Full-Scale Impeachment History
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to be recognized as I address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and I appreciate all the eyes and ears that are paying attention here this evening as we take up this most serious business that this Congress has only addressed three previous times in the history of the United States of America.
As we go back through American antiquity, we will see that there was an impeachment process that was advanced shortly after the Civil War with Andrew Johnson as President.
Then we sat back for over a century before there was another issue that arose, and that was in 1974 with the impeachment effort of Richard Nixon, who resigned before he faced the judgment of this United States Congress.
Then, in 1998, I happen to have been here in this city, not an elected Member of Congress, Mr. Speaker, but I came here into this city as a State senator from Iowa to an allied conference. As I opened up the newspaper, I saw in there that it said that there are impeachment hearings taking place in room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building for the dates of December 7, 8, and 9 of 1998.
I concluded that whatever was going on in that conference wasn't as important as me being seated there in that Judiciary Committee as a spectator to be able to witness the unfolding acts of history as the House of Representatives passed judgment upon then-President Bill Clinton.
As I listened to the testimony, and, of course, Mr. Speaker, I had been watching on television many of the other open public hearings that had taken place before the House Judiciary Committee, I was pretty well informed as to the charges that were being brought against Bill Clinton.
As I listened to that debate in those 3 days, December 7, 8, and 9 of 1998, I watched some other things go on around me that I would not have picked up if I had just been watching the committee hearings on C-SPAN. I remember Representative Barney Frank coming into the room. He wanted to ask questions of the witness and make his statement. They advised him that he had to have a tie on before he could be recognized. Then he went out and borrowed a tie from someone and made a big show out of tying that tie before he was recognized to speak before the Judiciary Committee.
I recall also that Democrats, in particular--in fact exclusively-- didn't appear to be taking it seriously. When they were off the sight of the camera, they were joking, laughing, and cutting up outside the scenes. I thought that that was not the decorum that we should have when we have the most serious of constitutional issues before us, the very impeachment of a President of the United States and the prospect that that impeached President--relatively soon to be impeached President--would be standing trial before the United States Senate to determine whether the acts that he had been accused of, not convicted of, but accused of in the form of an indictment out of the House of Representatives, whether he was guilty of those violations, which by my recollection were perjury, subornation of perjury, and obstruction of justice.
It seems to me those were the three charges that made their way out the center aisle here in the House of Representatives and over to the United States Senate where Chief Justice Rehnquist presided over a trial in the United States Senate.
The question was: Was President Clinton guilty of the charges that were brought against him right here in this House of Representatives?
And if he was guilty, did those violations that he was found guilty of rise to the level that he should be removed from office and put Al Gore in as President of the United States?
That was the question before the United States Senate. It was profound.
I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, it broke my heart to see how this country was torn apart over the disrespect in the Oval Office, the disrespect for the United States, and the disrespect for the Constitution and the decorum of the Presidency. I had a difficult time retaining my composure when I went back to Iowa to talk about what I had seen.
I recall going out to Arlington Cemetery during that time and making my way up the hill and walking around over to the eternal flame at the grave of President John F. Kennedy. Very close to him now, of course, is the grave of Bobby Kennedy, and not very far away is the grave of Teddy Kennedy, the three brothers who served this country so well. I remember standing with my back to that eternal flame and looking down across Arlington Cemetery and all the crosses that were there, around 285,000 of them at the time, and looking at the bridge that goes over the Potomac and on down the Mall. If you know where to look, Mr. Speaker, it is a little bit out of center, but you can tell where the White House is from President Kennedy's grave.
I thought about the caisson with President Kennedy's casket winding its way down Pennsylvania Avenue, winding its way out across the Potomac River, winding its way out to Arlington, and winding its way up to that place on the hill where I was standing where President John F. Kennedy was buried with the eternal flame still burning and still blazing there on that location never having been snuffed out.
I thought about a country that was full of grief for losing a President to the atrocity of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and what that meant, the blow to our Republic, the blow to the history of America, and the blow to the heart and soul of our country that took place when Lee Harvey Oswald pulled that trigger down in Dallas that day.
I thought about what our country had gone through from 1963 until that year in 1998, when we had gone from grieving for a President lost and aspirations not achieved because of a President lost, to a place where we have a President elected who, I believe, so disrespected the office that he conducted himself in it and next to it in a way that was never imagined by our Founding Fathers and in a way that I won't describe here on the floor of the House of Representatives.
It washed over me on that day, Mr. Speaker, what had taken place and what had been taking place in the Oval Office of the President of the United States and the rooms adjoining the Oval Office, the disrespect and in a way the desecration of that respect for the office that we so embrace and hold so dear.
It was so difficult for us to say good-bye to President Kennedy and not that many years later put our Nation through this impeachment hearing of a President who, I believe, did lie under oath, did direct others to lie under oath, and did obstruct justice along the way.
There were four charges brought to him here on the floor of the House of Representatives. I believe three of them were presented over in the United States Senate. I haven't looked that up in a long time. It is not a place I like to go revisit very often, Mr. Speaker.
I recall also that the decision was made here in the House of Representatives that said that we are impeaching the President of the United States for his activities with an intern and his refusal to tell the truth about them when he is under oath, that the trial took place over in the United States Senate. I think of my junior Senator at the time, Tom Harkin, whom I have had a good personal relationship with him, watching him on C-SPAN--as every Senator had to do, Mr. Speaker-- walk down the center aisle of the United States Senate, as if walking down here to this table right beside me with a large book there. On that large book it said:
I do hereby pledge to do impartial justice under the law and the Constitution of the United States of America, so help me God.
Each Senator was required to sign that book that they would do impartial justice. That meant they took the position of jurors to determine whether Bill Clinton was guilty of perjury, of obstruction of justice, of subornation of perjury, to listen to the evidence that was presented before the United States Senate and come to an objective conclusion as to whether they believed that President Clinton had violated the law in those areas. And the second question was, and if so, does it rise to the level that he should be removed from office?
