick as thieves,' added the first NSC source. `They sat next to each other and complained about Trump all the time. They were buddies. They weren't just colleagues. They were buddies outside the White House.' ``The February 2017 incident wasn't the only time the pair exhibited open hostility toward the President. During the following months, both were accused internally of leaking negative information about Trump to the media. ``But Trump's controversial call to the new president of Ukraine this past summer--in which he asked the foreign leader for help with domestic investigations involving the Obama administration, including Biden--gave them the opening they were looking for.'' I would humbly submit, though, that if they were involved in any of the corruption that was going on over there with Burisma and Ukraine-- and though many in the media want to take the talking points from our Democratic folks across the aisle, and one accused me of regurgitating Russian propaganda, when the truth is what the Russians have wanted, what Putin has wanted more than anything else was to divide the United States, because he knew dividing this country pretty much closely in the middle would help do what he has wanted to do since the Soviet Union fell and he was a KGB agent, and that is divide America so that it falls. That is exactly what he wants. We have heard--people don't want to talk about it--but the truth is, there were some Russian efforts to help Hillary Clinton in that election, which I think makes clear they wanted to divide America and they have been totally successful in dividing America. They have got to feel good about what they do as they watch the impeachment proceedings. But anyone who would sit here and say I was quoting Russian propaganda, actually, that person would end up being the tool of the Russians because he is dividing America which is what Russia and Putin have wanted to do. He is doing the handiwork of Putin, not me. So I would still submit, as I have numerous times, that critical fact witnesses don't necessarily need to be heard at this impeachment sham down the hall, but there do need to be witnesses in very rigorous hearings in the Senate. They would be Alexandra Chalupa who worked with Ukraine, Biden, and others, the leftwing activist trying to destroy President Trump also known as the whistleblower, Abigail Grace, and the guy who Chairman Schiff hired on July 26, the day after President Trump's good call with the President of Ukraine, Zelensky, the guy who ran on the basis that he was going to stop corruption. That was a great thing. He said: Why didn't President Trump talk to the Ukrainians sooner about anti-corruption? It wasn't until 2019 that they elected a new president who said he is going to do something about corruption. Why would he talk to the previous president who was in corruption up to his eyeballs? It wouldn't do any good. But President Trump had hope. Whether it is a Republican or a Democrat in the White House, I hope they will seek help from any country in which there is corruption that involves American high officials. I hope that happens. But in the meantime, the impeachment proceeding goes on down the hall, and it is dividing America. It is bad for America. We really need to come together and stop doing Russia's handiwork for them. They want us divided, and the people pushing this stuff are doing their handiwork for them. I am not saying intentionally. They are happy to do it to try to hurt Republicans, especially to hurt President Trump, but this is serious. It is dividing America. Again, my friends across the aisle, I love that they are quoting the Founders these days, but we should hang together or we will most assuredly hang separately. We need to hang together as a country. We can have our disagreements, but this wanting to criminalize disagreements as they have done with President Trump's America First policy needs to stop. We need to come back together and get some things done. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Washington, who is a great Member of Congress and who knows exactly some of the damage that the Endangered Species Act has done. We certainly have experienced that in Texas. We did, in the House, modernize the Endangered Species Act in my first term, 2005 and 2006, and it was quite an education to me because I thought the Endangered Species Act was all about trying to save endangered species. But I got an education. I found out that was not what the Endangered Species Act was about because if it was just about saving endangered species, we would have saved a lot more than 1, 2, and 3 percent of the endangered species. One of the things that we did in that bill that I thought was common sense because I know there are landowners--I hear about these situations--and that is what they rely on to feed their families. There is a doctrine that is not an official doctrine known as shoot, shovel, and shut up. Somebody sees an endangered species, and they are scared if somebody sees it, then the use of their land will be taken away, and they will no longer be able to provide for their family. Even though I believe that it is a taking anticipated under the Bill of Rights, which requires remuneration, that is not what the courts have found. But in that modernized bill back in my first term, we said: Look, if you are going to tell a landowner he can't use his land, or she can't use her land, then you ought to pay them because you have taken away the use. I was shocked to find that there were people on the other side of the aisle who said: No, no, no. We don't want that in there. But that will save species; people will be more willing to volunteer that they found an endangered species. The answer was: Well, they shouldn't even have that land anyway. I appreciate the efforts of the gentleman from Washington. Hopefully, we can work together because we do indeed care about endangered species, and modernization will allow us to save a whole lot more than 1, 2, or 3 percent.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Gallagher). Protecting Our Waters and Communities

