Weaponization of the Doj
Floor Speech
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for doing this.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to dovetail with what Mr. Good has talked about, and that is the weaponization of the Federal Government against American citizens for political purposes.
It is bad enough when it becomes weaponized against American citizens, but it becomes actually exponentially worse when it becomes a tool of authoritarianism to actually attack political opponents.
Why is it worse? It is worse because it undermines the very foundation of the rule of law and of the free association and free speech of American citizens, from which we recognize all of our political apparatus.
Let's think about this. We know the committee of weaponization, the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, recently put out a report dealing with the misuse of financial records of Americans. Imagine if the Federal Government could get ahold of everybody's credit card statements. Well, they can, actually. Why can they? Because they have asked for it, and the banks and credit card companies, many of them, have actually turned that information over to the FBI and the Department of Justice.
For what reason? There is no particular reason. There is no indicia of probable cause or suspicious behavior. They are just acquiring metadata so they can go after and pursue the individuals.
We see the same thing with this movement to buy up additional metadata from data brokers, private commercial data brokers. They do that so they can avoid the requirements of suspicious conduct or probable cause.
That is what went on when the FBI actually did millions of queries on American citizens and did hundreds of thousands of illegal searches of the data of American citizens.
They didn't have probable cause. There was nothing, according to statute. This is part of the problem with the FISA statute. They had no reason to believe that any of those searches would lead to finding criminal conduct, yet they still went after these American citizens.
The DOJ and judiciary are joined by the ATF. The ATF has been going after firearm licensees, distributors, trying to find technical errors showing up because this is the way the Biden administration is trying to disarm the American public.
It just goes on. Every institution has been weaponized. The military has been weaponized.
It looks like General Perry is here. He might want to talk about that.
The education system is weaponized. You know what happens when you have a generation or two that has been indoctrinated into how bad this country is, that we have no moral high ground, that we don't respect freedom, that we are going to basically embrace critical race theory and that type of the thing.
First of all, you remember that when they did this, they said there is no such thing as critical race theory. That is what the Democrats said here. We were in Judiciary. We had debates on it. They said there is no such thing.
Of course, there is such a thing. Critical theory grew right out of the Frankfurt School, the philosophical group that was led by Jurgen Habermas, Theodor Adorno and the others in the Frankfurt School. They came over and created the critical theory.
In the early seventies, a law professor created the notion of critical race theory. He published articles. It was adopted. The reality is what has happened with that is you have an indoctrinated generation that believes that America is no good, was no good, and will never be good because it is systemically and inherently problematic. It is not just critical race theory. There is a whole bundle of other critical arguments related to critical theory.
You have district attorneys and county attorneys who have run on the notion that those who commit violent crime are misunderstood and should be released into the public, and that those who are victimized become marginalized, which is why I introduced the ALVIN bill, which was to get at Mr. Bragg in New York, and the WILLIS Act.
What are these meant to do? They are meant to use what the Founders gave us within the Constitution, which is our opportunity to use the funding streams and the purse strings to actually try to bring a runaway executive branch back in.
This all culminates in today's actions. What do we see happening? I won't steal my friend's thunder because he was talking about former President Donald Trump, who is undergoing four pieces of lawfare. Those lawfare originated right in the White House. They are coming down from President Biden. How do we know that? Because the paramour of Fani Willis came up and met in the White House to get instructions. How do we know that? Because Jack Smith, who is prosecuting him here on the Mar-a-Lago case, went to the White House multiple times to get instructions. How do we know that? Because Alvin Bragg also met with the White House. How do we know that? Because Matthew Colangelo, one of the high-ranking DOJ lawyers, left that DOJ and went to Alvin Bragg's office after Alvin Bragg and everybody else who looked at the case that is going on in New York City said there is no there there.
By the way, they probably were also told your two star witnesses are Stormy Daniels, who has basically said multiple times--four different times--there was never any interaction between her and Donald Trump, and then Michael Cohen, who has a long string of convictions for lying. He lied about lying, and then he lied about lying about lying today. We heard it in the hours of testimony we saw.