He was already impeached, Mr. Speaker, but does it rise to the level that he should be removed from office?
Our Founding Fathers in the Constitution gave us those standards to interpret in our time. The wisdom of our Founding Fathers just amazes me time after time, how they left the language in such a way that we got to decide, in the context of contemporary values, whether or not the violations that I believe were committed by President Bill Clinton rose to the level that he should be removed from office.
As I said, my junior Senator walked down that aisle--as did 99 other Senators--and signed the book to do impartial justice under the law and under the Constitution. He walked back up that center aisle, he stepped out those double doors outside the Senate Chamber straight down through the rotunda where we are today, stepped up to the microphones, and he said: I will never vote to remove Bill Clinton from office. No matter what, I will not vote to remove Bill Clinton from office.
The ink wasn't dry on his pledge to do impartial justice under the law and the Constitution, and he already took a pledge not to do impartial justice under the law and the Constitution. He had already drawn his conclusions.
Here is what happened with many of the Democrats that would refuse to vote to remove Bill Clinton from office: they stepped out before those same microphones over and over again and said--because the question was such as: Is he guilty and should be removed from office, all what wrapped up in one. Then the question was, Mr. Speaker, for them, they said: Well, I didn't have to decide whether he had actually committed perjury or obstruction of justice or subornation of perjury, because even if he had, I didn't think it rose to the level that he should be removed from office.
Time after time the Democrats who voted to protect President Bill Clinton from being removed from office made the same statement: No matter whether he is guilty or not of perjury, obstruction of justice, or subornation of perjury, so what? It didn't rise to the level that he should be removed from office.
So they voted to protect his position in office, even though we had a Vice President whom they liked and respected, and I think would have made a reasonably decent President during that period of time.
But they held that ground, I believe, for partisan reasons, Mr. Speaker. Now, the legacy of that history echoes back over here to the House of Representatives and may echo back to the United States Senate again, if whatever a President is charged with, no matter whether he is guilty or not, doesn't rise to the level that he should be removed from office, then I guess the Senate is not going to remove him from office by a two-thirds vote margin which is required by the Constitution.
So let's apply those values today. Let's apply the Bill Clinton values today, and they come back to be this: that if the charges that actually don't exist yet against Donald Trump are some charges that are lesser than the charges that were leveled against President Bill Clinton, then how do these Senators--some of whom are still there from 1998--how could they vote to remove Donald Trump from office in the United States Senate if they can't even find a charge in the House of Representatives--and they have been churning around here for nearly 3 years looking for charges they can impeach him with--if they can't come up with a charge that is perjury, obstruction of justice, or subornation of perjury?
The biggest thing they have charged him with is collusion, and that is a laugher. The definition of collusion is pretty vague. If you and I team up together, Mr. Speaker, and we go out and set up a business enterprise, somebody will say we are colluding. If I say: I am going to sell lemonade at a stand on the corner of Fourth and Vine; and you say: I am going to sell lemonade on the corner of Fifth and Vine, that is collusion.
It is no crime, and it is no violation of our moral standards either, Mr. Speaker.
Whatever charges at this point have been speculated against President Trump are nowhere near that which I believe Bill Clinton was guilty of but not convicted and removed from office. But we never found out. The jury in the Senate never gave us a verdict on the violations of President Bill Clinton. They wrapped him up in the same question: Did he commit perjury?
Democrats said: Well, who knows? It doesn't matter. I didn't have to answer that question, because I didn't think he should be removed from office even if he had.
Time after time Senators signed the document, walked back, and decided, as Tom Harkin did, I will never vote to remove Bill Clinton from office, even though I just signed a document that said that I will do impartial justice under the law.
I am saying this, Mr. Speaker, because this impeachment process that we are in the middle of now is a very politicized operation and organization.
Look at the votes that will come down here to the floor of the House of Representatives tomorrow. The Rules Committee met tonight, and they had their dialogue going on there. They are going to bring an impeachment resolution down here. We are going to have a debate on the rule, we are going to vote, and it is likely going to be a clear partisan vote--Republicans on one side voting ``no,'' Democrats on the other side voting ``yes.''
They don't have to believe it, they just know which jersey they have on.
I am not asserting that Republicans don't conduct themselves in a similar way. Instead, I am asserting this, this is a partisan operation, and they calculate that they could bring these charges against the President of the United States, and in the effort to impeach the President find a way to tie his hands so he can't be as effective as the people who elected Donald Trump want, pray, and expect him to be.
I would take us back to this election that took place and the many hearings wherein I have questioned the witnesses before the House Judiciary Committee. Some of the witnesses whom I have questioned under oath go back to be, let's see, Janet Napolitano, Loretta Lynch, Rod Rosenstein, Christopher Wray, and James Comey. The list goes on. Peter Strzok would be one of those people. Another one I listened to would be Lisa Page. I don't believe I ever asked her a question, but I have listened to her testify. They put this whole scenario together. The texts that went back and forth between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page told us what was going on.
They had weaponized the FBI, weaponized the Department of Justice, weaponized the State Department, and weaponized the CIA, the branches of government that were mobilized to attack not only Conservatives and Republicans, but to attack the candidate for President, Donald Trump, who said during that period of time he believed that he had been wiretapped in Trump Towers in New York.
That turns out to be true. The only way the left can argue with that, Mr. Speaker, is that they say that the definition of wiretap really doesn't apply anymore because we have so much wireless that we are not actually wiretapping we are just doing surveillance.
An archaic term, though most recently archaic, doesn't mean President Trump wasn't right. He understood he was being bugged in the Trump Towers. Once he was advised of that by an admiral, Admiral Rogers, he moved his operations as President-elect out of Trump Towers in New York out to the golf course in New Jersey, where he could operate with a level of confidence that he wasn't being bugged in every conversation that he had.
