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.
“FBI INVESTIGATIONS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H1694-H1696 on March 19, 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:
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FBI INVESTIGATIONS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, with so much going on these days in the way of investigations, we still have Robert Mueller, special counsel--of course, he was supposed to look into potential illegal collusion between President Trump and Russia, and it has morphed into basically whatever he wants to pursue.
It is kind of like the investigation that James Comey as the Deputy Attorney General recommended that the then-Attorney General John Ashcroft should recuse himself, which he followed that advice, and then Mr. Comey was able to appoint his very dear friend and his child's godfather, Patrick Fitzgerald, to be the special attorney.
Special attorney, special counsel, and Mr. Comey apparently knew at the time the investigation began that the person who leaked Valerie Plame's identity as CIA agent was named Richard Armitage, somebody they did not want to go after even though it was supposed to have been a crime. But they weren't interested in the crime. They were interested in nailing a person or persons.
And it really appears that is not only what Patrick Fitzgerald did. He wanted somebody's hide, and apparently it was Dick Cheney's. He might have settled for Karl Rove. Apparently, the offer was made more than once. It was reported that Fitzgerald was offering Scooter Libby.
If you can just give me anything that will convict Vice President Cheney, then we will make sure you don't have anything to worry about.
But Scooter Libby was not going to lie to get himself out from under the gun, and as was reported, a witness against him, Judy Miller, later believed, when she found some notes, whoops, Libby had not lied as she apparently thought. Apparently, he was innocent, just as he had contended and, apparently, would have walked away without any problems, without the full force of the Federal Government going after him if he had just given him anything--that is Comey's child's godfather--given him anything that would have allowed him to convict Vice President Cheney.
It appears Mueller's investigation now has ceased looking for a crime involving Trump and Russia and is focused on just finding something--
kind of like the effort that Comey's buddy--if it is Comey's buddy, since we are told that Comey and Mueller are basically joined at the hip, then it must have been Mueller's friend, too. But they wanted Vice President Cheney, and when Scooter Libby wouldn't lie and do that, well, they convicted him of lying when, apparently, he did not lie. He was innocent.
You can go back and find these type of things in Robert Mueller's wake, whether it was as the assistant U.S. attorney in charge of criminal investigations in Boston when they were found later to have had people who worked for Mueller who were in bed with Whitey Bulger, the mob leader, and Mueller kept insisting that these four people who were framed by FBI agents should remain in prison and not be paroled. Two of them died in prison. There was ultimately a settlement, but Mueller couldn't be bothered with a settlement because of the actions of the people who worked for him.
Just like he went after Dr. Hatfill, claiming that he was the anthrax killer, and some say that was the highest profile case this FBI Director had handled. Others would say it was the prosecution and conviction of Ted Stevens, U.S. Senator, which we later found out was a frame-up. The FBI is reported to have hidden evidence that completely exonerated him and manufactured evidence. After that came to light, his conviction, all of the case was dropped, as it should have been, well before it was ever even pursued. But they got the intended result.
The trial, a week or so before his election, he was convicted and, therefore, lost the election. Kind of like what Mueller, as FBI Director, had his FBI do to Curt Weldon whom I saw stand at this podium numerous times and talk about the FBI had some information before 9/11 that showed that they could have stopped it, something like that. But he just kept beating up on the FBI.
I didn't have any idea whether what Curt Weldon was talking about was true or not, but I do know that just a few weeks before his reelection, after he had been easily reelected a number of times and after he was shown to have a decent lead over a very good Democratic opponent, 3 weeks before the election, the FBI stormed his daughter's office, and Mueller's FBI had leaked the information, apparently, because the place was covered up with reporters of all kinds so that they could document the raid on Curt Weldon's daughter's office.
Shortly thereafter, protesters with signs showed up at Curt's office, claiming that he had been caught red-handed, and the implications were clear from the FBI that Curt Weldon was guilty of something, and that brought about his defeat by about 2 percent.
As I understand it, the year after that raid on the Weldons, the FBI contacted Curt Weldon's daughter and said: You need to come pick up all this stuff up.
There was never a grand jury that we know of. There was no indictment. There was no real investigation. Mueller's FBI got tired of Curt Weldon making allegations from this podium I am standing at now, and they silenced him as a Representative.
There is much more, but we find out, and there is an article in the American Thinker by Daniel John Sobieski, and it talks about Uranium One. It says: ``Back in July, I called for a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton's collusion with Russia to turn over control of 20 percent of our uranium supplies to Russian interests in return for some
$145 million in donation to the Clinton Foundation. Now it turns out that there was one, an FBI investigation dating back to 2009, with current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller up to their eyeballs in covering up evidence of Hillary's collusion, bordering on treason, with a Vladimir Putin's Russia.''
``Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion, and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin's,'' says a report by the Hill.
John Solomon, Alison Spann of the Hill, said this:
``Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings, and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.''
