Insisting Department of Justice Comply with Requests and Subpoenas

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, it is one of my great pleasures to educate young people about the United States Constitution.

I find myself in an interesting position today because the people that I am educating aren't that young. One of my colleagues said that we are requesting documents to which we are not entitled. Checks and balances, anyone? We are entitled to whatever we ask for from agencies we established and fund and oversee.

Someone also said we are showing that politics is bigger than the law. Mr. Speaker, the Constitution of the United States is the law. This should have never come to this point that we should need a resolution of the House of Representatives to indicate that an executive branch entity that is funded by, established by, and overseen by this very House of Representatives should be compelled to give to us that to which we are entitled.

The next vote is a symptom of a much greater disease. We have a petulant Department of Justice defended by a petulant minority party.

Article I, section 8, Necessary and Proper Clause: It is the power of the legislature to establish comprehensive entities, to oversee such executive entities, and to fund such executive entities.

Mr. Speaker, we just witnessed a vote where 224 people, along party lines, voted to compel an executive branch entity established and funded by this body to do its job; and 182, along party lines, voted against having them be responsive to the checks and balances established in the Constitution of the United States.

There shouldn't even need to be a vote. Have the ``nays'' not read the Constitution? or do they just not care?

We established the DOJ. They refuse the oversight like a petulant child by withholding documents. Perhaps the time has come to look at our third responsibility, and that is the money.

If President Trump won't compel disclosure, if DOJ won't comply with the instruction of the body that established them and funds them, perhaps it is time to dock this petulant child's allowance. The power of the purse is ours.

In a perfect world, DOJ would never face such sanctions. But as the vote that we just witnessed has indicated, we don't live in a perfect world.

So as I see it, there are two options: DOJ can do their job and turn over the documents, or I and others of like mind can demand that we began to stop funding this petulant child who flaunts its ridiculous unissued power in the face of those who understand the Constitution and the citizens of the United States.

It is unconstitutional; it is arrogant and insubordinate; and it should stop; and any ruse of legality that is delightfully tap danced on by those who conveniently use the Constitution when it suits and then pervert it when it does not is not the direction this country needs to go if our tomorrows shall be as prosperous as our yesterdays.

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