But there was a concerted effort, and it is a matter of fact today proven and not reasonably disputed that there was a sincere effort on the part of a good number of people at the highest levels of the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA, and the State Department to neuter this President by any means possible.
They tried to do so with their undercutting of his campaign prior to the election in November 2016, and they continued to undercut this President as President-elect and as President of the United States.
So I am going to give a little piece of factual history here, Mr. Speaker. And that would be this: President Trump was elected, became President-elect, on the Tuesday prior to November 12, 2016. Then those 5 days or so later--and November 12 was a Sunday--Sunday noon, early Sunday afternoon, all the highest ranking Democrats--except Hillary Clinton, who was still in mourning and hadn't gone out in public yet. All the highest ranking Democrats in the country found their way to the Mandarin Hotel here in Washington, D.C.
There, they were to convene a weekend, or the early part of that week, planning how they were going to--I am going to use the word ``utilize'' and perhaps ``exploit'' the Hillary Clinton presidency that they expected to be a done deal with the stamp of approval of the voters on it by that date of November 12, 5 days later, after the election.
But, of course, we all know the real history of it, and that was that Donald Trump was elected President instead. He was President-elect on the morning after the votes were counted on that Tuesday in November.
So the Democrats had the Mandarin Hotel reserved. They descended into and upon the Mandarin Hotel, November 12, Sunday afternoon, of 2016. They had to change their agenda. Their agenda was how to exploit the presidency of Hillary Clinton, and it now became: How are we going to deal with President Donald Trump?
The political article that first announces this was published the evening of November 12, 2016, and the picture in the center of that is a picture of George Soros. George Soros, one of the--I want to say the top funder for the Democratic Party in the United States of America, involved in some 60 countries, I believe, undermining the God-given freedom and liberty that we are trying to restore, protect, or advance, wherever it might be. George Soros was the headliner.
Everybody that was there, except Hillary Clinton, they changed their agenda, Mr. Speaker. Their agenda was to be how to exploit the Hillary presidency, and it became: How do we resist Donald Trump?
In fact, that word ``resist'' and the movement of resistance that was launched with demonstrations across the major cities in America, weekend after weekend, all the way up to, including, and beyond the inauguration of President Trump was a brainchild that emerged there at the Mandarin Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Not only the idea of the resistance movement, Mr. Speaker, but other ideas on what they were going to do. By any means necessary, we have an ``insurance policy,'' as Peter Strzok wrote, to make sure that Donald Trump is never President, or if he is President, that he can't conduct the operations of a President. We are going to tie his hands one way or the other.
So there they sat in the Mandarin Hotel from November 12 to November 15. They came in on Sunday afternoon, and Wednesday, noon, they are checking out of the Mandarin Hotel having had this conference, this seance, about what they are going to do with Donald Trump.
One is, they are not going to let him govern. They are going to resist. The resistance movement and that language flowed from there.
They also, I believe, designed certain pieces of language that they were going to weaponize so that they could attack Trump supporters. The Make America Great Again, MAGA, people, were going to be targeted by all kinds of pejorative statements and labels. They understood--they, in the Mandarin Hotel--that they had worn out that tired, old term called ``racist,'' the most dog-eared, worn-out card in the lexicon deck of the Democrats. They were going to continue to use ``racist'' because it still was effective, even though it was the most-utilized word that they had.
I will say, also, that I learned this from a former Member of Congress, Tom Tancredo, who made it very clear. He said, when they start calling you names, that is when you know you have won the argument. They can't keep up with the debate or they wouldn't fall to name-calling.
But ``racism,'' ``racist'' was worn out. They needed some other words to apply. So they began to generate some of them in the Mandarin Hotel. From that day, we started to see increased use in terms like ``Nazi,'' ``fascist,'' ``white nationalist,'' ``white supremacist.''
Those terms flowed out of the Mandarin Hotel and were kicked into gear and utilized across this country against people who were vulnerable to those kinds of labels. They knew what they were doing when they weaponized those terms.
As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, I happened to have gotten a little curious and did a little search through LexisNexis for the term ``white nationalist.'' I chased it back to the year 2000, and put the search terms in, and I asked it how many times the term ``white nationalist'' was used between the year 2000 and 2016. It came back virtually none. To be precise, ``virtually none'' really means 100 to 200 times a year by all the publications out there. All the scholarship work that is being done, all the blogs, all the comments on all the articles written, and the articles themselves added up to 100 to 200 times a year from 2000 to 2016 that the term ``white nationalist'' had been used.
That is virtually none in a great country like we are, with over 300 million people and all the publications that we have.
My name shows up a lot more than that, just to give you an example, Mr. Speaker, and I am not always happy about that. But virtually not used, ``white nationalists.''
Then, when you get to 2016, this is the year at the Mandarin Hotel when they gathered together and decided what they are going to do to try to deny an effective Presidency for Donald Trump and to deny the will of the people. The LexisNexis search showed that that virtually never-used term of ``white nationalist'' jumped up to 10,000 times in 2016. In 2017, Mr. Speaker, it jumped to 30,000 times. In 2018, it was still there at 20,000 times.
A word that was virtually unused now had become weaponized. You can look at the charts and the graphs on this, Mr. Speaker, and you will see that ``white supremacy,'' ``fascist,'' and ``Nazi'' all also took jumps. But the most stark jump is ``white nationalist,'' and that is the term that is most weaponized. All the rest of these are weaponized also.
So when you weaponize the term, it changes the meaning of it, and they know that. They turn it into a pejorative term. I asked a couple of more senior Members who have served in this House of Representatives just last weekend: What do those terms mean?
They said: They don't belong in our language. I never heard that language.
