The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE FBI STEPS DOWN” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H671-H672 on Jan. 29, 2018.
The State Department is responsibly for international relations with a budget of more than $50 billion. Tenure at the State Dept. is increasingly tenuous and it's seen as an extension of the President's will, ambitions and flaws.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE FBI STEPS DOWN
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 22 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).
Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, Mr. Gohmert, my classmate, for yielding to me.
Mr. Speaker, tomorrow night the President will come before this Chamber to address Americans and the wider world. While some in this Chamber and those watching at home will disagree with the President's vision, I hope that we may all agree to pay attention to the facts.
The fact remains that our economy is booming. Thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, middle class Americans are receiving bonuses and are empowered to keep more of their paychecks. Energy companies are slashing their rates so that taxpayers are spending less on energy. Families are now able to keep more of their hard-earned money to spend any way they wish.
The Dow Jones has soared into new heights under this administration. These facts will surely be addressed by the President, even if they are conveniently ignored by some in this Chamber and members of the news media.
I look forward to attending the State of the Union and encourage all those tuning in to remember the facts.
Mr. GOHMERT. My friend, former President Foxx, collegiate president and great Member of the House, made some great points. I look forward to hearing the President's State of the Union Address tomorrow as well.
Mr. Speaker, there has been a great deal going on here lately in Washington, and something that has been a real threat to what I believe is the greatest law enforcement institution in the history of mankind, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has pointed out a number of times, had candidate Hillary Clinton won the Presidency in November of 2016, we would have no idea how badly or how significantly the Department of Justice and the FBI had been weaponized politically. I just thank God we had the opportunity to find out before it was too late and to do something about it.
Today's news has been that, as The Wall Street Journal article by Aruna Viswanatha and Del Quentin Wilber today reported: FBI deputy chief steps down after Trump criticism.
The article points out: ``Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe left his post on Monday after his bosses urged him to step aside, said people familiar with the matter, following weeks of criticism from President Donald Trump and other Republicans.''
I guess I would be one of those other Republicans.
``Mr. McCabe will take leftover vacation time until he is technically eligible to retire from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in March, the people said.
``Mr. McCabe has faced a steady string of attacks over an alleged conflict of interest stemming from his wife's previous run for Virginia State Senate as a Democrat before he became deputy director. He has denied any conflict.
``But Mr. Trump and other Republicans have cited it as part of a broader assertion of bias on the part of the FBI, Justice Department, and special counsel's office as they investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign and any links between the Trump campaign and Moscow in that effort. Mr. Trump has specifically called for Mr. McCabe's ouster.
``Democrats say these assertions are an attempt to distract from the investigations and discredit them.
``FBI Director Chris Wray, addressing Mr. McCabe's departure in an email to employees, said Mr. Wray `will not be swayed by political or other pressure' in making decisions, according to a person familiar with the message.''
That is quite interesting coming this long after evidence was slapping people in the face, figuratively speaking. It appears that evidence that is overly compelling also may not actually sway Chris Wray into taking actions as the Director of the FBI that a reasonable and prudent Director of the FBI would have taken under the same or similar circumstances.
``Mr. Wray thanked Mr. McCabe for his service, adding''--I guess that includes the politicalization, the weaponizing, of the FBI in which Mr. McCabe was involved--``that Mr. McCabe said he would take leave immediately following a conversation between the two, the person said. The email was first reported by The New York Times.
``In the message, Mr. Wray also said he wouldn't comment on a pending report from the Justice Department's inspector general, or inhouse watchdog, which is expected to criticize the FBI's handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton's email arrangement when she was Secretary of State. The report is expected to prompt some personnel changes.''
You think?
``Mr. McCabe's decision Monday was a surprise to many inside the FBI''--apparently those who had gotten used to it being weaponized and politicized.
``Officials abruptly canceled a press conference to discuss an unrelated criminal operation. . . .''
It goes on to say: ``The U.S. intelligence community, in January 2017, said it believed Russia had conducted an influence operation with the goal of hurting Mrs. Clinton and helping Mr. Trump in the 2016 Presidential election.''
Gee, okay, so this article is citing the U.S. intelligence community. I guess that would include the part of the intelligence community that made the decision in 2012, along with the State Department--that would be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--to leave the Ambassador to Libya exposed to grave danger, and even after seeing footage of attacks, the same intelligence community that decided they were better off leaving people to die and ordering four heroes to stand down and not go protect the Ambassador and others from dying, that same intelligence community. How about that?
They, apparently, according to the article, said they believed Russia conducted an influence operation. It turns out the same intelligence community that couldn't stand George W. Bush and leaked plenty of information to hurt his Presidency, and also has done a great job of leaking material to hurt President Trump's administration, if this article is correct, they helped the weaponized Department of Justice launch an investigation into potential Russian influence.
