Issues of the Day

Floor Speech

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Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, our thoughts and prayers will continue for the folks who are in harm's way with the hurricane coming ashore. I am grateful for all of those who are serving, State, Federal, and local officials, trying to keep people safe. They will continue to be in our thoughts and prayers.

I am very grateful that President Trump hasn't waited. They mobilized. They have got Federal folks on the ground ready to go.

I am also glad it got downgraded to some extent, but it is still going to be a rough go for folks, their homes, and their goods. So we will continue to remember them. I am grateful for those first responders out there ready to serve.

We just remembered 9/11 this week. Those of us who were old enough to know what happened that day will never forget what happened. We will never forget where we were.

I will never forget the next day, September 12. In my hometown of Tyler, just like in hundreds of thousands of towns and cities around the country, people came together and we prayed together. We sang hymns together. We held hands and sang together. It was a powerful day.

And I will always remember there were people from all different races, ages, both genders, people of all walks of life, but we gathered there in solidarity. What I noticed that day was that there were no hyphenated Americans. We were just Americans. That is what everybody said, and that is what everybody was.

It was an incredible day that an act of sheer hatred, evil, wanting to destroy freedom and the freest country with the best founding document that would allow freedom, they wanted it all destroyed. But there was a lot of love that next day. It is unfortunate that, 17 years later, we don't see that kind of harmony.

It used to be that, in this body, we would disagree, but, as the House rules require, we wouldn't call into question any other elected official's motivation, intentions. We would say we all want is what is best for the country. We all want to keep our oath to the Constitution.

But it appears that some don't want to follow those rules anymore. In fact, some of the very people who have been in this room, in the Senate, here in Washington, in front of the press around the country, people who have demanded that the Federal Government get involved and stop bullying at all levels, including threatening, harassing little children in elementary school because the Federal Government felt like it had to intervene and prevent bullies even at such an early age, yet some of those same people who have been calling for Federal intervention to stop bullying have become the biggest bullies in the United States of America.

It is unbelievable how people would be encouraged by elected officials to bully, harass people with whom they disagree. If you can find them in public anywhere, intimidate, scream at them, run them out. Don't let them eat. Don't let them do anything. Don't let them shop. Bully them until you drive them out and you intimidate them so much that they are afraid to express their political opinion or to continue to work in a Republican administration or as a Republican in the House. It is just unbelievable. It has, clearly, incited people to go out and commit bullying and sometimes physical assaults.

But you also look at some of the other things that have gone on: people who are completely disloyal to the President for whom they work will go to the extent of committing crimes because they don't like the President, even to the extent of, as a former judge, what I would call committing a fraud upon the FISA court. That is the way it appeared to me.

The FISA judges granted four different warrants to surveil people in the Trump campaign and administration, one of whom, Rod Rosenstein, I have asked him if he even read the applications and affidavits. He never would answer the question, which, as we know from Watergate days, that is a nondenial denial. Clearly, when they would not admit that Rosenstein had read the application, he said: I didn't know how things work.

Well, I know how they are supposed to work. If you come before a judge and you sign a document in an effort to get that judge to encroach on the constitutional rights of American citizens, you better know what you are doing. Rosenstein defrauded the court. But the reason they possibly did not defraud the court is if the court was engaged in fraud itself.

The only reason I would raise that is because the FISA judges who were granting warrants based on false information, incomplete information, misleading information, it is possibly because they were okay with helping to use the color of the law to violate American citizens' rights.

Maybe there is a 1983 civil rights action there against judges and those who participated. Who knows. I can't help but wonder about the integrity of judges who are not upset that lawyers came in from the Justice Department and manipulated them into signing a warrant four times when it should never have been signed once.

Then we find out this guy, Halper, who is supposed to have identified Mike Flynn and the relationship with Russians, it turns out he had gotten contracts from the Defense Department--I think one was over $600,000, another over $400,000--and it was flagged by a very dedicated, devoted employee of the Defense Department whose job it was to analyze contracts to make sure they were legitimate and people were doing what they were supposed to. His name is Adam Lovinger.

He saw those contracts and thought: This is very strange, two contracts worth over a million dollars to one person and there doesn't appear to be anything that he is getting.

Well, he was being paid by the Federal Government to set up somebody in the Trump campaign as someone who had been dealing with Russians, who had been paying Russians to come speak at his conferences or seminars, who had an ongoing relationship with Russians, so he would later say: Gee, this guy from the Trump campaign was getting too cozy with the Russians, so I quit.

You mean the guys that you had this ongoing relationship with and paid them to come and speak at your conferences, you were concerned about someone from the Trump administration or who worked with Trump in the campaign actually speaking to the people you have been hiring for a number of years?