I sat down here this morning with a gray-haired Member of the House of Representatives who grew up in a similar era that I did, from the South, and he said: We never used those terms. We don't know what they mean in common language.
Well, they were weaponized, and the definitions that the people wanted them to have in that Mandarin Hotel November 12 through 15 of 2016 are the definitions that have been applied to those terms, and they are using them against people.
That is just one thing. But they also determined that there were going to be demonstrations across America. These demonstrations ensued in city after city, all over the country. They had to be funded. People didn't have anything to be aggrieved about until they were told that they weren't going to be happy with President-elect Trump. So they began to demonstrate.
It culminated here in this city, June 20, 2017, Mr. Speaker. That is when we came together to celebrate the inauguration of President Donald Trump.
I traveled around this city. I was here for the inauguration, and I traveled to the events that it was important that I attend. Everywhere I went, the city was jam-packed full of these ladies in their silly pink hats. I won't describe for the Congressional Record what they called them, Mr. Speaker, but they were everywhere. They had posters and signs just replete with all the obscenities that one could imagine.
I believe there were more people here protesting the inauguration of Donald Trump than were here celebrating the Presidency and the inauguration of Donald Trump. They jammed the streets. They stood in front of our car, and they blocked our traffic. They descended upon me in a McDonald's over there in a part of town.
I thought I actually ought to have something to eat that day, and I ended up with about 200 of them in pink hats surrounding me. I thought, I will just debate them down to the last one. I kept asking them, ``Why are you here?''
``We are here to demonstrate for women's rights.''
So I just kept asking them, ``What rights do men have that women don't have?''
That stumped every one of them. They didn't have a single answer to that question, out of 200 or so that approached me in that McDonald's that day. But I saw what they did in this city, and I asked them.
They complained they didn't have enough money to pay for their health insurance, the Affordable Care Act. The un-Affordable Care Act is the more accurate way to describe it. But they had been able to buy a plane ticket from Phoenix to Washington, D.C., and a couple of hotel rooms so they could be there to demonstrate in their pink hats.
Who funded that? It wasn't out of their pocket, Mr. Speaker. I would suspect it was out of the pockets of George Soros and his subordinates. But that bill is the foundation for what is going on here. It gets us into this new year. That was January 20, 2017.
Shortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated President of the United States, he had a meeting with James Comey. James Comey was interviewing for the job as Director of the FBI. There was also an interview with Robert Mueller, who I believe did not tell the truth, even though he was under oath. But the record showed that he was interviewing for the job of Director of the FBI as well.
James Comey went outside his meeting in the Oval Office with President Trump, sat down, and typed up from his memory what he believed was the exchange between Donald Trump and James Comey. In short order, he took it up to Columbia University and handed it over to a law professor, who was a friend of his, with either the direct or the implied, explicit or implied directions: Leak this information in the private meeting with Donald Trump to The New York Times.
The objective is to upset this country in such a way that they will have to name a special counsel to investigate the Russia collusion that we heard about for 2 years, and that special counsel needs to be Robert Mueller.
Well, see how this unfolded? Our Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is a personal friend and someone whose intelligence and integrity I admire and respect, found himself in a place where he accepted some advice that I think, to this day, he would tell you he wished he hadn't accepted that advice, but the advice was to recuse himself from anything that has to do with the Russian investigation.
Our Attorney General was essentially unable to address the circumstances of this Russia investigation. The special counsel is named--Robert Mueller. The special counsel is named by Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, the number two in the Department of Justice, and his position has been falling under significant question since that time as well.
But, Mr. Speaker, we ended up with Robert Mueller. We ended up with about 17 or so investigators/prosecutors handpicked. Handpicked by whom? Was it Robert Mueller? It sure didn't sound like it 2 years later when he is under oath trying to explain the Mueller report before the United States Congress. It sounded more like he wasn't in charge, or if he was in charge, he didn't remember what was going on.
That is a good example of why when you have witnesses to testify, especially in these times, when the destiny of America is on the bubble and can turn, you have to have those witnesses open in the public where people can watch them, watch their body language, watch their facial expressions, listen for the pauses before they answer the questions, and listen to the voice inflection to determine whether you believe that witness or don't believe that witness.
If you just end up with a transcript that one day we are able to extract from Adam Schiff, you are not able to evaluate the demeanor of the witnesses. What you have to do, then, is you just accept what he has served up.
But the Mueller investigation went on for nearly 2 years with roughly 17 investigators. At least 13 of them clearly had a history of partisanship, Mr. Speaker. Some of them were ruthless, undercutting, partisan prosecutors. Weissmann would be one of those who comes to mind for me.
One of the people on that panel was Peter Strzok, and it looks like Peter Strzok was the individual who was in the center of most everything that was going on and the weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI. Was he the individual who named all the folks that were part of the Mueller team? And when the text with his lover, Lisa Page, came out, and we saw the partisan, nasty, bitter, undercutting, on-the-verge-of-treason texts that came back and forth between Peter Strzok and his lover, Lisa Page, it became obvious even to Robert Mueller that he needed to remove Peter Strzok from the investigative team, the Mueller team that was seeking to find something that they could impeach Donald Trump for. That was Peter Strzok.
But we went through nearly 2 years of that, $25 million to $30 million. When the Mueller report came out, they asked Robert Mueller to come to testify before Congress. Throughout all of that, the Democrats were licking their chops, Mr. Speaker, as: Surely, we have this Mueller report. He is such a smart guy. James Comey handpicked him, and James Comey despises the President, and he will move to New Zealand if Donald Trump is reelected.
So, surely, James Comey gave us good advice that Robert Mueller will be the man who can pull this information out and document the transgressions of Donald Trump so that we can impeach him and remove him from office because of that animosity that exists when a person steps up and tells the truth and tells America first and says we are going to restore the respect for the rule of law and we are going to restore our border security and we are going to restore our American strengths.
