Jamie Raskin

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Mr. Morton Abner Mintz, a World War II veteran and legendary investigative reporter who turned 100 years old this week. And what a century it has been for this great and modest man of exceptional gifts. Born January 26, 1922, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Mr. Mintz enlisted in the Navy after graduating from the University of Michigan. He served as Communications Officer and then Commanding Officer in World War II on USS LST 505, which supported troops in the D-Day Invasion of Normandy from June 6 to June 25, 1944; the Invasion of Southern France from August 15 to September 25, 1944; and in the Pacific Theater during the assault and occupation of Okinawa from May 29 to June 10, 1945, and subsequently in China. Married for 68 years to the lovely Anita Inez Franz until she passed away in 2015, he has two daughters, Margaret and Roberta, and a son Daniel, 10 grandchildren and a great-grandson. Following his service in the Navy, Mr. Mintz became a newspaper reporter and editor in St. Louis, then moved to Washington, D.C. to work at the Washington Post in 1958. He was to become one of America's most independent, highly respected, and public-interested reporters. For decades he was a first- class investigative journalist and peerless muckraker. Widely recognized by his peers for his relentless focus on protecting the public against both corporate and governmental abuses of power, the prodigious Mr. Mintz covered a wide range of topics, including anticompetitive business practices, automobile safety, air pollution, the tobacco, pharmaceutical and medical device industries, waste and fraud in military contracting, the corrupting power of the campaign finance regime and the corrosive influence of lobbying and large corporate donations on elected officials. He knew much could be learned from covering seemingly obscure congressional hearings and reading the fine print in legislation and administrative rulemaking processes. Mr. Mintz' dogged investigative work repeatedly exposed corporate actions undertaken to increase profit at the expense of consumer safety, leading to significant government regulations that curbed corporate misconduct and saved lives. In 1962, he broke the story of how FDA scientist Frances Kelsey had discovered the dangers of the drug Thalidomide, which led to the last- minute banning of the drug from entering the US market and likely avoiding thousands of horrifying birth defects as were experienced in Europe. In the late 1960s, Mr. Mintz chronicled the inadequate testing of the original birth control pills and, years later, tracked the story of how a pharmaceutical corporation willfully ignored the safety hazards of the contraceptive Dalkon Shield, causing serious injury to thousands of women. He broke the extraordinary story of General Motors' corporate surveillance of Ralph Nader, the automaker's biggest public critic. He wrote about how profit driven decisions in the infant formula business led to great harm in impoverished populations with limited access to safe drinking water. And he reckoned with difficult and indigestible truths, such as in a 1983 exclusive interview with Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, who had served in the Roosevelt administration, where he revealed some of the story behind the refusal of the United States during World War II to bomb the rail lines transporting Holocaust victims to the Birkenau or the Auschwitz concentration camps. Following his retirement from the Washington Post in 1988, Mr. Mintz continued his work as a journalist and media critic. In 1993, he exposed the failure of the American Civil Liberties Union to inform its members that it accepted money from the tobacco industry and, under the guise of defending free speech, also actively opposed legislation that would ban or limit tobacco advertising and promotion. In 1999, he wrote media criticism for Tompaine.com. ``Mort Wants to Know,'' and posed questions that the press should be asking of presidential and congressional candidates in the 2000 national elections. A Senior Advisor to the Nieman Watchdog Project for many years, he also contributed commentary to niemanwatchdog.org on vital topics including military spending, congressional ethics and oversight, single payer health insurance, pharmaceutical pricing, executive pay, corporate welfare and the corporate shield that protects executives from punishment for their decisions to market products known to be harmful, as well as tough questions that reporters should be asking legislators and corporate executives. He served as chair of The Fund for Investigative Journalism for three years and on the board of Project on Government Oversight (POGO). Mr. Mintz was an active member of the Washington-Baltimore News Guild. His bestselling book ``America, Inc.: Who Owns and Operates the United States,'' written with the late Jerry S. Cohen, demonstrated the pervasive and often hidden influence of corporate power. Mintz and Cohen later co-wrote ``Power, Inc.: Public and Private Rulers and How to Make Them Accountable,'' continuing their investigation of the pernicious impact of unaccountable power in the interlocking corporate and government realms. Mr. Mintz's other books include ``The Therapeutic Nightmare,'' ``By Prescription Only,'' ``The Pill: An Alarming Report'' and ``At Any Cost: Corporate Greed, Women, and the Dalkon Shield.'' He received many prestigious journalism awards including Nieman Fellowship 1964, the Worth Bingham, Heywood Broun, Raymond Clapper and George Polk Memorial Awards, the Columbia Journalism Award, The Playboy Foundation's Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award for Lifetime Achievement, (More) Magazine's A.J. Liebling Award, the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild award for Public Service and for Distinguished Writing and the Association of Trial Lawyers of America Special Literary-Public Service Award. I have known Morton Mintz since the seventh grade when his son Daniel became one of my closest friends. As kids, we all marveled at Mr. Mintz, an old-fashioned gentleman with a golden pen, rock-ribbed integrity and sparkling intelligence. I commend Mr. Mintz for his splendid commitment and service to the public interest always--whether the subject be consumer safety, corporate and government accountability, or the truth about humanity's wars--through his many decades of extraordinary investigative reporting, I am proud to share a small piece of his story with my colleagues and the nation. Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in recognizing Mr. Morton Mintz on the occasion of his 100th birthday for his exceptional service to our nation, both as a patriot in uniform and as a crusading investigative reporter in love with the truth.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I include in the Record the following letters of support for the Senate Amendment to H.R. 5746. Democracy 21, Washington, DC, January 13, 2022. Dear Representative: Democracy 21 strongly supports and urges you to vote for the House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 5746, the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act and for the rule to bring it to the House floor. The right of every eligible American to vote and have their vote properly counted is the cornerstone of our democracy. This fundamental right and our democracy are at grave risk today. In 2021, Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country enacted a wave of unprecedented voter suppression and election sabotage laws in the name of ``election integrity.'' More are expected to be enacted in 2022. The state laws stemmed from the Trump Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, even though there was not a shred of evidence to support his demagogic claim. Trump's own top government security officials found that the 2020 election ``was the most secure in American history.'' The Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act would override the state voter suppression laws for federal elections and combat the state election sabotage laws that empower partisan election officials to rig the results of federal races. The Act would also prevent partisan gerrymandering and provide essential campaign finance reforms. The Act would protect the right of every eligible American to vote and preserve our democracy. Democracy 21 strongly urges you to vote for the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act. Sincerely, Fred Wertheimer, President.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, our colleagues object to guaranteeing the peoples' right to vote through the vehicle of a NASA bill of all things. A quarter of a century ago Republicans changed Texas State law to permit astronauts to vote absentee from space. They want to make it easier to vote from space, and they want to make it harder to vote on Earth. In the last election, tens of thousands of citizens in Texas waited in line for 6 hours to vote and an astronaut on the International Space Station could have orbited planet Earth four times in the 6 hours that Texas forced some of its citizens to wait in line to vote. Across the country it is voter suppression, GOP gerrymandering of our districts, rightwing Supreme Court packing and judicial activism to destroy the voting rights in cases like Shelby County v. Holder and Brnovich and deployment of the filibuster to block voting rights legislation--the whole matrix of GOP democracy suppression today. It is time to protect the right to vote here on Earth. If it takes a NASA bill to do it, then I invite my GOP colleagues to boldly go where none of them have ever gone before--to planet Earth on a mission to defend the voting rights of the people.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I characterized the sender of a November 4, 2020 text message to Mark Meadows as a Member of this body. The specific text message I was referring to was actually not sent by a Member of this body, but by another political figure.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, hundreds of people have come forward to testify about the violent and dangerous events of January 6, and there are just a handful of people, like Mr. Bannon and Mr. Meadows, who somehow think they are above the law. We are not a banana republic because we hold everybody to equality under the law. And we are not communists, as the gentlewoman from Georgia suggested. Those are just the friends of the former President, who you lionize, like the dictator of North Korea, who he loves, and Vladimir Putin, who said that the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the collapse of the Soviet Union. So, those are your friends. Don't put them on our side. They are saying that the Select Committee on the January 6th Attack is out to persecute and bankrupt their opponents. On the contrary, we are out to write a report, under H. Res. 503, to the American people about the most violent, sweeping, and dangerous attack on the Republic since the Civil War or the War of 1812. Mr. Bannon is raising money on it. Far from bankrupting Mr. Bannon, he is trying to get rich on it. And Mark Meadows has written a book where he tells all the stories he wants about January 6. It is just that he doesn't want to face the rule of law and the questions of this bipartisan committee, which is making tremendous progress in terms of getting the truth of what happened on that day. Mr. Speaker, I recommend to all of my colleagues who invoked the rule of law today that they read the D.C. Circuit Court opinion, which obliterates every single argument that they have made about executive privilege. It is basically gone now because the way the law works is the people have a right to get the information we want unless there is a compelling interest on the other side. They haven't even pretended to invoke a compelling interest. What is the compelling interest in being able to prepare an insurrection, a coup against the government? Is that what we want to establish a precedent for, that outgoing Presidents can try to organize an insurrection against the Vice President and encourage people who go out and stage a riot against the Vice President of the United States and the Congress? I don't think so. Mr. Speaker, a couple of the speakers said it was absence of legislative purpose. This is the central purpose of our government, to make the government survive and to go out and serve the people. That is what this committee is doing. Mr. Speaker, he is in contempt. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule and the previous question.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First of all, on the matter of the phone records, what has been subpoenaed is simply the metadata establishing where the phone calls were going amongst different parties that were involved in the January 6 insurrection and the attempted political coup against Vice President Pence, but not the actual communications themselves. There has not been a single word that has been subpoenaed from the telephone companies of the actual conversations that took place. All of that, in any event, is an irrelevant distraction. Let's be very clear about what is going on here, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Meadows began to cooperate. He turned over 9,000 documents of extraordinary relevance to this investigation. We were getting exactly what we wanted, up until the point at which he pulled the plug on his participation. Look at some of the texts which we released over the last 24 hours that came in as part of his discovery with the committee. This is from some Republican lawmakers and others: ``We are under siege up here at the Capitol,'' was one text he received. ``They have breached the Capitol.'' ``Mark, protesters are literally storming the Capitol. Breaking windows on doors. Rushing in. Is Trump going to say something?'' ``There's an armed standoff at the House Chamber door.'' ``We are all helpless.'' Here is what came in from some members of the media that Mr. Meadows turned over to the committee. Laura Ingraham: ``Mark, the President needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.'' Brian Kilmeade sent this to Mark Meadows: ``Please get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished.'' Here is Sean Hannity: ``Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol.'' Trump family members also were texting, according to the materials turned over by Mark Meadows. Donald Trump, Jr.: ``He's got to condemn this'' excrement ``ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough.'' Meadows responding: ``I'm pushing it hard. I agree.'' Donald Trump, Jr.: We need an Oval Office address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.'' Mr. Speaker, all of these texts and hundreds more like them lead to hundreds of questions that we have about the sequence of events on January 6: Who did what in response to different pleas from lawmakers, Democrat and Republican alike? Who did what in response to these pleas coming in from members of the media and from members of the Trump family? What was the sequence of events? How was the National Guard involved? How did this interact with other parts of the Federal Government? Then Mr. Meadows, though, did a U-turn when Donald Trump called his book ``fake news.'' Meadows decided to agree with him and hurriedly said it was fake news and then said he would not appear on December 8, a date, by the way, which had been postponed from two other dates to testify because we wanted to accommodate his schedule and the schedule of his lawyer. But now he decides to go completely cold. They are left in a completely untenable posture legally because he is refusing to testify about things that he has already conceded there is no privilege covering. He has said: None of this is privileged. I am turning it over to you. We want to ask him questions about it, and now, suddenly, he runs back to the idea that there is some privilege, although one can see his eroding faith in that argument as the D.C. Circuit rejected the claims of executive privilege unanimously in Trump v. Thompson. So now that is why he is saying we have no legitimate legislative purpose, which is perfectly absurd. If we don't have a legislative purpose in defending our own institution, our own Constitution, our own government, then we have no legislative purposes here at all if we can't even have an investigation into an attack that goes to the very survival of our form of government. Mr. Speaker, Mark Meadows has to testify. He has to come in like 300 American citizens have patriotically and lawfully done. What makes him special? The fact that he knows a former President of the United States? I am afraid not. In Jones v. Clinton, a case that my colleagues applauded on the other side of the aisle, the Supreme Court held that even a sitting President of the United States is not immune to civil actions, even a sitting President. We don't have an office of former President. When you are no longer President of the United States, under our Constitution, you are a citizen like everybody else. You can't wave a magic wand over your friends and say that they don't have to comply with lawful subpoenas. So this witness is in contempt of our committee and the United States Congress. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, today the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 848. The rule provides for consideration of the resolution accompanying House Report 117-216, under a closed rule if the report is called up by direction of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. It provides 1 hour of debate equally divided among and controlled by Chair Thompson, Vice Chair Cheney, and an opponent. Mr. Speaker, after producing 9,000 pages of documents that he conceded to be nonprivileged in any way; after saying he would comply with the subpoena to appear before the January 6th committee on December 8; after negotiating and rendering preliminary cooperation with the January 6th committee, Mark Meadows' book came out with tons of startling and eye-popping revelations about January 6th and the role that then-President Donald Trump played. Ex-President Trump exploded and called Mr. Meadows' book fake news. Amazingly, Mr. Meadows agreed that his book was fake news, and then he suddenly pulled the plug on his agreement to testify in formal deposition before our committee on December 8. Instead, he went to court and alleged that our committee has no valid legislative purpose. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Meadows' sudden vanishing act is plainly a delay tactic designed to run out the clock on one of the most important investigations in the history of the United States of America. If we don't have a legislative purpose in investigating the most sweeping, violent attack on the U.S. Capitol since the War of 1812, and the most serious and most dangerous threat to American constitutional democracy since the Civil War, then we really don't have a legislative purpose for anything we do here. If this investigation into a dangerous assault on the American Government is not necessary and proper under our Constitution, then nothing is. Article I, Section 8, Clause 15 of the Constitution gives Congress of the United States the power to provide for: calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions. Obviously, we have a legislative purpose in what we are doing to investigate an attack on this building, on this Chamber where more than 140 of our officers were wounded and injured, hospitalized, people came back with broken necks, broken jaws, broken vertebrae, broken arms, broken legs, traumatic brain injuries, and to this day, continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome. The counting of electoral college votes was interrupted for the very first time in American history for several hours. This was the most serious, destabilizing, domestic threat to American constitutional democracy that any of us have seen in our lifetimes. Now, the committee has bent over backwards to accommodate Mr. Meadows' multiple requests. It is now clear he has no intention of complying with the subpoena, even when his testimony could have no theoretical connection to an executive privilege claim. This is the key point. He is categorically refusing to show up to testify about 9,000 pages of documents that he has already turned over to the committee and for which he has thus nullified any hypothetical assertions of executive privilege by President Biden, or a former President. He is refusing to testify about statements that he made in his book that are now all over the country, published last week, and that he has repeated in the media about what took place on January 6. He is willing to talk about it in his book. He is willing to talk about it in public, but he is unwilling to undergo the questioning of our committee despite having been subpoenaed to do so in deposition. This is another category of statements which has nothing to do with executive privilege because it has already been completely waived, completely obviated, and completely nullified by his own actions. This witness, Mr. Speaker, must testify. He must come and render truthful, honest, and complete testimony like 300 other witnesses before him have done, either voluntarily and patriotically, as the vast majority have done, or at least under compulsion of a legal subpoena. The Supreme Court has been perfectly clear about that. We have the same authority to ask for people's testimony that a court does in pursuit of our official constitutional duties. And if anyone we have called as a witness knows in his bones that he must testify before this committee, it is Mr. Meadows himself, a former member of this body who repeatedly through his career in Congress insisted that high-ranking executive branch officials must comply with congressional demands for information and congressional subpoenas for their testimony. By the way, you don't get to choose and say: Well, I will send you my documents, but I am not going to testify. That is not how going before Congress works or going before a court works. In the last administration, multiple times, Mr. Meadows found high- ranking officials hiding information from Congress, withholding relevant documents, or ``even outright ignoring congressional subpoenas.'' And here is what he had to say about that: ``This level of conduct, paired with the failure to even feign an interest in transparency, is reprehensible. And whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, this kind of obstruction is wrong, period. ``For 9 months we've warned them consequences were coming, and for 9 months we've heard the same excuses backed up by the same unacceptable conduct. Time is up and the consequences are here.'' We have multiple statements by Mr. Meadows like that, who was a distinguished member of the Oversight and Reform Committee. He, of all Members, continually insisted that people and high-ranking government officials respect the authority of Congress to do its job. Our investigative powers are implicit in, and intertwined with our powers to legislate as the Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized. The Meadows' lawsuit against individual members of this committee is extremely dubious in light of the Speech or Debate Clause and multiple other constitutional roadblocks, and its substantive allegations are frivolous, such as the central absurd claim that Congress has no legitimate purpose in investigating and reporting to the American people on a violent attack on our Capitol, our Presidential election, and on the peaceful transfer of power. We must hold him in contempt for his refusal to participate in these proceedings, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Fischbach), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. general leave