It is just fraudulent what they were doing. Incredible. And I had hoped, when Christopher Wray took over at the FBI--well, I don't really know him--but maybe he'll help clean up the disaster that was created by the weaponization of the Department of Justice, and particularly the FBI, by Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, so many of those--Bruce Ohr--who were working at DOJ or FBI.

But we got a solid piece of evidence that Christopher Wray is not the answer; he is part of the problem. And that came as was reported in this story Wednesday, August 29, 2018. As the headline from Newsmax says: ``FBI: No Evidence Clinton Server Hacked Despite Trump Tweet.''

Well, Christopher Wray had to approve that, and either he is completely, objectively incompetent or he intended to slap the President with a fraud by omission and also to slap--figuratively speaking--our Intel community.

It wasn't the FBI that found that Hillary Clinton's server had been hacked and that over 30,000 of her emails--all but 4, and the 4 really didn't amount to anything--all went to a foreign country's intelligence apparatus. They had hacked it, put instructions on there.

So then, we know that because the Intel community has made--they knew with 100 percent certainty that that had happened. They found it. They found the anomaly. They found the embedded instruction that was placed when her server was hacked.

And I know there have been allegations that perhaps Hillary Clinton's classified information that went through the unclassified private server may have gotten some of our undercover people killed in China. I don't know if that is what got them killed or not, but it certainly wouldn't have helped.

Nonetheless, the Intel community inspector general, who back then was Chuck McCullough, and Investigator Frank Rucker are the ones who found that. And I haven't talked to Mr. Coats, but this was a slap at the Intel community, basically saying, Hey, we at the FBI didn't find any evidence her private server was hacked, so anybody who says they did is just totally wrong because, if the FBI doesn't find it, nobody in the Intel community of the United States is competent enough to find such a hacking.

Well, Chris Wray and whoever fed him this statement to put out publicly were wrong. Our Intel community was good enough. They did find that her private server was hacked. And the emails did not go to Russia or any representatives or agency affiliated with Russia. Richard Pollock wrote that he had confirmed that it went to China. I didn't say that when I questioned Mr. Strzok, but that has been reported.

If Mr. Wray is going to continue in his efforts to slap-- fraudulently, really--at the President and our Intel community, he really ought to just voluntarily step down.

The FBI has had so many thousands and thousands of honest, ethical, upright FBI agents, because I have known many. And they need somebody who will help the FBI get its reputation back. When the current FBI director engages in this kind of fraud by omission, then he is not the answer; he is trying to salvage a great reputation that has been destroyed during the Obama administration, and he is not going to get it back by misrepresentations, by omissions.

Hopefully he'll do the right thing and let us get somebody to replace him soon who will clean things up. In the meantime, that is a little scary.

Now, I also had noted an article I had never noticed before and a friend pointed it out. I had never heard of this. I had to go back and look. A New York publication by Chris Smith, October 20 of 2003. The byline under it says: ``Mr. Comey goes to Washington.'' Byline says: ``Just as his terrorism and corporate-corruption cases here are heating up''--apparently in New York--``United States Attorney James Comey is heading south to become John Ashcroft's deputy. What's a nice, nonpartisan prosecutor going to do in a Justice Department like that?''

Well, it doesn't sound like they were big fans of John Ashcroft, who is really a fine, dedicated, upstanding individual. He must have been feeling a little bit giddy. He is going to be the deputy, Department of Justice. And so he said far more than was good for his reputation.

It says, in the fourth paragraph: ``Comey has been savaged by William Safire and lauded by Chuck Schumer; just what kind of Republican is he, anyway? This sets Comey howling again.''

Then the quote from Comey. He says: ``I must be doing something right. In college, I was left of center, and through a gradual process I found myself more comfortable with a lot of the ideas and approaches the Republicans were using.''

The article says: He voted for Carter in 1980, but in 1984, Comey said: ``I voted for Reagan.'' These are Comey's words: ``I'd moved from Communist to whatever I am now. I'm not even sure,'' Comey says, ``how to characterize myself politically. Maybe at some point I'll have to figure it out.''

It says in the article: ``On the surface it's an odd pairing: Comey-- who cites liberal theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as a formative influence,'' which is a little disturbing, ``and who can sing along with Good Charlotte pop-punk hits--and Ashcroft.''

But anyway, that was interesting. I did not know that Comey had admitted to being a commie, but Comey the commie is no longer in charge of the FBI. And it still boggles the mind that Rod Rosenstein would do a memorandum telling the President: You need to fire Comey. He hasn't been intellectually honest. You need to fire him. Causes are all here.