So from today's report, we find out that the investigation was supervised by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, who is now President Trump's Deputy Attorney General, and then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who is now the Deputy FBI Director under President Trump.
Robert Mueller was head of the FBI from 2001 through September 2013, until James Comey took over as FBI Director in 2013. They were both involved in this Russian scam being that this case started in 2009 and ended in 2015.
Let me insert parenthetically, Mr. Speaker, I don't know who recommended the U.S. attorney investigating Russian collusion with Hillary Clinton and with the trucking firm, with others here in the United States, but whoever recommended Rod Rosenstein to President Trump as Deputy Attorney General should be fired, whoever that was. They are not there to help President Trump.
Further down, the article says: ``Tuesday, on Fox Business Network,
`Lou Dobbs Tonight,' Breitbart editor at large and the author of
`Clinton Cash,' Peter Schweizer said there needs to be a Federal investigation into the Russian uranium deal then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's State Department approved after the Clinton Foundation receiving $145 million from the shareholders of Uranium One. . . .''
So it is rather interesting. The article goes on to point out that about the investigation into Hillary Clinton, and it points--it quotes from Schweizer, saying: ``A lot of people don't realize it now, in parts of the Midwest American soil is owned by Vladimir Putin's government because this deal went through.''
He goes on and makes some interesting observations.
At the conclusion, he says: ``Actually, we no longer need an investigation of Hillary Clinton and Uranium One. This FBI investigation in conjunction to what we already knew is prima facie evidence of criminal corruption and intentionally putting of American national security at risk for personal financial gain.''
Then this article from Lee Smith, March 13, titled, ``Robert Mueller's Beltway Cover-Up.'' This points out that if the deep state here--and it does cross party lines. They wanted somebody to effectively cover up all of the leaks, each one of which is a crime punishable by time in prison. If the deep state here in Washington wanted somebody who could protect all of these criminals who are working in intelligence, or FBI, that regularly leak information to hurt people who threaten their power here in Washington, then they could not have a better person as special counsel than Robert Mueller, as overseen by Rod Rosenstein.
It points out that ``Mueller took his job not at the behest of the man who by all accounts he is likely to professionally and personally disdain, Donald Trump, but of the blue-chip Beltway elite of which he is a charter member. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed him nearly a year ago to lead an investigation without parameters. That's because Mueller's job is to obscure the abuses of the U.S. surveillance apparatus that occurred under the Obama administration.
``The fact that someone at the level of former FBI Director was called in to sweep up the mess left by bad actors in the Bureau and Central Intelligence Agency and other parts of the intelligence bureaucracy suggests that the problems are even worse than previously thought. And that means the constituency from Mueller's political intervention is enormous.''
Mueller is said to believe that the Eric Prince meeting, the reference back in January of 2017 with the Russian banker--that would be well after the election, obviously--was to set up a back channel with the Kremlin.
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But that makes no sense. According to the foundational text of the collusion narrative, the dossier allegedly written by former British spy Christopher Steele, the Kremlin had cultivated Trump himself for years.
So what is the purpose of a back channel when, supposedly, Vladimir Putin already had a key to the front door of Mar-a-Lago?
Further, the collusion thesis holds that the Trump circle teamed with high-level Russian officials for the purpose of winning the 2016 election.
How does a meeting that Erik Prince had a week before Trump's inauguration advance the crooked election victory plot?
It doesn't. It contradicts it. Erik Prince may well be involved with questionable practices that would make people's blood run cold--and he talks some about Erik Prince--but the idea that whenever anyone who supported Trump, or even voted for him, met with a Russian national, the dish on the menu was treason is the stuff of Cold War ``B'' movies. But it is also evidence of something more than prosecutorial overreach.
The fact that Mueller has zeroed in on Prince points to a key motive behind his ongoing investigation. And he talks about Prince was thrown into the middle of Russiagate after an April 3, 2017, Washington Post story reported his meeting with the Russian banker.
But how did anyone know about the meeting?
After the story came out, Prince said he was shown specific evidence by sources from the intelligence community that the information was swept up in the collection of electronic communications and his identity was unmasked. The U.S. official or officials who gave his name to the The Washington Post broke the law when they leaked classified information.
Then on further it says Mueller presumably knows whether Prince's name was indeed unmasked and then leaked to the press, and that the leak was a crime. Mueller certainly knows that most of the case he has regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election was built by abuses of the foreign intelligence surveillance apparatus and other related crimes that are punishable with jail time.
The identity of Trump's short-term National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, was swept up and leaked to the press in the same way as Prince's. It was leaked to the same newspaper, The Washington Post. As I explained last week, the identity of Attorney General Jeff Sessions was also unmasked from an intelligence intercept and leaked to The Washington Post. The fact that the FBI had secured a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on Carter Page was also leaked to The Washington Post. The warrant on Carter Page was secured on the basis of findings in the Christopher Steele dossier, an unverified piece of opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.