All of these points that come forward--America first--all of that was apparently anathema to the people in the Department of Justice and the FBI and other departments--the CIA, for example.
So we saw, as this unfolded, this great anticipation that the Mueller report was going to bring forth these items, multiple items, that would be just cause to impeach Donald Trump. And it landed with a big thud because we had open hearings, and the testimony of Robert Mueller fell flat for a number of reasons.
Some said that he wasn't astute enough to be able to deliver the Mueller report effectively. That may or may not be true.
But I will make the argument that the real reason was lack of substance. If there had been substance there, someone on the Democrat side of the Judiciary Committee--maybe several, and most likely several--would have pulled that substance out and brought that forward so that we would know what it was in the Mueller report that they thought should be worthy of impeaching the President of the United States.
Well, if you remember, Mr. Speaker, when the Mueller report landed and Robert Mueller testified before the committee and his testimony came out to be very empty and vacant and vacuous, there was a silence out of the Democrats for, oh, a couple of weeks like: What are we going to do? We are still determined that there must be something in the Mueller report that we can use to impeach the President, but we don't know what. We don't know what we can make stick with the American people.
Because, in the end, this judgment on the impeachment is up to the American people. That is how it transfers through the system eventually--not right away, not directly, but eventually.
Well, they finally figured out, after 2 weeks or 3 weeks or so, that they weren't going to be able to utilize the Mueller report to impeach the President.
So, what do they do? Well, we are going to have to tool up another kind of an argument. What shall we use to get rid of this President? Two years burned up on the Mueller report, all the weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI.
I want to make sure, Mr. Speaker, that people understand. I lived through Watergate. I watched it closely.
I lived through the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I watched it closely, even more closely than Watergate.
But, as far as Bill Clinton's impeachment was concerned--and he was impeached--it wasn't so much a matter of corruption within government as it was the matter of the corruption of the President himself. Be that as it may, it threatened our Republic, our constitutional Republic.
But, if I take you back to 1974 and we talk about the Nixon impending impeachment--not the actual, but the impending impeachment--and we think about what actually took place then and Watergate, this, I will say, horrible event within American history that tore this country apart, what happened was a few of the campaign operatives for Nixon's reelect team broke into Watergate to see what they could gather up in information from the Democrats.
That was really stupid, and it was really against the law, yet it wasn't within the knowledge base of President Nixon that they were about to or had invaded that space and committed that burglary. But, when Nixon found out that they had committed the burglary, he set about trying to cover it up.
We were involved in the Vietnam war at the time. We had Vietnamization. Peace with honor was the message that President Nixon was involved in. And we were having success; I would say, from my memory, significant success.
But President Nixon decided that the violations of the law that took place in the Watergate break-in, he made a decision to try to cover it up. Rather than stepping forward and saying these people need to be frog-marked into justice and we are going to clean this up and it never was anything that was commanded from on high out of Nixon's office, instead, he set about trying to cover it up, which was a dramatic mistake in judgment by the President of the United States.
Had he been successful and we had never heard about this, the Vietnam war may have had an entirely different result, Mr. Speaker.
So, President Nixon had a number of things, a number of responsibilities to weigh when he made that decision to try to cover it up.
But, nonetheless, we are at this place in history where we look back in the rearview mirror and we say that was a mistake to try to cover it up because he got caught.
He would have been removed from office because Republicans had integrity and Democrats had partisanship and, I believe, integrity, so they decided that a President who was that dishonest, who would go to that level, needed to be removed from office. That was the judgment at the time of the people who were elected here in the House and in the Senate. And I do not quibble with those decisions or those positions that were taken.
That was Richard Nixon, 1974; Bill Clinton, 1998.
These things that I have talked about--covering up the crime of a burglary for political-motivated purposes, covering up the sexual activities by committing felonies of perjury, obstruction of justice, and subornation of perjury--those truly are at least, if they are not high crimes, serious misdemeanors.
But they came up with nothing in the Russia investigation with Robert Mueller, nothing that could stick, even though they had rigged this game against the President of the United States, President Trump, with the dossier.
And who colluded with the Russians to produce the dossier? The DNC. I mean, it started out with a check written by Paul Singer to do opposition research, because he is a never Trumper. He got what he could get out of the dossier effort in the beginning as it got handed over through Fusion GPS, funded by the DNC, and checks written through the attorney's office in order to try to defuse the trail, following the money trail on how this was put together.
But we know the dossier was unverified and it was full of manufactured narratives, much of it plugged in there by the Russians to upset the election results of the United States. And, if you look at their efforts, yes, they did try to affect the results of the election here in the United States. I believe that is true. But I don't know that they had a choice on who they wanted to be President of the United States so much as they just wanted to create chaos within our system.
So they spent something like $100,000 on internet ads. That is a piece of it. They did other things to try to hack into messages going out. There is no evidence that they affected any vote tally. There is always a speculation that, perhaps, they did affect the way some people voted.
But we also know that there were, I will say, I am going to say, hundreds of millions of dollars--it runs into the billions--spent on advertisement in this country to also affect the election.
So, I recall sitting there with a group of Russians at a conference that we had, and, after having excoriated them for their effort to upset our elections here, their response was: So 13 of our Russian hackers were in a building in Russia and they created this much chaos in the United States of America for $100,000 worth of ads and 13 of them working in there trying to be hackers. Think how bad it would have been for you all if there had been 26.
That was their answer to me.
Mr. Speaker, I reflect on that, and I have to give them a little nod, kind of a little silent smile of he had enough audacity to make the statement. What it amounts to, really, is it says that 13 Russians didn't affect the election here in the United States.
