Steve Scalise

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. So let's look at the process. Let's look at the facts. Yes, if you think it is fair that you can control everything and deny the ability for Members of Congress to go in and see what is happening behind closed doors in that room, if you think it is fair to deny the ability for both sides to call witnesses--hey, you get to call your witnesses and you think that is fair, and you don't want anything to be disclosed. You talk about innocence. Everybody is innocent until proven guilty. You think the President should have to go prove his innocence time and time again, with anonymous sources in many cases citing things that are inaccurate, that have been disproven. But you can lay false claims out, and the chairman can lay false claims out, and then the President has to go prove his innocence. Time and time again, we see that even with these selective leaks that are coming out of your committee--which shouldn't happen--many of those are disproven too, but the damage is done. Just like when the chairman opened up the committee hearing with a parody, stating things that were false that were not part of the phone call between President Trump and President Zelensky, giving his own version of it that was false while the public was watching on TV thinking that was the transcript, that is disingenuous. That is not a fair process, but that is what happened. Just today and yesterday and every day, we have had of members of our party--I don't know if any members of your party have tried--but members of our party who wanted to try to go down there and read the Volker testimony or sit in the hearings were turned away because the process is going on in secret. This is not fairness. This is not how it has always been done. If you really think it is unfair, and you think the rules should be changed, you do get the control over that. I will write the rule with you, and we will vote for it together. We could pass that rule today. In fact, I filed a rule change with Ranking Member Cole of the Rules Committee to allow Members access to these hearings. Madam Speaker, I would ask the gentleman: Would you be willing to schedule this rule for the floor so we could have more fairness in this process? I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. The gentleman will have an opportunity----

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, with all due respect, this process is rotten to the core. The gentleman can talk about process, and he can talk about facts. The facts point out that this process is shrouded in secrecy. Madam Speaker, you literally have a chairman who was running around for 2 years during the whole Mueller investigation saying that he had ``more than circumstantial evidence'' that there was collusion between the President and Russia. And then the Mueller Report comes out, and there were no charges. There was no collusion. In fact, the chairman never showed his secret evidence. If he had evidence ``more than circumstantial''--his quotes--then he should have shown it to the American people. But he didn't because there was no evidence. Those were the facts. If the facts were there, Madam Speaker, you know he would have shown that evidence. It didn't exist. Instead of moving on and taking care of the work of the people of this country, it is another witch hunt. It is another fishing expedition in secret. The gentleman talks about fairness, why is it that voting Members of Congress are being denied access to the room? The press doesn't have access to these hearings that the gentleman calls fair. He calls them fair. There was never even a vote of this House to start an impeachment inquiry. It was a decree from the Speaker in The Washington Post in September: ``Therefore, today, I am announcing''--the Speaker of the House--``I am announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.'' That is a decree by the Speaker of the House. That has never happened before. The other three times when there was an impeachment inquiry, it was started with a vote of the full House. Everybody was accountable-- no Star Chamber, no one or two people in this country who think they can run the entire process and deny the people the right of a duly elected President to serve because they just don't agree with the results of the 2016 election. They never showed high crimes and misdemeanors. The majority has never shown high crimes and misdemeanors. They are just looking around for something. The majority calls witnesses. They talk about fairness and who is in the room. Our side cannot call witnesses. Do you think that is fair? Our side, the President's own counsel----

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, as we all remember him, it is that style. It shows the example for all of us that you can be tough, you can fight for the things you believe in--we ought to all come here to fight for the things we believe in--and that means we are not always going to agree. But he always treated people fairly, and the fact that even as he had some of those tough confrontations with people like Chairman Gowdy and Jim Jordan, that those people who went toe to toe with him respected him, and mourn his loss equally as we all do, I think it says a lot about his character and that he is able to leave a strong legacy as a champion for the things he believed in. But even his adversaries that he fought with on the other side hold deep regard for the kind of person he was. Again, he was a great example for all of us to, hopefully, try to emulate as we move forward with some of the other challenges that we are facing. I do want to ask the gentleman about the latest efforts to try to get some kind of fair process in where we are with this impeachment inquiry. There are hearings going on behind closed doors. Many of my colleagues have tried to attend some of those hearings and have been turned away if they are not on the committees of jurisdiction. Colleagues that have tried to go and read things like the Volker testimony have been turned away, denied the ability to do that. So there is a real concern that there is an attempt to impeach a President of the United States, remove a President who is duly elected, using a process of secrecy, behind closed doors, where one person is setting the rules, breaking with the tradition that we have always had with the only three other times in our country's history where an impeachment inquiry began in the House. In all of those cases, they laid out rules of fairness, where people were able to ask questions on both sides. People were able to call witnesses on both sides. Even the President would be able to have an opportunity to have somebody there to also question people. That has always been the case, and, yet, it is not the case here. Very serious questions of fairness have been raised, and I would ask the gentleman: Are we going to finally get beyond this secret, closed- door, Star Chamber process of impeachment and go to something that is ruled in fairness? I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), our distinguished majority leader, for the purpose of inquiring about the schedule for the week to come.