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is always an honor to be here in the House of Representatives and have an opportunity to speak, as so many places around the world don't have those privileges, those rights. Sometimes people ask, well, if the rights are truly endowed by our creator, then why don't people have them all over the world? And it is an endowment, these rights, like an inheritance; but the only way you get to keep any inheritance is if you are willing to fight for it, because, if you are not, in this world, evil people will always be trying to take what you have and take it for themselves. So we have been blessed to be in a country where we had men and women willing to stand up and fight for us. My 4 years in the Army, we were never in combat. I still think we should have gone, in 1979, to Iran; and if we had addressed the attack on our American property, which was the U.S. Embassy, then the Ayatollah would have been gone, and there would be tens of thousands of Americans still alive today. It is just very unfortunate. But at least Soleimani is no longer around to kill Americans and to dream up new devices, whether improvised or exploding devices to kill and maim Americans. It is one of the great ironies that the lead terrorist in the world, Soleimani, who ordered, directed, got the best architects to design instruments to inflict casualties on Americans--and there were more Americans killed or wounded on that road in from the airport in Iraq. Some may remember, back in the early days of the war in Iraq, that the most dangerous place we kept hearing was on that road in from the airport. There were so many IEDs and explosive devices that killed, maimed our American military, and they were set to kill and maim American military. That was after Soleimani had taken over the IRGC and he had his special troops. But he was a terrorist. He had been allowed to keep finding ways to kill Americans for far too long, and the world is a better place without him. It was amazing that people on both sides of the aisle could agree on that when President Obama ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden, and yet so many of those same people with whom we agreed thought it was atrocious that President Trump would order the taking out of the lead terrorist killing hundreds of Americans. It is just a strange thing. Some call it Trump Derangement Syndrome. They just have so much hatred for our current President that it doesn't matter that it is in direct conflict with what they have said before. For example, our chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the minority leader in the Senate had some pretty strong quotes back when President Clinton was impeached, and now they both say 180-degree opposite things, completely contradicting themselves about what impeachment should be and not be. So it is clear, though, from the Constitution--this is the last sentence of Article II. It says: ``The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason''--that is a crime-- ``bribery''--that is a crime--``or other high crimes''--those are crimes--``and misdemeanors''--and those are crimes. So it is very clear, if you are going to impeach and then convict and remove a President from office, there need to have been crimes. In every one of the prior impeachments--there have only been a few--the allegations involved crimes. Perjury, as President Clinton was guilty of, is a crime. He was not prosecuted. There still seemed to be a permanent feeling that you couldn't convict a sitting President of a crime. But he paid a very heavy price, being disbarred for perjury and other costs that he had to pay. But, unfortunately, we now live in a time where right and wrong are supposed to be so relative. It all depends. The ends justify the means. That is the way you lose a great civilization. That is the way you lose moral authority, when right and wrong all become relative. In fact, John Adams, as President, in 1797, our second President, made very clear when he said this Constitution is meant for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other. If we are going to continue to allow schools to teach relativity of right and wrong and that ends justify the means, you can be mean and evil and hateful so long as your hate and evil conduct is aimed at somebody that you call hateful. So we have developed quite a quandary here in the United States where so many people--and I know some have said: Oh, I don't hate anybody. But President Trump obviously drives them crazy and spurs them to do and say things they wouldn't normally do and say, and they certainly didn't with President Clinton when he was caught actually lying under oath. So we have got to get back to teaching right and wrong. There is a right; there is a wrong. And I know some people say: Well, I am a Christian and, therefore, I know God is love, and, therefore, I love everybody, and that is just the way God is. But I would direct attention to Psalm 6, beginning with verse 16. It points out that there are actually some things that God hates, and one is a lying tongue; one is a heart that devises wicked schemes; one is a person who stirs up conflict in the community. And, frankly, we had that among some people who conspired to eliminate a sitting President. Actually, they started out conspiring to use taxpayer funds to use the FBI, intelligence community, even some defense funds, State Department personnel and funds, to prevent Donald Trump from being elected. And then after he was elected, those guns were turned on him to try to eliminate him from office. Obviously, in the current impeachment, there is no treason; there is no bribery; there is no high crime; there is no misdemeanor. So those pushing these Articles of Impeachment, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, actually ended up being guilty of both of those allegations. But they are not crimes; they are not high crimes; they are not misdemeanors; they are not bribery. But they are guilty of those themselves. If you go back, as I am thrilled that so many of my friends across the aisle are doing now, quoting our Founders, they made clear in those early debates that you could not, you should not, could not be able to remove a President or someone because you don't like the way they are doing things or maladministration; or you think they are not doing something quickly enough and so you would say they are obstructing Congress; or you don't like the way they did something so you would say: Oh, they are abusing their power--even though the Obama administration did the very same things, just much worse. I thought it was worse when I met with a big group of weeping Nigerian mothers whose children were kidnapped and chained to beds, normally raped multiple times a day, from what we were told. I asked the pastor who was trying to assist so many of these Nigerian women: Where are the fathers? He said: That is part of the tragedy. The fathers know that their little girls are chained to beds and being raped every day, and they don't feel like they should stay in a bed when they were not able to protect their daughters. And I have got to give it to the Obama administration. They did hold up a sign and say #bringbackourgirls. But from what Nigerians in government there were telling me, they were told: If you really want us to take out Boko Haram for you, we have got the power; we have got the money; we have got the military might; but you are going to have to change your laws to allow abortion and to allow same-sex marriage. And if you are not going to do that, we are not going to help you like we could with Boko Haram. I saw a quote from a Catholic bishop in Nigeria who was basically saying: Our religious beliefs are not for sale, not to President Obama, to John Kerry, to America. They are not for sale. So some of us were concerned that we could have helped stop some of the biggest atrocities going on in the world by radical Islam, but money was withheld. Help was withheld in order to achieve a political agenda regarding same-sex marriage and