It is just so amazing, when we start finding out facts that there was a dossier that Fusion GPS was involved in getting, strictly an opposition research effort that ended up having totally fabricated, really outrageously outlandish allegations, and according to the news media, what was in that dossier was so outrageous, if you were a Russian, you would think, these stupid Americans will have to be out of their minds to think that Donald Trump would have done something like this. But maybe--maybe--the now weaponized Department of Justice in America and the Obama administration when coupled with the Clinton campaign, maybe they are crazy enough to think Donald Trump would do something like this. It is going to end up making them look bad in the end, and that would certainly affect the election if the campaign were crazy enough to utilize such a totally fabricated dossier, I guess that would affect the election.
I still have trouble getting over the decision to tell American heroes to stand down, don't go try to save the lives of our Ambassador and the others there with the Ambassador. Tyrone Woods, Ty, was not going to have any of it. He and the other heroes headed out there to help as they could, including willingness to lay down their lives to protect other Americans, something the CIA station chief, in collaboration with other ``U.S. intelligence community,'' apparently decided was not worthwhile.
This article goes on to say: ``Mr. McCabe's abrupt departure is the latest event in a highly unusual back-and-forth between the Trump administration and a Federal law enforcement establishment that is both investigating him as it works for him and cherishes its independence.''
We know that is not true. They don't cherish their independence. Oh, yeah, the FBI, in other levels, absolutely does. But then, at the same time, they also cherish their good working relationship with other local and State law enforcement.
This article further down said: ``Mr. McCabe's resignation also comes as the FBI faces fallout from thousands of text messages between an FBI agent and lawyer who were involved in the Russia investigation, including some texts harshly critical of Mr. Trump.''
How about that? The lawyer working for Mr. McCabe.
Apparently, Mr. McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits as the President himself tweeted out. I can't help but still go back to the former Director of the FBI, Mr. Mueller, who set up a personnel program that would ensure that the thousands and thousands of years of incredible law enforcement experience that was obtained by honorable, honest FBI supervisors--that they would be run off by Mr. Mueller. He didn't want those people hanging around.
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He put a personal policy in place that ran off thousands of years of incredible law enforcement experience from the FBI.
I can't help but think that if Mr. Mueller had not had such a policy to get rid of people that had great experience in law enforcement from the FBI, there would have been people who could have gently nudged people like Andrew McCabe or Mr. Strzok or Lisa Page and would have warned them when they were getting close to the edge before they got into such total politicization of our important FBI and DOJ. But those people weren't there because Director Mueller put in place a policy that ran them off.
I still wonder about the victims at the Boston Marathon bombing. Had we had an FBI Director that was as interested in seeking out radical Islamist killers as he was in having community outreach with the mosque that was started by a man who is now doing 23 years in Federal prison for supporting terrorism, if he had not been so interested in playing patty-cake out with his community partnership and instead gone to the mosque and been asking specific questions about the older Tsarnaev brother after we got two notices that he had been radicalized--they never asked a question, not one, about Tsarnaev; about what he has been concentrating on, what he is reading, what he is memorizing, what he is talking about, what books he has got. They didn't know what questions to ask because Director Mueller had seen to the purging of the FBI training materials so the FBI agents didn't know what questions to ask. They didn't know what they were looking for in a radicalized Islamist.
The same scenario has played out time and again. Tsarnaev should have never been able to carry out that bombing, because he came into the crosshairs of the FBI investigation. Basically, from all we can find out from the hearings, they asked him if he was a terrorist. He said he wasn't. They asked his mom if he was a terrorist. She said: He is a good boy.
That is an encapsulation of it. But they didn't know what to ask because of Mueller.
Michele Bachmann and I reviewed material that was purged. The FBI classified it so we couldn't reveal, Mr. Speaker, to others publicly what was purged. Some of it was silly and needed to be purged.
Say, for example, there were a purging of verses from the Koran. Why should anything ever be purged from the Koran if it is part of the training materials?
You have to ask Mr. Mueller that.
The FBI and the DOJ deserve better. We are looking forward to finding out what the IG report has to say, but it is time for games to stop. It is time for law enforcement to do their jobs at the Department of Justice and the FBI. Jeff Sessions has got his hands full. It was obvious that he felt like he could trust those who were called career DOJ employees. Hopefully he has learned some of those career employees didn't have the law enforcement long in the tooth to give them the benefit of their experience because Mueller ran them off. They got off into an area of politicization of the DOJ and the FBI. He can't trust the people he would have been able to otherwise, had the FBI not gotten so far off track.
We need a second special counsel, as I advised the President back in June, and we need it now. Investigations cannot be conducted by Mueller into what Mueller did during the prior Russian investigation, along with U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, and could not properly investigate his joined-at-the-hip friend, Mr. Comey.
He could not properly investigate what will be in the inspector general's report, but it certainly should require further investigation. He can't do that. It needs to be totally independent. I am not talking about the godfather of one of Mr. Comey's kids, Patrick Fitzgerald, who conveniently got appointed after he talked John Ashcroft into recusing himself. I am talking about somebody totally independent. That is what we need.
Where does the DOJ go to get its reputation back?
It is going to be a long process and it is going to take truly independent people cleaning up the mess that has been created so that can happen. We need a reputable Department of Justice and FBI, and it is high time we got one back.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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