Mr. SCALISE. We never tried to impeach a President----

Mr. SCALISE. And the Department of Justice disagreed with that, but he had the authority.

Mr. SCALISE. I would ask him. It is a yes or no question, but I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. I thank the gentleman for yielding because there were many things that were thrown out there that need to be addressed. First of all, the Department of Justice disagreed with Mueller's assessment that he didn't have the ability to bring charges. He had full authority to bring any charges, and he brought zero charges. Mueller had full authority to bring charges and brought zero because he found nothing, and Justice even said he didn't have----

Mr. SCALISE. We never had an impeachment inquiry. We are talking about an impeachment inquiry, which has been done before--there is precedent--three times, and it has always been done the same way. You are now having an impeachment inquiry, but you are treating it as if it is a secret, closed-door hearing, which it is not. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. I am going to yield in a moment after I go through the different claims the gentleman made. It is real interesting that the majority leader read selectively from that conversation between President Trump and Zelensky on: Will you do me a favor? So let me read you the full sentence, because you are trying to take one context and shift it somewhere else, which has been done over and over by Chairman Schiff and others. So let's start. This is President Trump: I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine. They say CrowdStrike. That is the sentence where he said: I would like you to do us a favor. Not ``me,'' ``us.'' Please read the transcript. That is what he said. And when he said, ``I would like you to do `us' a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it,'' the corruption was going on in Ukraine. The interference from Russia, much of it was emanating from Ukraine in 2016. We know that. Don't deny it. Don't try to hide that. ``I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine. They say CrowdStrike.'' He is not talking about Biden. He is not talking about some future election. He is talking about the company that was looking into the corruption and the interference by Russia in the 2016 election. We still haven't gotten to the bottom of that. This is part of it. This absolutely went through Ukraine. And, by the way, in the NDAA, a law that is on the books today that the gentleman voted for and I voted for, the law requires that, when the United States of America is giving money to a foreign country, they have to make sure that they are looking into whether or not there is corruption. And so he is absolutely looking into the corruption, because we are sending hundreds of millions of dollars over there. And before they sent the hundreds of millions, the law--not his personal preference, the law--says he has to look to make sure there is no corruption. That is in the NDAA law that we passed last year. That is current law. And so the President is complying with the law asking him ``do us a favor''--us, not him. Please make that note accurately. And then he asks about CrowdStrike. Not Biden, CrowdStrike. We all know what CrowdStrike was involved in. They were involved in looking into some of the illegal activity that Russia was participating in to try to interfere with the 2016 election. We still haven't gotten the answer to that. I wish your committee would be spending more time on that so that we can stop it from happening again. And so that is what he was talking about. That is the context. It is not accurate, it is not fair to try to read it out of context and then go attribute it to something else, because many have done that. ``I would like you to do us a favor.'' And then he says, all of this stuff that was happening in Ukraine, ``they say CrowdStrike.'' That is what he asked about. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. He filed no charges. He had authority. He filed no charges. He found nothing that rose to the level of filing charges that he had the full authority to do.

Mr. SCALISE. That is accurate. Did he file a single charge? Please name it, because I haven't seen the charge because it doesn't exist. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE.--behind closed doors with innuendos.

Mr. SCALISE. I would trust Mr. Nunes to have equal access to call in witnesses, just like Chairman Schiff does, to subpoena people. Chairman Schiff can do that, and Mr. Nunes cannot. Why is Mr. Nunes denied those same rights that the chairman has? Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCALISE. I would trust him to run that same fair process.