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 848 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I just want to emphasize that in his distinguished service in this Chamber, Mr. Meadows would never tolerate an executive official simply deciding to blow off a subpoena of the U.S. Congress. He said, ``Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, this kind of obstruction is wrong, period.'' He repeatedly complained about intransigence and delays by the executive branch. So I think he understands exactly why this is a matter of such gravity to our body. Now, as I was saying, as a member, not just of the Rules Committee but also of the January 6th Select Committee, we have seen overwhelming participation and cooperation by the people we have called. Most people are doing their legal duty and their civic and patriotic duty by coming forward and voluntarily saying, here is what I know, and here is the information I have got to help you put together a report for the American people. It just seems as we have gotten closer and closer to Donald Trump, that is where we are running into the obstructionism, as from Steve Bannon, as from Jeffrey Clark. And now we have got this problem we are in with Mark Meadows, who had been on the path of cooperation, had turned over these thousands of documents, and now he is in the very awkward position of saying he is not going to testify about thousands of documents that he already turned over to us, which demonstrate how radically dangerous that day, in fact, was. Let me just read a few more of the texts that Mr. Meadows disclosed to our committee: One text said, ``We are under siege here at the Capitol.'' That came to him on January 6. Another, ``They have breached the Capitol.'' ``Mark, protesters are literally storming the Capitol. Breaking windows on doors. Rushing in. Is Trump going to say something?'' ``We are all helpless.'' Dozens of texts, including from Trump administration officials, urged immediate action by the President, ``POTUS has to come out firmly and tell the protesters to dissipate. Someone is going to get killed.'' And, of course, several people died on that day and within days of the attack on January 6. In another, ``Mark, he needs to stop this now.'' A third in all caps, ``TELL THEM TO GO HOME.'' A fourth, and I quote, ``POTUS needs to calm this''--expletive deleted, excrement--``down.'' Multiple FOX News hosts themselves knew the President needed to act immediately. They texted Mr. Meadows. He turned over those texts to us. ``Mark, President needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy,'' wrote Laura Ingraham. Brian Kilmeade texted, ``Please get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished.'' Sean Hannity urged by text, ``Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol.'' And so on. We need to find out what actions were taken in response to all of those entreaties from Members of Congress, from members of the media, from members of Trump's own family, what sequence of events took place afterwards. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank the gentlewoman for her very insightful remarks. The committee has referred often to the passage that the gentlewoman identifies by the Supreme Court saying that a subpoena to come and testify is not an invitation to a game of hare and hounds. That is a little old-fashioned. Basically, the court is saying it is not a game of hide-and-seek or cat-and-mouse. You are told to come and testify, and you must. That is what the vast majority of people have been doing in our investigation and the vast majority of Americans do all across the land when they are subpoenaed to come to court. It seems like a tiny handful of people who think that somehow they are above the law because they know a former President of the United States. I am sorry, that is just not how our legal system works. We have no kings here, as Judge Chutkan emphasized at the district court in rejecting Donald Trump's claims against our committee. We have no kings here. Everyone is subject to the law. We have no nobles. We have no lords. Congress cannot award titles of nobility here. We are all equals, and we are all subject to the law. It is a crime in the District of Columbia not to comply with a subpoena, punishable by up to 1 year in jail and a $100,000 fine. Very serious business. Now, if you think you have got some kind of legal privilege against testifying, like the marital privilege or the priest-penitent privilege or the doctor-patient privilege or the executive privilege, you come, you show up, you testify, and you invoke it as to a specific question. Mr. Speaker, the reason why this case is overwhelmingly easy, we would argue 100 percent easy, is because we are talking about testimony by Mr. Meadows that he has been subpoenaed to give relating to 9,000 documents that he has already admitted are not privileged by the executive privilege or the Fifth Amendment or anything else. He has said, here, take them. This is evidence about what happened. And rightfully so did he do that. I will express my personal disappointment that Donald Trump's explosive rage about the publication of Mr. Meadows' book occasioned some kind of change in his attitude about it, but regardless of his subjective attitude, he has a legal obligation to show up and to answer the questions of this committee. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I appreciate, of course, the temptation to just change the subject and talk about something completely different because there are no arguments left on their side. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in the Trump v. Bennie Thompson case, in an opinion of more than 50 pages, reviewed all the arguments on both sides about executive privilege and said executive privilege is a claim which, of course, belongs primarily and principally to the existing President of the United States, not to a former President of the United States. To the extent that a former President of the United States can raise it, the presumption is that the people in our constitutional democracy have a right to all the information they seek in order to govern themselves. That is what the investigative power of Congress is about. We have a right to obtain the information we need in order to legislate. So the presumption is that we get it. That can only be overcome if a sitting President--or in perhaps some exceptional cases, a former President-- demonstrates there is some compelling need that would override the fundamental right of the people to get the information we want. The D.C. Circuit panel found unanimously that not only had they not shown there was a compelling need on Donald Trump's team, they didn't even identify a potentially compelling need. Of course, there isn't one. Why? The Supreme Court has already found that executive privilege does not cover criminal activity; much less could executive privilege cover insurrectionary activity or activity designed to promote an insurrection or a coup against the United States of America. So I welcome my colleagues talking about anything else because it simply demonstrates their abandonment of the executive privilege argument, an argument also that has been abandoned by Mr. Meadows himself, who voluntarily turned over 9,000 pages worth of documents to our committee, thereby saying there was no privilege at all. But now he is refusing to testify about it, apparently because of Donald Trump's explosive reaction to the publication of Mark Meadows' book. I am sorry, that is not a constitutional defense to being called to testify before Congress. You can't say a former President is mad at me and wants to wave a magic wand so I don't have to testify. That doesn't work in our system of government. Mr. Meadows must come and testify, like hundreds of people have come to testify before our committee about this brutal attack on our system of government. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The gentlewoman invokes the oath of office. Former President Trump swore an oath to uphold and defend our Constitution, and we have all of these tweets which clearly indicate he wasn't doing that. H. Res. 503 authorizes and obligates our committee to get to the particulars and details of what took place on January 6, what were the causes behind it, and what do we need to do to defend ourselves in the future against these kinds of attacks on our election process, on the peaceful transfer of power, and on the workings of Congress. That is what we are doing. And with their January 6 case collapsing all around them, my colleagues now head for the border in their rhetoric, and I don't blame them for doing that. But they are not going to fool the American people. People understand exactly what is happening here. The prior speaker said that it is a crime not to show up for a subpoena, and he said you know who does that, undocumented aliens. Well, then it is undocumented aliens, Steve Bannon, and Mark Meadows who are violating the law. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, like 300 other witnesses called to meet with the January 6 committee and our staff, Mark Meadows was, indeed, cooperating with our committee and voluntarily released thousands of pages of admittedly unprivileged documents, and then something changed. His book came out and apparently embarrassed Donald Trump. After ex-President Trump exploded and called the book fake news, Meadows performed a U-turn and suddenly refused to appear at the December 8 deposition that he had previously agreed to. He called his own book fake news, which is a pretty devastating review to render on your own book, and he brought a lawsuit against the committee alleging--check this out--that we have no legislative purpose. Meadows' sudden vanishing act cannot vaporize the Article I legislative power of our committee to investigate the massive assault on American democracy that took place on January 6. If the January 6 committee has no legislative purpose, then none of our committees do, for the first rule of democratic government is self-preservation. Article I, Section 8, Clause 15 gives us the power to suppress insurrections and repel invasions against the Union, and this we will do by investigating and reporting on the most dangerous political violence ever unleashed against the Capitol by a domestic enemy. We have hundreds of questions. Yes, we do. The fact that Donald Trump, who gave Mr. Meadows a positive blurb for his book, apparently changed his mind about the book doesn't mean that Mr. Meadows can now violate a congressional subpoena, something that Meadows frequently insisted upon himself as a leading member of the House Oversight Committee, and he knows it. And we have pages and pages of his insisting upon the central importance of honoring the subpoenas of Congress. We have hundreds of questions for Mr. Meadows about information he has already admitted is not privileged in any way at all by the executive privilege, the Fifth Amendment, or anything else. Here is one of them: How did the following text from a House lawmaker influence Trump's plans to overthrow Joe Biden's electoral college majority of 306 to 232 after Joe Biden beat Donald Trump? Here is what that lawmaker wrote him. On November 4, a Member of this body wrote to Meadows: Here is an aggressive strategy--one day after the election--why can't the States of Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and other Republican-controlled State houses declare this is BS where conflicts in election not called that night and just send their own electors to vote and have it go to the SCOTUS, the Supreme Court of the United States. How did this text influence the planning of Mark Meadows and Donald Trump to try to destroy the lawful electoral college majority that had been established by the people of the United States and the States for Joe Biden? Those are the kind of questions that we have a right to ask Mark Meadows. He does not have any special privilege above any other citizen to get out of his civic responsibility.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that, in the engrossment of H.R. 5314, the Clerk be authorized to correct section numbers, punctuation, spelling, and cross-references, and to make such other technical and conforming changes as may be necessary to reflect the actions of the House.