abortion, according to people I met with there in Nigeria, and seemed to be bolstered by articles that have been read back at that time. We also know that this Congress has repeatedly, since I have been here, made clear we don't want to be giving away money to countries that are going to use it for improper purposes. Now, of course, that changed a great deal during the Obama administration. We are willing to give $150 billion to people that we knew there is a decent chance they were going to be using it to kill Americans and to terrorize the world, maybe use it, some of it, to pursue nuclear weapons. We have been hearing that some of it was used by Soleimani to help coordinate attacks against Americans around the Middle East because they want Americans out of the Middle East. But I have had a bill in most of the Congresses in which I have been a Member called the United Nations Voting Accountability Act, and it put requirements on our money. I almost got it passed as an amendment early on. It just simply basically says any nation that votes against the United States' position in the U.N. more than half of the time shall receive no assistance of any kind from the United States in the subsequent year. It seems like in March, somewhere around there, we get the voting results from the prior year from the U.N. and you can go through and see what percentage of the time each country voted with us and when they voted against us. I think it would be a great requirement to put on our financial aid, and as I have said repeatedly since I have been here in Congress, you don't have to pay people to hate you, they will do it for free. You don't have to pay them to hate you, they are perfectly happy to hate you for free. And as I found from being very small in elementary school, you don't win the respect of a bully by giving them your lunch money or giving them whatever they demand. You have to make them pay a price. Even if you don't win the war, if you hurt them--of course, they hurt you worse--they decide they will pick on somebody else because they don't want to get hurt themselves, and they know you will fight back. It is nice here in the United States, we are big and strong enough we can take it to bullies, terrorists like Soleimani, and I thank God that he is gone and there will be Americans living as a result of him being gone. So Trump derangement syndrome has caused the House majority to push through two Articles of Impeachment. We heard for 3 years all of this Russia collusion. As most of us know who have had legal training, collusion is not normally a crime, unless it is with regard to stocks. Normally the term is used as conspiracy, a criminal conspiracy. Somebody came up with a brilliant idea of using the word ``collusion,'' and let's accuse Donald Trump of doing exactly what we have done. Why else would the President of the United States say to the President of Russia, Tell Vladimir I will have a lot more flexibility after the next election? So they could give in a lot more than he even had in the past. It is called projecting. You engage in improper conduct and then accuse your opponent of engaging in what you did. That is exactly what we have seen here, projecting. So you have somebody that gets paid off by corrupt entities in Ukraine, and they turn around--and when the President of the United States does his job and basically says to Ukraine--when they elect a president who got elected on the basis that he was going to end corruption--if you have got evidence of corruption, we sure would like to see it if it involves American people. You know, please, we would like to see what you got if it involves Americans. There is nothing wrong with that. It is perfectly legal. If you listen to the contention of some people we have heard in Washington, the contention basically is: You may have committed a crime or engaged in corrupt activity, if you will just run for President then we will defend you, saying, you can't go after that person, he is running for President. You are trying to use your office for political purposes. That way somebody that engages in corruption and keeps running for President can never be prosecuted because we will defend you because you shouldn't be prosecuted, you are running for President. So we can say your position is being used for political purposes, where actually if somebody is engaged in corruption it ought to be investigated. Look what has happened as a result of this Ukraine hoax; it scared a lot of people to death, including people that have worked with Ukraine in our National Security Council who were aware of some of the money passing back and forth with Americans. And what do they do: Oh, my gosh, what are we going to do? We are going the get caught up in this investigation. Oh, I know, we will claim that when the President asked for evidence of corruption by Americans that that is some kind of quid pro quo. And even though it is perfectly consistent with the President keeping his oath, we will allow that to just be hammered over and over again, so maybe we can convince the Ukrainian President if he provides the evidence of corruption by Americans then that means the President is guilty of some crime. They have actually been very successful in backing President Zelensky and Ukraine off of investigating crimes of corruption by American individuals. That is a real victory. No matter what happens on impeachment in the Senate, it is a real victory for those who were engaged, participated in potential corruption with Ukraine, because they have been able to turn the tables, accuse President Trump, and then back the Ukrainian President off from investigating their corruption, and all of the focus is on President Trump instead of on those who may be guilty of high crimes, including bribery. It has been interesting to see the way that has politically played out. We are told constantly, there is breaking news, the President should not have sat on that money to Ukraine. There was nothing illegal about holding up the money. And if I were President, I would be holding up any money that was going to any country that engaged in or where there was rampant corruption, as we knew had gone on in Ukraine, and require them to produce evidence that they were actually trying to stop corruption. Since the corruption seemed to involve American individuals, we have now stopped that investigation by Ukraine into the corruption by Americans, and that means that Ukraine is not going to be rid of corruption because they haven't been able to adequately pursue it. There is no breaking news. There is nothing new if people reporting it were fair. Again, one good thing from my standpoint about the Trump derangement syndrome, we knew there were lots of bad actors among deep staters in the State Department, in the Intel community, in the FBI at the top, at the DOJ, some of the top people, but it was hard to identify them. Well, because of the hatred for Donald Trump that is just in- articulable, it is so deranging to those that have this level of despising the President they keep raising their heads, so we know who