What they did was wrong. They have been indicted by the Mueller people. We will never see them again. They are never going to be brought to justice. Thirteen Russians, and we were all tied in knots for 2 years, $25 million to maybe as high as $30 million of the Muller report that comes back to be nothing.
So what is the next play? It is kind of like you call a big play in a football game and you drop back to throw this pass and you get sacked for a 25- or 30-yard loss. You go back to the huddle. What are you going to do now? Well, we are not going to run a dive play that is going to get 3 yards. We are going to have to come up with another trick play.
Well, what is that going to be? Let's see. We are going to get the President for a phone call to Ukraine.
And we know the story on that. It is contemporary, Mr. Speaker. I don't have to refresh the body on this very much except that, when you read the transcript of that phone call, that transcript that has been vetted by at least six different people who are professionals to make sure that the context of that call and the language of that call is reflected within the transcript that they type up for that call, I read it with this peace, or I thought: I am going to get to a place where I get this little peace in my gut that kind of flips and says, ``Oh, he actually said that?'' And I read it with that in mind, carefully.
I found no place that troubled me in any way whatsoever. When the President said--and I have heard him in his own voice and person say this--it was a perfect phone call, he has got a strong argument. It is pretty close to a perfect phone call; although, I don't think much of anything is ever perfect in this society.
And the request to go in and do the investigation of Burisma and any board member, as I looked at that request that was there, this country has been full of questions about what was going on in Ukraine. And if Joe Biden's son is on the board for $50,000 a month with no energy expertise whatsoever, isn't that worth looking into?
And we also have the videotape of then-Vice President Joe Biden saying: Yeah, I held a billion-dollar check out and dangled it in front of the Ukrainians, and I told them that, ``If you don't fire that prosecutor that is investigating the oil company whose board my son is on, if you don't fire him, I am leaving in 6 hours with the check, and I am not coming back.'' And he said--and I can't say these words here on the floor, but it was son of a blank. They fired him, within a very short period of time.
That leveraged the investigator out who was on the trail, at least he believed, of corruption in Ukraine, and that corruption pulled into question at least Hunter Biden, if not Joe Biden himself.
So, why was Joe Biden so determined to extort the firing of the investigator in Ukraine by dangling a billion-dollar check in front of him--which was a loan guaranty, to make the record correct. Why was Joe Biden doing that, and why is it moral for Joe Biden to enforce a shutdown of an investigation that would be cleaning up corruption in Ukraine before U.S. dollars would be put into that system?
He is enhancing corruption. He is not cleaning up corruption. And Donald Trump's statement, if it is to be read at all, was an encouragement to go in and do the investigation to clean up the corruption, not to enhance the corruption.
A billion-dollar equivalent of a bribe by Joe Biden--I will give you this billion-dollar loan guaranty if you fire the investigator that is investigating the corruption--versus Donald Trump implying, but not saying: Can you help us out here? Can you help us with the investigation? Can you reopen this investigation into Burisma, because I am hearing a lot of problems over here in the United States about what has been going on in Ukraine.
Now, is it happenstance that Joe Biden is a potential political rival? He is not a political rival right now, Mr. Speaker. He is a candidate in a Democratic primary for President of the United States that started out with, I don't know, 24 or so Democrats altogether.
And he may still be the marginal frontrunner, although I think Elizabeth Warren--I am confident she has passed him up in Iowa, and it looks like the momentum of his campaign has flattened out. But why would President Trump be so concerned about this that he would ask that they would go in to do this investigation?
And I will say, instead, a President of the United States has a duty to investigate for corruption, and he has an obligation by law not to advance those funds until there are assurances that corruption is cleaned up.
That is a statute that has been served up to him, and it exists out there. And I have read the language. I just don't have it in front of me to quote it to you exactly here tonight, Mr. Speaker.
So President Trump, I believe, was following not only his conscience and good judgment and leadership, but following the law that compelled him to ensure that corruption was being cleaned up in Ukraine before U.S. aid could go into Ukraine.
And they found a way to turn this around and say, well, no, we are going to assign the President a motive, and then we are going make the motive stick, and that motive will be--they will rise to the level that we are going to impeach him in the United States House of Representatives for seeking to use U.S. dollars as an incentive for an investigation into his political opponent. How about an investigation into corruption?
The corruption was being investigated until Joe Biden stepped in and extorted the firing of the investigator in Ukraine. And all Donald Trump said was, can you light this back up again, and let's find out what the truth is.
Why is anybody on the other side of the aisle, Joe Biden or Hunter Biden or anyone else included, why are they worried about an investigation if they are clean? The investigation must be shut down by Democrats for some reason. I mean, from where I stand, I am clean. And so, if somebody says I am going to investigate Steve King, I say, fine, go ahead. You know, if that is all you have to do with your life, go ahead.
They said the other day what happens if they bring ethics charges against those of us who went down to the SCIF and said we are going to bring sunlight into this basement room here that Adam Schiff is holding his secret impeachment hearings in, and some of the Members said, well, gee, it is going to cost us millions of dollars to defend ourselves if they bring ethics charges against us. And I said, it is not going to cost me a dime. Lock me up if that is the case, because we have a Constitution to protect and preserve. We have a country to protect and preserve. We have a legacy that is handed to us from our Founding Fathers that requires us to step up and defend our Constitution and the rule of law and the principles of truth, justice, and the American way, no matter how heavy the partisan politics get. And they are heavy. They are so heavy that the history of impeachment is kicked aside by Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi.
And I picked up the impeachment resolutions from 1974, Resolution of Inquiry. ``Following is the text of House Resolution 803, as approved by the House February 6, 1974.'' This is the Nixon impeachment resolution.