The next step is, how else do you weaponize government? You use it to shield bad acts from the public. Let me give you one. This is my last one. Today, the Judiciary Committee voted to hold Merrick Garland in contempt of court. Tonight, I anticipate the Oversight Committee will do the same.
What did the Biden administration do? President Biden has asserted executive privilege. Now, I want my colleagues to think about this for just a moment. The rationale for the executive privilege based on what Merrick Garland said today, both in an oral and written statement, was two reasons. Number one, we are not going to be able to pursue sensitive investigations. He didn't say how that works, but that is not a reason for executive privilege. It isn't. The other thing with regard to executive privilege is they talked about politics and the political ramifications if this audio recording was released.
Now, you have already released the transcript. By the way, both of those arguments are undercut because you already released a written transcript.
The only reason not to bring out the recording is because you were abashed, embarrassed because you either doctored your transcript, your written transcript, or because the performance is so egregiously bad in the oral transcript. Neither of those will work.
I am going to call right now and remind everybody that we can take action here. We should. I will just tell you that that is another way that you can weaponize government. That is to hide information, fail to be transparent. That is what this administration has done.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate both of the chairmen for their comments.
I want to add just a couple things. We are a constitutional republic. We are not a democracy. A constitutional republic actually elects representatives to make decisions and represent the will of a district or a State. That is the distinction.
Democracy actually comes from the Latin word ``demos''. It is where the people themselves are voting directly on the issues and decisions to be made. That is really what happens in a democracy, which is why the Founders warned us and said: You have a constitutional republic, you don't have a democracy. You don't have a democracy because democracies have been short and turbulent in their destruction.
As one historian said in about 1804, it has been the sad history of democracies that as soon as people realize they can vote themselves benefits from the government, they do so, and the government terminates. So we have a constitutional republic.
We have separation of powers both horizontally and vertically. James Madison taught us very clearly that we should honor those separations rigidly.
When we talk about horizontally, we always think of the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the judiciary, which by the way, are not coequal branches. The Founders were very clear on this. They described the judiciary as the weakest branch. We control their jurisdiction, except for in a few cases of original jurisdiction. We create the Article III courts with the exception of the United States Supreme Court.
The executive branch has very limited powers. In fact, they thought the executive branch itself, the Presidency would be more ceremonial than substantive, and the legislative branch would be small with enumerated powers, but because the House of Representatives was elected directly by the people, it would have the purse strings.
The Senate was to be elected by the State legislatures, and they were to represent the States' interests.
Well, what has happened is we are upside down. We are so upside down because every State--having spent many years in the State legislature, and I think my colleagues know this.
What happens is this: We spend about 80 percent of our time in the State of Arizona trying to respond to Federal mandates passed by this bunch of yo-yos or by the bureaucracy where they were telling us things like, gee, in Phoenix, Arizona, what we want you to do is we want you to water down your dust because the number one particulate in the Phoenix metro area is dust. That is your biggest pollutant. Water it down.
The other half is EPA saying: You can't water it down because we are watching you on your water usage. This is from people who are cubicle dwellers who are controlling, without any understanding, 5.5 million people in the Phoenix metro area.
They become weaponized. They are nameless. They are faceless. They are the D.C. cartel, which consists of bureaucracy, media, and lobbyists. That is your cartel. They have taken the institutions of this country, and they have weaponized them against the American people.
It is time for this body to say we are the ones closest to the people, and we must do all we can. We may not have leverage over the Senate now, we may not have leverage over the executive branch now, but we must do and can do everything possible to restore the separation of powers both horizontally and vertically. If we did that, I guarantee you what would happen is this weaponization would dissipate. It wouldn't go quietly in the night, but we have felt it wrap around our necks like the flaxen cords of sin, and we have got to begin cutting it off.
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