the people are that are willing to abuse their office and violate their oath to the Constitution and loyalty to our own government. I didn't hear the first part of Lieutenant Colonel Vindman--I have got family members that are lieutenant colonels, I have known so many serving in the military, in the Army, but he is the only one that I ever heard get high, righteous, and mighty and demand to be called lieutenant colonel, even though most days he doesn't wear a uniform. But he certainly wore one so people that don't normally respect the military, as well as some of us that do, they would go on and on about him being a part of the military. I asked my staff to get me the transcript of his testimony, and I got it before he had finished, and I am reading through and I am going, My word, Vindman has been violating his oath to his own Constitution. And he certainly is not being loyal to the President when the President is not committing a crime. He is clearly being more loyal to Ukraine. Then you find out later, well, actually, he was admonished because a superior officer heard him bad-mouthing the United States to some Russians. But that is why it came as no surprise to me. I was thinking he is more loyal to Ukraine than he is to the United States. It was no big surprise when I found out that Vindman was offered the position in Ukraine of defense minister three times, because clearly he had shown the Ukrainian leaders that he was more loyal to them than he was to his own U.S. leaders. That might be a good move for him at some point since he appears to have more loyalty to Ukraine. He may want to take them up on that at some point. Obviously, he would want to wait until after the impeachment trial is over. I know there are some that want to have live witnesses in the Senate Chamber, just make it a full-blown circus. We should have had live witnesses in the House. That is what they did during the Clinton impeachment. You had fact witnesses that testified before the Judiciary Committee, however, we had a bunch of opinions coming in. We didn't get the real fact witnesses. And of course, the real fact witnesses, in my mind, would include Alexandra Chalupa, the actions and antics she was involved in, along with Eric Ciaramella, Abigail Grace, and Sean Misko; they had both worked at the National Security Council. They have a lot of information about work with Ukraine, real facts, not just made up stuff, but real facts. They would have been important to get under oath. I still think they would be. Andrew McCarthy, just a superb former prosecutor, had an article yesterday or today talking about the Senate should just say we are not taking up impeachment until you finish. You want us to do the investigation that you didn't do in the House because you were in such a hurry to get it to the Senate. We are not going to do your investigation, you don't have a high crime, you don't have a misdemeanor, you don't have treason, you don't have bribery. So why don't you go back, and if you come up with a high crime, misdemeanor, bribery, or treason then come see us once you have actually got evidence of something like that. Unfortunately, the House passed impeachment even though it didn't rise to the level of impeachable offenses. It is an allegation of maladministration, which the Founders said should never be a basis for impeachment, and that is why they didn't include those types of things as a basis for impeachment. That is what they have alleged, and that is what is now down at the Senate straight down the hall. The Senate is going to take them up. I agree with my friend, Andy McCarthy. The Senate should not do the House's job. The House had thousands of pages of transcripts. I sure wish they would release the Inspector General's deposition, but of course, that is why they did it down in the SCIF. None of the information we were told was classified. The witnesses were told if you have any answer that may involve classified information, just don't answer, which is also a cue, don't answer any questions Republicans ask that you don't want to answer. And that was the reason that so often Republican questions were interrupted with instructions to the witness by the chairman of Intel. That is why Intel did it. They wanted to have them in secret even though they weren't classified, have them in a place where most of us could not be there, including people like those of us on the Judiciary Committee, the true committee of jurisdiction. Then they could leak out what they thought might be helpful, even if they were leaks that were not accurate about what was actually testified to, and certainly out of context, to try to build this feeling that the President had done something terrible. Again, this has been going on for 3 years, the investigation. We have been told since the day after President Trump was elected that they were going to impeach him. They didn't know what for, but they were going to find something. As Senator Schumer said back I believe it was in 1998 or 1999, during the Clinton impeachment, he pointed out that the Clinton impeachment-- even though, as I say, it involved an actual crime of perjury, the Clinton impeachment lowered the bar. He said now it will be too easy to go after a President and impeach him for a minor crime like perjury. Well, he had no idea how low the bar would be made by the Democrats. Now, it really is dangerous because they have shown you don't have to have a crime. All you have to have is a majority in the House and you can help destroy at least 3-plus years of a President's term by keeping them under a cloud the whole time. I didn't initially support Donald Trump as a candidate, but I really think people believed if we can just go after his family, go after him, go after business and friends, 6 months in, he will resign. He will say: ``I am going back to making money. You can forget this. I don't need this,'' and walk away, but they just didn't know President Trump. He was not going to walk away. He could see this country was in big trouble. As Newt Gingrich has said, if Hillary Clinton had been elected, we would never have known the extent of the corruption in these departments. Now we find out even in Defense, as Adam Lovinger found, they were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars, I think over a million dollars, to a guy named Stefan Halper. It didn't look like there was anything they were getting back, and that was his job. Ultimately, they don't question Halper's involvement with the Defense Department, making all this money, getting rich helping the Defense Department as a professor over in London. Little did Adam Lovinger know that he was doing work for a number of departments by trying to set up Carter Page, setting up Papadopoulos, and just helping out trying to bring down a candidate and then bring down a President. Even the Defense Department got into this effort to prevent the election and then to remove a sitting President. Historically, that is called a coup d'etat. Sometimes, it is without violence. In this case, of course, we found out there was violence at