As Director of the FBI during the post-9/11 period, when foreign intelligence surveillance and its abuses made regular, front-page headlines, Mueller knows exactly how the system can be abused and what the penalties are. He also recognizes that Russiagate is evidence of how it was abused and who abused it, including some of the same people he worked with during his 12-year tenure as FBI Director.
The purpose of the Mueller inquiry is, therefore, not to investigate the most ludicrously seeming charges in the Christopher Steele dossier, but to protect the institution of the FBI, former colleagues, as well as the National Security Surveillance System. Therefore, the inquiry has to cover up the sinful origins of the collusion narrative itself, which was borne in repeated abuses of power and subsequent crimes committed by U.S. officials in the intelligence bureaucracy and the Obama administration.
So, Mr. Speaker, regardless of what anybody thinks of President Donald Trump--and I know there are some Republicans who are unhappy that he was elected President and want him gone at all costs. And I know that most of the Democrats I know, it just grieves them to no end that he was elected; they want him gone at all costs. But at some point Members of Congress in the House and Senate have got to wake up to the fact that we have crimes being committed in the FBI and in our intelligence apparatus. There are people who are being paid with government checks who are out to destroy people who disagree with their power grabs and their crimes.
This article points out Mueller's investigation has got to drag on as long as necessary to prevent any of the people who have committed the crimes of leaking and other crimes--leaking, lying, perjury, obstructing justice, trying to create an insurance policy to take out a sitting President of the United States. It is time we wake up.
When elected officials in this city have to fear for their political lives by people who they have given power in the FBI, DOJ, CIA, NSA, then the system is broken. It is out of control. And it is how you lose a democratic republic like we have, or like we used to have. It is time to get it under control.
Mueller is not the answer. He is the problem. He is the poster child for the problem that he has created during his entire tenure. And if he had any decency, he would have never accepted this special prosecution on anything involving Russia because he had been involved in that investigation and because he remained silent or perhaps spoke up to keep it hush-hush.
But he and Rosenstein both, they should have stopped the sale of 20 percent of our uranium to a national enemy. Apparently the Obama administration was so intent on that reset because they felt like, you know, George W. Bush just overreacted; all Putin did was invade Georgia, one country invading another smaller, weaker country. They felt like Bush overreacted and said: You shouldn't be doing this; put some sanctions in place.
So they wanted to show: We are just fine with you invading adjoining countries. Maybe even those that don't adjoin. But, sure, at least adjoining countries.
Whether they knew it or not, they gave the green light to Putin to invade Crimea, to invade Ukraine. And they gave the green light--they had to know this, because it was part of what they did--to the sale of 20 percent of our uranium to a country that most recently had its dictatorial leader bragging that he had missiles that he could put those nukes on that the United States couldn't stop. And those nukes can be tipped--at least 20 percent of them--with what Hillary Clinton, Mueller, Rosenstein had to be complicit in giving them, in letting them have.
This is serious stuff. But until the leakers and the abusers of our intelligence system are brought to justice, then nobody who believes in representative government is safe. We end up like China, like Russia, where you are scared to death of the people behind the scenes, behind the government, or even the dictatorial leader because you know they made you and they can destroy you.
And when the free press is not free, they are complicit in the assisting of the committing of crimes by gladly accepting the leaks, publishing them to complete the crime, we are in big trouble.
So I would say, if Mueller had any decency, he would just resign. And he doesn't even have to explain how wrong it was for him to accept the appointment. I had hoped that the damage he did to the FBI would have come to an end when his 10 years were up. But, oh, no. President Obama was so thrilled with the things he was doing, he extended his term 2 years and pushed it through Congress.
People wouldn't listen to me when I said: Oh, no, this is not a guy you want for 2 more years. He has done enough damage.
And any Republican who says, ``Oh, he will be fair,'' is either desperately wanting President Trump gone or is intentionally ignoring the facts of Mueller's background from the days as the assistant U.S. attorney in charge of crime in Boston, up through the present.
There are a lot of innocent people who lie in his wake. Some of them got multimillion-dollar settlements for the damage Mueller did to them, but most didn't even get an apology. Mueller couldn't be bothered with how many millions were paid out in Boston because of what he oversaw. He couldn't be bothered with the $5.8 million that was paid to Hatfill because the FBI, under Mueller, and under his direction, apparently--
from what the article said, he took direct oversight over the Hatfill investigation, assuring, when there was no evidence that he committed any wrong, that he was still the one.
It is time that Mueller's investigation come to an end. I think Lee Smith had it right. I think the article by Daniel John Sobieski had things right. We have already had an investigation of Russian collusion, and it was done by U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Robert Mueller, and they shut her down, shut up the information so the Clinton Foundation could be the beneficiary. And goodness' sake, they were big-time beneficiaries.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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