So the President relies on Rosenstein and fires Comey; and then, what, the next day Rosenstein turns around and says: Oh, well, there is cause to appoint a special counsel to investigate the President for supposedly obstruction of justice for firing Comey, because the President followed Rosenstein's recommendation.

The mere fact that Rosenstein would appoint a special counsel to investigate the President for doing what Rosenstein said should have been enough to get him fired back then. What kind of manipulative little demon would say, ``Fire Comey,'' and then the advice is followed and then he appoints a prosecutor to try to disrupt him and remove him from office.

I mean, it is like some kind of game: Oh, I know. I will set up the President. I will tell him to fire Comey, and then we can use that to investigate him for the rest of his time as President.

Well, hopefully--and I have been hoping for a long time that Rosenstein's days are numbered. Of course, he was the U.S. attorney who was in charge of the investigation investigating Russia and their illegal efforts to obtain American uranium. He would also be the same person, along with FBI Director Mueller and a guy named Weissmann, who is currently working for Mueller, who made sure that their undercover guy who was gathering information to show how illegally Russia was acting, make sure he signs a nondisclosure agreement.

They threaten him, we are told, that he either sign the nondisclosure or they would prosecute him. So he signs it. Because they did not want anybody talking about how illegally Russia was acting because, if they had, then the committee that had to approve foreign investments in the United States, CFIUS, they could not have voted to allow Russia to get a hold of 20 or so percent of American uranium. And if they were not allowed to get hold of that much uranium, then, of course, there would not have been the $145 million or so that went into the Clinton Foundation.

Then we get this reporter from FOX News: ``John Kerry slammed for `shameful' shadow diplomacy after admitting to meetings with Iran.''

Now, I think there is a word for it, but when someone goes and tries to undermine the United States President's administration from protecting the country, America, from the biggest supporter of terrorism in the world, I don't know what you would call that, but it seems like, if you have a President, in President Trump, trying to protect America from terrorist attacks that would be funded by the biggest supporter of terrorism in the world, Iran, and you have somebody else from America go over and try to save the deal that was going to help Iran be more of a threat to America--gee, that seems like people used to get prosecuted about things like that.

Seemed like there was somebody named Rosenstein or Rosenberg back there that was not a help to the United States. I think back then they were hanging traitors. But, in any event, interesting.

Also yesterday, committee chair Richard Burr from North Carolina, who has bent over backwards, done everything he can to get Justice and Intelligence to produce any kind of evidence whatsoever showing Trump or his administration colluded with the Russians, he comes out yesterday and says the panel has found ``no hard evidence of collusion'' between the Trump campaign and Russia.

So it is just amazing. It sounds like we still need a housecleaning at the FBI at the very top.

And this out today from the New York Post that Strzok and Page texts are a disaster and embarrassment to the FBI, DOJ.

And it has this tweet from the President: ``More text messages between former FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page are a disaster and embarrassment to the FBI and DOJ.

``This should never have happened, but we are learning more and more by the hour. `Others were leaking like mad' in order to get the President.''

``In the lengthy exchange, the two ex-lovers talk about a leak operation for `political' purposes.

`` `Oh, remind me to tell you tomorrow about the Times doing a story about the RNC hacks,' Page wrote to Strzok, who replied, `And more than they already did? I told you Quinn told me they pulling out all the stops on some story . . . '

`` `Quinn' could be referring to Richard Quinn, chief of the Media and Investigative Publicity Section in the FBI's Office of Public Affairs. . . .

``Strzok then texted Page, `Think our sisters have begun leaking like mad. Scorned and worried, and political, they're kicking into overdrive.'

``It's unclear,'' the story says, ``whom he was referring to as `sisters,' but retired FBI Special Agent John Iannarelli told Fox it could be another government agency.

``Earlier this week, a report from Rep. Mark Meadows . . . a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said a new Strzok-Page text from April 2017 showed them discussing a `media leak strategy'.''

So this is serious stuff. And, apparently, we don't have somebody at the top of the FBI who will get this cleaned up. There are plenty of FBI agents across the country that could get things cleaned up. We know there is at least one here in Washington, D.C., that is good at coverups, but most of the rank-and-file FBI agents are classy, honorable, decent, upright investigators who honor their oath every day, and, who, I keep hearing from different times, different places, are really upset with the damage that the people like Comey, Strzok, Page, Ohr, the damage they have done to their reputation for what used to be a sterling FBI.

So it is time to clean house. Rosenstein has got to go. Chris Wray needs to be replaced by somebody that is not going to try to keep slapping the President when he is wrong about the FBI.

Hopefully, we are going to see that come in the next few weeks. We will see.

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