Trump events, and they blamed Trump for that. Then we find out, in a secret recording, a Democratic operative said: Yeah, we are the ones that hire people to go in and start fights so that we can accuse Trump supporters of being violent. That is also a tactic of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is what they have done in Egypt. They had the largest peaceful uprising in the history of the world protesting against a Muslim Brother, Morsi, who was shredding their Constitution. They arose, demanded he be removed. The Muslim Brotherhood went out, started violence, burned down some churches and synagogues. Then CNN and others faithfully reported that it was the protestors and not the Muslim Brotherhood that did that. But it was amazing what the people of Egypt did in their peaceful protests against a man shredding the Constitution, much as our Department of Justice and FBI top people have done over the last 4 years. Some have said they only began to investigate the Trump campaign in July 2016, but we know it was months before that. It looks like they were probably investigating different campaigns, trying to figure out ways, if that person won the Republican nomination, then they would come after them as well. I don't have any doubt that would have happened. As former Speaker Gingrich has said, we wouldn't have had any idea just how corrupt the intel and these other folks had become. If you want a real fact witness, it ought to be Brennan and Clapper. Of course, we saw how comfortable they have been lying under oath when testifying before Congress. It would be nice if they were held accountable. It would be nice if Koskinen had been held accountable, if Loretta Lynch had been held accountable, because right now, after all these abuses during the Obama years, people got very arrogant about their abuses of their positions, and nobody has been made to pay. That needs to happen. But we don't need to have people who are comfortable lying under oath come down to testify at a big circus in the Senate Chamber. They should adopt exactly what they did under the Clinton rules. If they have witnesses, depose them, use the testimony from the depositions. Senators from both parties can submit questions to be asked, but they ought to follow exactly the rules exactly the way they did during the Clinton impeachment. They shouldn't be taking new witnesses. Like Andy McCarthy says, the Senate should not be asked to do the job that the House should have done but did not. He is exactly right about that. I would encourage, Mr. Speaker, and I hope, the Senate will hold to those rules. They were rules that were demanded and agreed to under the Clinton impeachment during the Clinton administration. They seemed to have been fair rules back then. They ought to enforce them exactly the same way: no live witnesses in the Chamber. That is not the place to have an investigation. There is no high crime; there is no misdemeanor. None of those were charged. We heard about bribery. We heard about Russia, Russia, Russia. We know that the real crimes regarding Russia were committed by Christopher Steele; potentially the DNC; and the Clinton campaign, which paid Fusion GPS, which paid Christopher Steele, who worked possibly with--he said, yeah, it is possible that maybe they worked for Putin, the people he got his information from. Maybe they were involved with Ukraine. We are not sure. Obviously, the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC paid foreign individuals to interfere in our election. It amazes me that even some smart reporters have said all this Ukraine stuff has been disproven. No, it hasn't. They act as if Russia and Ukraine activity--that you couldn't have misconduct in Russia and also have misconduct in Ukraine. Absolutely you could. In fact, we know that countries around the world, including China, have been trying to affect our elections. For those who have been students of Russia and their current highest leader, Putin, Putin didn't care so much who got elected in that election. We have heard testimony that they provided things to help Hillary Clinton as well. That doesn't come out in the media a whole lot because it is not consistent with what the alt-left media would have you believe. But they did things to help Hillary Clinton, and they did things to help Donald Trump. They were not as much interested in who got elected as they were about dividing America, and they have been extremely successful with that. America is divided. It is terribly divided. People get mad at each other in this Chamber and in committees. It is so frustrating. I hope it doesn't get as bad in the Senate as it has here. But Putin succeeded. And they didn't have to spend hardly any money, not much money, to divide America. They have tried for so long, yet here, with some unknowing allies, they have been able to divide America like hadn't happened in the last 150 years. It is tragic. I am hopeful that Senators will understand that the accounts they have seen in the media are rarely factual, that they are going to have to do a little bit of digging, that they are not going to be able to take summaries at face value, and that they need to do some real digging, do some real homework to find out exactly what the facts are. They will be amazed. I am hoping that people who will be deposed will include Alexandra Chalupa, Eric Ciaramella, Abigail Grace, and Sean Misko. I have said that for months. Some report stories and say: ``Oh, Gohmert named the whistleblower.'' No, I didn't. I named four fact witnesses. Apparently, all these media folks must know who the whistleblower is to say that I named him. I have never named a whistleblower. We were told earlier on apparently it was a male, but I haven't named the whistleblower ever. I have named people I think are fact witnesses and that I think would be very good to have in depositions in the Senate. I hope they will be called. I don't think they need Vindman again. They certainly don't need law professors who are so inconsistent and just have a law professor act like he is really reluctant to talk about impeachment, have people talk about how serious and how reluctant they are, when, actually, like in the case of the Harvard professor, he has been talking about it since right after the election. He has been trying to come up with ways to impeach President Trump. These were not honest witnesses. Then you have people like Turley, Professors Turley and Dershowitz, who were actually trying to be fair and who have been extremely consistent. I have had profound disagreements with both of those professors on some issues, but I have always found them to be honest. Some people are shocked that I have liberal friends who are Democrats. When people are honest, you understand where they are coming from. When they haven't lied to you, you can work together. That can happen, and it does happen here. I hope that this impeachment stuff ends so that we can get back to helping the President help America, as he has been doing for 3 years. He has done an extraordinary job. Until the impeachment is