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the 1974 resolution for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. 1974 Resolution of Inquiry
Following is the text of House Resolution 803, as approved by the House Feb. 6, 1974:
Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary, acting as a whole or by any subcommittee thereof appointed by the chairman for the purposes hereof and in accordance with the rules of the committee, is authorized and directed to investigate fully and completely whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its constitutional power to impeach Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States of America. The committee shall report to the House of Representatives such resolutions, articles of impeachment, or other recommendations as it deems proper.
Sec. 2:
(a) For the purpose of making such investigation, the committee is authorized to require--
(1) by subpoena or otherwise--
(A) the attendance and testimony of any person (including at a taking of a deposition by counsel for the committee); and
(B) the production of such things; and
(2) by interrogatory, the furnishing of such information; as it deems necessary to such investigation.
(b) Such authority of the committee may be exercised--
(1) by the chairman and the ranking minority member acting jointly, or, if either declines to act, by the other acting alone, except that in the event either so declines, either shall have the right to refer to the committee for decision the question whether such authority shall be so exercised and the committee shall be convened promptly to render that decision; or
(2) by the committee acting as a whole or by subcommittee.
Subpoenas and interrogatories so authorized may be issued over the signature of the chairman, or ranking minority member, or any member designated by either of them, and may be served by any person designated by the chairman, or ranking minority member, or any member designated by either of them. The chairman, or ranking minority member, or any member designated by either of them (or, with respect to any deposition, answer to interrogatory, or affidavit, any person authorized by law to administer oaths) may administer oaths to any witness. For the purpose of this section, ``things'' includes, without limitation, books, records, correspondence, logs, journals, memorandums, papers, documents, writings, drawings, graphs, charts, photographs, reproductions, recordings, tapes, transcripts, printouts, data compilations from which information can be obtained (translated if necessary, through detection devices into reasonably usable form), tangible objects, and other things of any kind.
Sec. 3. For the purpose of making such investigation, the committee, and any subcommittee thereof, are authorized to sit and act, without regard to clause 31 of rule XI of the Rules of the House of Representatives, during the present Congress at such times and places within or without the United States, whether the House is meeting, has recessed, or has adjourned, and to hold such hearings, as it deems necessary.
Sec. 4. Any funds made available to the Committee on the Judiciary under House Resolution 702 of the Ninety-third Congress, adopted November 15, 1973, or made available for the purpose hereafter, may be expended for the purpose of carrying out the investigation authorized and directed by this resolution.
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Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the October 7, 1998, resolution for the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary, acting as a whole or by any subcommittee thereof appointed by the chairman for the purposes hereof and in accordance with the rules of the committee, is authorized and directed to investigate fully and completely whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its constitutional power to impeach William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States of America. The committee shall report to the House of Representatives such resolutions, articles of impeachment, or other recommendations as it deems proper.
Sec. 2. (a) For the purpose of making such investigation, the committee is authorized to require--
( 1) by subpoena or otherwise--
(A) the attendance and testimony of any person (including at a taking of a deposition by counsel for the committee); and
(B) the production of such things; and
(2) by interrogatory, the furnishing of such information; as it deems necessary to such investigation.
(b) Such authority of the committee may be exercised--
(1) by the chairman and the ranking minority member acting jointly, or, if either declines to act, by the other acting alone, except that in the event either so declines, either shall have the right to refer to the committee for decision the question whether such authority shall be so exercised and the committee shall be convened promptly to render that decision; or
(2) by the committee acting as a whole or by subcommittee,
Subpoenas and interrogatories so authorized may be issued over the signature of the chairman, or ranking minority member, or any member designated by either of them, and may be served by any person designated by the chairman, or ranking minority member, or any member designated by either of them. The chairman, or ranking minority member, or any member designated by either of them ( or, with respect to any deposition, answer to interrogatory, or affidavit, any person authorized by law to administer oaths) may administer oaths to any witness. For the purposes of this section, ``things'' includes, without limitation, books, records, correspondence, logs, journals, memorandums, papers, documents, writings, drawings, graphs, charts, photographs, reproductions, recordings, tapes, transcripts, printouts, data compilations from which information can be obtained (translated if necessary, through detection devices into reasonably usable form), tangible objects, and other things of any kind.
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Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, when you lay them down side-by-side and you read them, they come out and say, ``Authorizing and directing the Committee on the Judiciary to investigate whether sufficient grounds exist for the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States.'' The committee--this says, ``Resolved, that the Committee on the Judiciary''--this is Nixon--``acting as a whole or by any subcommittee thereof appointed by the chairman for the purposes hereof and in accordance with the rules of the committee, is authorized and directed to investigate fully and completely whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its constitutional power to impeach Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States of America. The committee shall report to the House of Representatives such resolutions, Articles of Impeachment, and other recommendations as it deems proper.''
This is substantively the same. The provisions in here, the language varies a little bit in the preambles, but the provisions in here are identical, because they had an understanding that they needed to be in conformance with the constitution, Mr. Speaker, with history, with the sense of fairness and trust and knowing that antiquity would look back on this and see how did they conduct themselves in the House of Representatives when they were faced with this question of whether or not to impeach a President of the United States.
Well, I have this other resolution here, Mr. Speaker. This is H. Res--it's before the Rules Committee tonight, it doesn't have a number on it now as I have it, it is not at all like the resolutions, the identical resolutions of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.
And it is also curious that in modern times we have gone back to this impeachment over and over again where the only other impeachment up until Richard Nixon was Andrew Johnson shortly after the Civil War.
But here is what we have. This is I think the Adam Schiff resolution. It says: ``The chair . . . shall designate an open hearing or hearings pursuant to this section.''
Well great, we went down to the SCIF and shined sunlight on that, and now they have capitulated to the pressure that was brought to bear that day, and they are going to have an open hearing or hearings.