Mr. SCALISE.--of collusion, and there was no collusion. So now we move on to this claim of quid pro quo. Well, first of all, you can name all the whistleblowers you want--you won't. You won't even allow the whistleblower to be interviewed, someone who is trying to take down--someone who was deemed to have a political bias is trying to take down a President of the United States in secret----

Mr. SCALISE. So you are acknowledging he didn't.

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of my colleague Andy Biggs' resolution to censure Adam Schiff for the way he has conducted this impeachment inquiry behind closed doors and in secret. We have seen this pattern of misinformation time and time again, where he throws out false information, like when he said he had more than circumstantial evidence that the President colluded with Russia. Then, after the Mueller report comes out, we find out there was no collusion. Not once did he try, by the way, Mr. Speaker, to present that evidence because there was no evidence. Then he goes on and gives this false representation of the whistleblower report. Of course, we now have seen the transcript. We know what happened. There was no quid pro quo, even though he was alleging quid pro quo. Now he is holding meetings in secret, behind closed doors, to impeach a President of the United States. Mr. Speaker, we had an election in 2016; Donald Trump was elected. We have another election next year, and the people will decide who the President is, not Speaker Pelosi and not Adam Schiff behind closed doors. We need transparency, and we need to end this kangaroo court witch hunt. Let's get back to the people's work here in this House.

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, only three times in the history of our country has the House moved forward with an impeachment process. Currently, Madam Speaker, in all three of those cases, the House has taken an actual vote to start the process.

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, my parliamentary inquiry is this: Has the House been authorized to conduct an impeachment inquiry into President Trump?

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, we ought to know the answer to that question.

Mr. SCALISE

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio. Again, when we talk about something as serious as impeachment, and obviously, that is where they have said they would go, the Speaker said she wants to get the committee working toward an impeachment inquiry. Why? Why, Madam Speaker, haven't they brought a vote here on this House floor to start an impeachment inquiry? They are scared to death of having a vote on this House floor on impeachment. Yet, they keep moving down that train track. It is a reckless track, when they say that they are going to bring impeachment. Even the people who have read this, not one of them has pointed out a high crime or misdemeanor that is in here. The quid pro quo that they promised doesn't exist. These are the same people who promised that there was collusion, with the Mueller report, and there was no collusion. Instead of moving on, they keep going down the impeachment path. People are sick and tired of the constant harassment of the President. Go read the transcript, and you will see, again, a President congratulating another President who was elected on a platform to root out corruption, and he is working to root out corruption. We ought to cheer that. Instead of doing this, we ought to be focused on things like USMCA, lowering drug prices, solving real problems. Let's move on.

Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Wenstrup) for yielding. As we are talking about this resolution, and as my colleagues from Ohio and from California earlier talked about, as we speak, the White House is actually transmitting the documents that are mentioned in the resolution. The White House has been going overboard, doing more than has been done before, to make sure that Congress has all the information it needs about this issue. I think what really is at question is where this all leads to, and I think we know where it all leads to. This all started with an intention by many in the majority. When they took the majority, it was that they were going to try to work to impeach the President. Many of them talked about it. They didn't even have the gavels in their hands yet, and they were talking about impeaching the President. The chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary said he wants to bring Articles of Impeachment to the House floor by the end of this year. Keep in mind, there is not a single Article of Impeachment that they have listed because there have been no crimes. They thought the Mueller report was going to give them the crimes. It turned out it showed there was no collusion. Instead of wrapping it up, they move on to look for something else. It is not the job of a prosecutor, by the way, to hope to go indict somebody and then look around to see if they find evidence. They are supposed to follow facts. If the facts lead them there, that is where they go. That is not happening here. When you saw the Speaker of the House yesterday saying that the President committed crimes, please name one crime that has been listed. We have seen the report now, the transcript of a conversation between President Trump and President Zelensky of Ukraine. There are a lot of niceties here, the President congratulating him on winning an election. There is not a single quid pro quo, which we were told there would be. There is not an exertion of pressure, which we were told there would be. Now, they bring up Joe Biden. Joe Biden, himself, has said that he exerted pressure on the Ukrainians, bragged about the fact that he withheld $1 billion in aid from the Ukrainians.