over, apparently, that is not going to happen. For those who believe in the power of prayer, we need to be asking God for mercy. I would implore people who believe in the power of prayer in the United States: Do not pray for justice because we don't want God's justice to come down on America or we are over. We need mercy. We need grace. We need direction, and we need to come back to the place where we recognize there is an absolute right or wrong. It comes from a universal source, as C. S. Lewis talked about, where he came from being an atheist to becoming, ultimately, a Christian. But the realization started that he could never know that there was a fair and unfair, a right and wrong, a just or unjust, unless there was some ubiquitous universal standard of right and wrong. Otherwise, he would be like a man born blind. If you have never seen the light, how can you know that there is light and dark? You have never seen it. You have never experienced it. So there has to be something placed in our hearts that gives us an idea of right and wrong, truth and untruth. And just because, as he said, some people come closer to hitting it right, doesn't mean there is no absolute right and wrong, just or unjust. We need to get back to the point where truth matters, justice matters. And when we have officials, as we still do--we still have some in our Justice Department, in our intelligence department or agencies, in the FBI--and we do need a new FBI Director, he is part of the problem--but until we get back to having people in the Justice Department, in intel, who are honest, honorable, just, upright people, then we will continue our slide toward the dustbin of history. No Nation lasts forever. The United States won't. But my prayer is that we will come together and do the things that will allow this country to succeed as a Republic with people having freedom for at least 50 more years. Is that too much to ask? I know people are worried about climate change. We won't make another dozen years where we are right now unless we have some massive reform within our government. We need to come together to do that. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman) and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) for their work in this area. Mr. Speaker, there was a time not long ago when Steve King at the Conservative Opportunity Society had a young lady named Ramona Trevino who came and spoke to us. An extraordinary woman, she was top in her class, as I recall, and became pregnant at 16. She was encouraged by some to abort the child, but she didn't. She didn't go on to college, and eventually, there was an opening for director at a Planned Parenthood facility in Sherman, Texas, for which she would apply. She was thrilled when she had the chance to be director. But she had that daughter who meant and means so much to her, and she was surprised at the monthly meetings that the thing that was pushed most was not to get the number of abortions up, but if they would push taking birth control pills to the younger girls, then that would ensure that they would have revenue up from abortions, that the key was getting birth control pills to the youngest girls. They were more likely to miss days and get pregnant, and they would come back in for an abortion. That was the way they were trained. They were trained to encourage the young girls that came in: We will keep this between us. Your mom can't be trusted, but we can. We will keep your secrets, and you can have a very open lifestyle and enjoy yourself. If there are problems, you come back to me. You don't have to tell your parents. That is so destructive to the family. It is destructive to the mother-child relationship. It has led to the millions of abortions that have been performed, as sanctioned by Planned Parenthood. One other thing I have to mention that struck me so harshly, in the Committee on the Judiciary, we had a doctor that did late-term abortion. He said he did over a thousand of them and never thought about it. The mom's cervix was not dilated so for a late-term abortion--and he was very graphic about the manner in which you went in. You would find something that seemed linear, and it was either an arm or a leg. You had to pull it off. Once you had done that four times, you had to feel for something bulbous, he said, and then that had to be crushed. Then, you could remove the child. After his daughter was tragically killed in an accident, he couldn't do it anymore. The thought of pulling a little child apart was more than he could bear. Mr. Speaker, it ought to be more than Americans could bear, coming between a mother and daughter, the mother who wants the best for her child. It should be unthinkable for a loving, caring, nonabusive mother. That ought to be unthinkable, but that is what is going on. That is what Roe v. Wade has led to. You may say: Well, you are just a guy. What do you know? I have defended what some people said were indefensible people, and it is an honor to stand up and defend a child that can't speak.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, this is an important time. We have got people who are demanding that the Senate do what they hypocritically refused to do here in the House, and that is to have a fair investigation and have fair hearings. And, in fact, we know the majority is the majority; they can change the rules anytime they want to. But they didn't even bother to change the rules. They just said: Do you know what? Even though the rules say that the minority can have a minority witness day, we are going to just ignore that and move on, because time is of the essence. So we didn't need any evidence to show that our friends were not being completely genuine with their comments, no, because we heard: Clear and present danger; urgent; urgency; got to happen now; we can't wait; we can't follow the rules; we can't hear witnesses here in the House; we have got to have this impeachment done. And then they sit on it for over a month. Seriously, that says what anybody needs to say. This was never serious to begin with in the respect that there was a serious charge. There was no serious charge. It is supposed to be about treason, bribery, high crimes, misdemeanors. All of those are crimes, including misdemeanors. Look at the charges: abuse of power, obstruction of Congress. Those are the two charges that those pushing impeachment are guilty of, not this President. Madam Speaker, this is a scam. It is a shame. The Senate should just go in and have a trial, follow the Clinton rules, and that is it. Let's get this done. Let's get it over with. A proper verdict is not guilty, not removed.