Well, I wrote a little note on there that says, yes, they are going to have an open hearing, one. It is a minimum of one. They might have more if they decide to, but not all. They are still determined. This resolution says that they can go back down into the basement room of the Capitol, the secret room and conduct their secret hearings with their secret rules and the public can't see in, the public can't hear the audio, the public can't see the video, the public nor other Members of Congress can watch the facial expressions, listen to the voice inflections, watch the body language and determine the demeanor and veracity of the witnesses. That is not going to happen under this resolution that comes to us tomorrow just as they are going to do one open hearing. And it might be a gavel in and gavel out. That will comply with this resolution. And they can move on.
It says also, The chair and ranking minority member of the committee--that is the secret committee, the Permanent Select Committee--``shall be permitted to question witnesses for equal specified periods of longer than 5 minutes, as determined by the chair.''
So Adam Schiff can decide if he wants to question a witness for beyond 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, even 45 minutes because they have a 90-minute cap on this, as determined by the chair. But if Adam Schiff wants to question a witness for 6 minutes only, that means that Devin Nunes can only question that witness for 6 minutes only. Well, that is a pretty tight rule, isn't it?
So if they like what the witness is saying, they are going to continue to ask questions. If they don't like what he is saying, he is going to shut that questioning off, and that shuts off Devin Nunes, and he is the only one that can ask questions of that witness.
It says but the time, ``shall be equal for the chair and the ranking minority member.'' Sure. But the chair determines how long that time will be.
And then it says it, ``shall not exceed 90 minutes,'' which I mentioned ``in the aggregate. Only the chair and ranking member or a Permanent Select Committee employee,'' meaning staff, ``if yielded to by the chair or ranking minority member may question witnesses during such periods of questioning.''
So the rest of the committee that is allowed access into that secret basement room, there in the dark, in the confines of the most secret room in the entire Capitol complex, they are constructing a method to try to impeach the President of the United States.
Banana republics do that. Soviet-style justice does that. It is not justice in the Soviet, it is not justice here.
Also it says, ``At the conclusion of questioning pursuant to this paragraph, the committee shall proceed with questioning under the 5- minute rule pursuant to clause. . . . '' Does that allow all Members? That is not determined.
`` . . . minority witness requests, the ranking minority member may submit to the chair, in writing, any requests for witness testimony . . . '' But ``any such request shall be accompanied by a detailed written justification of the relevance of the testimony of each requested witness to the investigation described in the first section of the resolution.'' Then it says, ``The ranking minority member of the Permanent Select Committee is authorized, with the concurrence of the chair, to require, as deemed necessary to the investigation . . . subpoena. . . . ''
Let me boil this down for you, Mr. Speaker. What it really says is, the chair has subpoena power, and the ranking member has subpoena power, if the chair allows the ranking member to have subpoena power, which means the majority runs this whole show. The ranking member, the minority, if he does not like it that he is denied subpoena power, oh, he is free to appeal it to the full committee. The full committee, which is dominated by Democrats and commanded by Adam Schiff and will never--an I will put this point down--will never roll their speaker on a question of a subpoena for a witness that might defend the President of the United States, as called by the ranking member, Devin Nunes. That is what we are dealing with.
``In the case that the chair declines to concur in a proposed action of the ranking minority member . . . the ranking minority member shall have the right to refer to the committee for decision. . . .'' That is just what I said. He can go to the committee, but the votes aren't going to be there in an objective fashion. The votes are only going to be those that follow down the partisan line. That is what it is set up to do.
It says, ``The chair is authorized to make publicly available . . . the transcripts of depositions.'' And they may be ``with appropriate redactions for classified and other sensitive information.'' Other sensitive information means whatever Adam Schiff decides the public shouldn't know if it runs contrary to his agenda will be redacted before any report comes out of there. And remember, we are not going to see the video, we are not going to hear the audio, we are not going to read the transcript. We are going to get the edited version that Adam Schiff would deliver to us.
It says, ``The Permanent Select Committee is directed to issue a report setting forth its findings and recommendations. . . . The chair shall transmit such report . . . to the Committee on the Judiciary. . . .'' Well, so the report would go to the Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee then would have the responsibility presumably of taking up an impeachment motion and debating it up or down and voting on it in the Judiciary Committee. It takes a lot of authority out of the hands of Jerry Nadler, the chair of the committee. And it says to me that the Speaker and Adam Schiff and others in leadership over on this side of the aisle don't have the confidence that Jerry Nadler will handle this the way they would like to see him handle it.
``The report required by this paragraph shall be prepared in consultation with the chairs of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on Oversight and Reform.'' Prepared with their counsel with the chairs. Seems like they left out the ranking members. There will be no minority input in this. They are just going to sit down with the chairs of some other committees that they claim to be relevant and have them weigh in on this before this report comes out, Mr. Speaker.
``The chair of the Permanent Select Committee . . . in consultation with the ranking minority member, to transfer such records or materials to the Committee on the Judiciary.'' The chair in consultation. What does ``consultation'' mean? That means Adam Schiff can say, hey, Devin Nunes, I am going to introduce this report and send it over to the Judiciary Committee. What do you think? And ranking member Nunes can say, ``I don't like it. I think it is dishonest.'' Well, too bad, we consulted, now I am sending it to judiciary. That is all this language requires. This is a phony resolution, Mr. Speaker.
``Committee on the Judiciary.'' It says, ``The House authorizes the Committee on the Judiciary to conduct proceedings relating to the impeachment inquiry . . . including such procedures as to allow for the participation of the President and his counsel.'' Oh, that is good. I would be happy to have the President's counsel there, but it doesn't say the judiciary, it says, authorizes the committee to conduct those proceedings. It doesn't say shall allow the President's counsel. So that is all missing.
`` . . . Judiciary is authorized to promulgate additional procedures as it deems necessary. . . .'' Well, that will be the majority deeming necessary that which they think will best impeach the President, not an impartial hearing.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I want to see a balanced and a fair process, one that is consistent with the history of the United States of America.
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