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, consistent with the statement that was just made about Brian Fitzpatrick, I will be missing tomorrow's votes. If I were here, I would vote ``no.'' There is too much good that is being done with the PFAS, and I would vote ``no.'' But I will be attending the funeral of a former Member of Congress, a great patriot, a friend, just a wonderful person, Michael Fitzpatrick, and it was an honor to serve with him in this body. Obviously, we have had a lot of discussion about Iran, Soleimani, his death, the death of so many that he caused, and his role in being head of the IRGC, so I thought it would be helpful if we learned a little more for those who haven't. It helps, I found, profoundly, if people know what they are talking about, and it seems there has been a whole lot of talking and not a lot of knowledge about what is going on with Iran. Many of us remember, and I sure remember because I was in the Army at Fort Benning at the time, when our Embassy in Tehran was attacked initially, it was said by the Iranian leaders that the students attacked the Embassy; and after days of President Carter doing nothing but begging for them to let our people go, they realized that we were not going to do anything, and so they began to say: We have the hostages. I always thought at the time, paying close attention to the news back in those days, that by saying the students did this that the Iranian leaders were giving themselves a back door if we had had a President who had put his foot down and said: Either you get them released, or we are going to come get them released ourselves; and if they are harmed, Iran will pay heavily. I felt that was probably where they would say: Hey, we got them from the students. Here they are. But that was the first clue after Vietnam that we were still a paper tiger. That is the way we were portrayed around the world. That is what we in the Army heard back in those days: Gee, all you have to do is drag out confrontation like Vietnam and they will turn tail and run. That appeared to be consistent with us doing nothing about our Embassy, which, under international law, is American soil. It is American property. It is American housing. It was attacked, and we didn't do anything about it for a lengthy time, which sent the message to the new leader in Iran, the Ayatollah Kohmeini, that we really were paper tigers. We were toothless. There was no power, no courage, and it encouraged them. In fact, there was one effort at a rescue but, unfortunately, the military's hands were tied by people at the top. I was told by a friend in the Army back at the time that the White House was the one that had them cut back the number of helicopters that would go into the desert across, around 500 miles or so of desert, with turbine engines in the helicopters. And they knew, as my friend, General Boykin has confirmed, they had to get six to the landing area. Otherwise, it was an abort. And when it was clear only 5 were going to make it, that the mission was aborted. The helicopter pilot may have gotten vertigo. The helicopter tilted. The blade went through a C-130 that was there to equip them for the trip in to rescue our hostages, and Americans were killed and left there in the desert at the staging area. If there had been an adequate number of helicopters allowed to go in, they would have had sufficient number of six or more to make it. But the number going in was cut back, I was told, by the White House. They didn't want it to look like an invasion. I am proud we have got a President that is not worried about it. I mean, I have asked him about this before, and he is more concerned about protecting our American treasure, our American military members; and he wants to commit whatever our military needs to get the job done. That is a far cry from where we were in the late 1970s. In fact, I do recall President Carter, he had turned his back on the Shah. It didn't sound like the Shah was a great person, a great humanitarian at all, but at least Iran and the area were not at war with us at that time. But when President Carter turned his back on the Shah, it opened the door for him to be overthrown. Apparently, people in the Carter White House did not give adequate thought to what happens when the Shah is gone, because what happened was the Ayatollah Khomeini. And President Carter, as I recall, welcomed the Ayatollah Khomeini back in charge of Iran--he had not been in charge before--but welcomed him back to Iran, and proclaimed he was a man of peace. It could not have been a more ignorant welcome to the man that would start Iran on the course to be the greatest source of terrorism in the world. So thank you very much to the Carter administration. Great job. You brought in, allowed in people who have continued to kill Americans at a rate greater than anybody else. They have helped Afghanistan. That was a shock when we found that out. They have helped Sunnis, they have helped Shia. And normally, that doesn't happen, but they are so dedicated to destroying the Great Satan, America, in their view, and destroying the Little Satan, Israel, that we have to take them seriously. Too many Americans have been killed as a result of ignorance or optimism unjustified. But this is a study done from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a very good study done, and it gives us a lot of information about Iran. It points out that Iranian military action, often working through proxies, uses terrorist tactics; has led to the death of well over 1,000 American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade and a half. They point out that the explosively formed penetrators--a lot of people are familiar with the IEDs, but these are EFPs, explosively formed penetrators, a shaped charge designed to penetrate armor--that these are often camouflaged as rocks and were identical to those employed by Hezbollah against Israeli forces. In 2006, the British Telegraph revealed that three Iranian factories were mass producing the roadside EFP bombs used to kill soldiers in Iraq. In 2007, American troops discovered over 100 Austrian-made Steyr HS .50, 50-caliber sniper rifles, in Iraq. They can pierce all in-service body armor from up to a mile and penetrate U.S. armored Humvee troop carriers. I fired a 50-caliber sniper rifle at Quantico. It is amazing how powerful they are. But, unfortunately, they were found in Iraq, and they had apparently come from an Austrian manufacturer, but they were bought by Iran, and supplied by Iran, apparently, to Iraq to help kill American soldiers. Iran also paid Taliban fighters $1,000 for each U.S. soldier they killed in Afghanistan. In fact, the Sunni Times reported that a Taliban operative received $18,000 from an Iranian firm in Kabul as reward for an attack in 2010 that killed several Afghan government troops and destroyed an American armored vehicle. Iranian President Rouhani's so-called moderation, was displayed when he appointed Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan to be minister of defense. He had played a key role in the October 1983 suicide bomb attacks in Beirut, in which 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French paratroopers were killed. And of course, Dehghan, apparently was replaced previously, in 1998 with a guy named Soleimani, who is with us perhaps in spirit only now, thanks to our current President and the ability of our United States military. Anti-Americanism helped fuel the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, a violent anti-American doctrine that challenges any role for America in the Middle East, it has been, and remains the central focus of Iranian foreign policy. Since the revolution, Iran has waged and continues to wage war against the United States and its allies. Unfortunately, though, Iran has been at war with the United States for 40 years now, since 1979, for sure--well, really, since the Ayatollah took over and President Carter welcomed him as a man of peace. He has not been a man of peace. He has been at war with the United States. The report points out the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC-- people hear that term quite a bit, but that was founded by Ayatollah Khomeini shortly after the overthrow of the Shah at the onset of the Islamic Revolution in 1978-79. Iran's RGC has morphed from its initial, mainly ideological, composition into a particularly powerful organ of Iran's political system, the upper echelons of which tend to be drawn from the ranks of the IRGC. They are developing an increasing lethal system such as advanced naval mines, coastal defense, anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles and attack craft. The IRGC boasts a paramilitary unit comprised of 10 to 20,000 individuals known as the Quds Force. That was what Soleimani commanded and was using strategically, killing Americans, as many as he could. The strategic objective of the IRGC-QF is to subvert Iran's enemies and export the Iranian Revolution, a goal it attains largely by facilitating the delivery of weapons to pro-Iranian factions in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Persian Gulf States, Gaza, the West Bank, Afghanistan, and central Asia. In 2007, the Treasury Department designated IRGC-QF as a terrorism- supporting entity. The report is quite extensive. It goes on to point out many of the efforts, successful efforts to kill Americans, talking about the Khobar Towers in 1996 and many other attacks. But it points out that in 1998, Major General Qasem Soleimani has led the IRGC-QF, in which time he has created branches focused on intelligence, finance, politics, sabotage and special operations. With a direct independent channel to Khomeini, Soleimani has successfully sought the assassination of political rivals, armed terrorist proxies, and directed a network of insurgent groups in Iraq that killed over 1,000 Americans. And that is just in Iraq. But we know more regarding what they have done in Afghanistan, in Lebanon, in Syria. Mr. Speaker, I see I am joined by my friend, who has served his country honorably and well and made his way up to the rank of general. He knows a great deal about war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry).

Mr. GOHMERT. In fact, it took me too long to get around to reading Winston Churchill's books on World War II, but he points out that when Hitler first moved into the Sudetenland, they were so disorganized that it was a disaster, that if there had been any resistance put up at all instead of Chamberlain waving a piece of paper that this means peace in our time and we are going to let him go in and move in and take over this land, that if there had been any resistance at all because of all the material breakdowns, mechanical failures--Hitler was furious. He said any resistance would have caused the defeat of the Germans moving in, and then the Germans would have been humiliated. They would have, in all likelihood, gotten rid of Hitler because he got too ambitious and exposed them to defeat. He would have been gone, and the world would have been spared the tens of millions of people who died as a result of trying to placate the man. Just supporting what my friend the Congressman is pointing out, it doesn't usually work well, and it hasn't worked well. I know there are people who say all we were doing was giving Iran their money back when we gave them all that money. Money is fungible. We say maybe that specific money enabled them to continue supporting Hezbollah and terrorists who would attack and kill Americans.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I have an article here from January 2017, and the title from The Guardian is ``America dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016. What a bloody end to Obama's reign.'' I remember specifically because I had been to Libya, but as our Defense Secretary Bob Gates said in a live interview, Libya is not in our vital interest. We didn't have a real dog in that fight is what I am saying. In fact, Qadhafi did have blood on his hands. He wasn't a good guy. But since the U.S. went into Iraq, he opened his doors and said: You tell me what weapons I can keep. I won't pursue nukes anymore. He had not been a problem for us from that time forward, yet President Obama, without any authority from here, decides basically to go to war with Libya and with Qadhafi and dropping bombs on them. Why? Because he said NATO needs us to do this.

Mr. GOHMERT. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. GOHMERT. There was no strategy in Libya other than to take out Qadhafi. Just like President Carter turning his back on the Shah and welcoming Ayatollah Khomeini in, when President Obama took out Qadhafi and, yes, he bombed him into oblivion. We have seen reports that Qadhafi was begging, look, we will just go into exile, and he sent word to the President, if you will just let me leave in peace, I won't ever come back to Libya. Let's leave the country not destroyed, stop the bombing, and I will just leave, but never heard back from Washington. The problem is that President Obama created a failed state in Libya, and it has been the source of destabilizing all of North Africa. I don't know if there is any Member of Congress who has been allowed to have 2\1/2\ hours with the head of intelligence in Egypt as I have, but Egypt is paying heavily for President Obama's wrongheadedness in taking out Qadhafi and completely destabilizing North Africa.

Mr. GOHMERT. Actually, President Obama had our forces, NATO forces, but they were American. They bombed his convoy as he was leaving Libya. That allowed the locals--

Mr. GOHMERT. Then he was assassinated there.

Mr. GOHMERT. In criminal terms, he was certainly an accessory. He could not have been killed without President Obama's help.

Mr. GOHMERT. Yes, it was, but only on one side of the aisle, and that was this side because we were okay with President Obama defending Americans and American interests. But as Bob Gates said, that did not include Libya. Now, he walked that back some, but it was clear it was not in our vital interests. What really got me, though, is I am hearing so many people who were here back then. They didn't offer one peep about the illegality of what President Obama was doing. Many of us did, but they didn't say a word. And that was outside our interests. Killing Soleimani, that was protecting American lives. Going after Qadhafi didn't protect any American lives, and in fact, it has caused total disruption.

Mr. GOHMERT. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. GOHMERT. No.

Mr. GOHMERT. No.

Mr. GOHMERT. Right.