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.
“CONSTITUTIONAL AND MORAL AUTHORITY” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H318-H322 on Jan. 16, 2020.
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:
CONSTITUTIONAL AND MORAL AUTHORITY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2019, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin
(Mr. Gallagher).
Protecting Our Waters and Communities
Mr. GALLAGHER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. Speaker, last week, the House passed H.R. 535, the PFAS Action Act of 2019. This important legislation marks a critical step forward in addressing the public health crisis caused by so-called forever chemicals like PFAS.
According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, certain compounds of PFAS, like PFOA and PFOS, are known to cause liver damage, thyroid disease, asthma, birth defects, and even some cancers.
Unfortunately, for many in northeast Wisconsin, this fight is personal and tragic. Anyone who has been to our small corner of the country knows that water is part of what makes northeast Wisconsin so special and beautiful. Unfortunately, this water, which is so central to our way of life, is under threat from chemicals like PFOA and PFOS.
While until recently, PFAS was an unknown contaminant. Recent studies give us a better understanding of the risks posed by compounds like PFOA and PFOS. Not only have our communities been unwittingly placed at risk by these toxins, but it has taken far too long to get them the resources required to mitigate their effects.
As a result, these toxic chemicals have contaminated local water sources and literally poisoned the well from which Wisconsinites drink.
No one should be afraid to drink or use the water from their tap. The fact that this is the case for many across the country, including in northeast Wisconsin, and in Peshtigo, in particular, means one thing: We must act with a sense of urgency to defend our communities and protect the clean water that underpins our way of life.
As a member of the PFAS Task Force, I am committed to finding ways to combat PFAS and its negative effects on our communities.
Last year, Representative Delgado and I introduced the PFAS Right-to-
Know Act, a bipartisan bill that would require PFAS to be listed on the Toxics Release Inventory and require manufacturers, processors, and producers to report their usage of PFAS chemicals to the EPA.
Signed into law last month as part of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, this bill provides communities with a better understanding of where these toxins come from so we can better combat their effects. While this was an important first step, there is more to be done.
The PFAS Action Act builds on last year's progress through a number of important provisions. It designates PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances to ensure that all those responsible for contamination do their part to clean up and restore our waters and habitats. It establishes stronger drinking water standards to give States and communities the resources they need to mitigate contamination. It strengthens the Clean Water Act to include PFOS and PFOA as toxic pollutants.
This legislation will be critical in protecting waters in northeast Wisconsin and across the country for current and future generations. When it comes to the PFAS crisis, I would simply argue to my own colleagues who may be skeptical of which direction we need to go or the need for the Federal Government to get involved that inaction is not an option.
The PFAS Action Act is a thorough, comprehensive, and long-overdue solution, and I want to thank Representatives Pallone and Dingell for their leadership, as well as my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their hard work in protecting our water and our communities.
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Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is always an honor to be here in the House of Representatives and have an opportunity to speak, as so many places around the world don't have those privileges, those rights.
Sometimes people ask, well, if the rights are truly endowed by our creator, then why don't people have them all over the world?
And it is an endowment, these rights, like an inheritance; but the only way you get to keep any inheritance is if you are willing to fight for it, because, if you are not, in this world, evil people will always be trying to take what you have and take it for themselves.
So we have been blessed to be in a country where we had men and women willing to stand up and fight for us.
My 4 years in the Army, we were never in combat. I still think we should have gone, in 1979, to Iran; and if we had addressed the attack on our American property, which was the U.S. Embassy, then the Ayatollah would have been gone, and there would be tens of thousands of Americans still alive today. It is just very unfortunate.
But at least Soleimani is no longer around to kill Americans and to dream up new devices, whether improvised or exploding devices to kill and maim Americans.
It is one of the great ironies that the lead terrorist in the world, Soleimani, who ordered, directed, got the best architects to design instruments to inflict casualties on Americans--and there were more Americans killed or wounded on that road in from the airport in Iraq.
Some may remember, back in the early days of the war in Iraq, that the most dangerous place we kept hearing was on that road in from the airport. There were so many IEDs and explosive devices that killed, maimed our American military, and they were set to kill and maim American military. That was after Soleimani had taken over the IRGC and he had his special troops.
But he was a terrorist. He had been allowed to keep finding ways to kill Americans for far too long, and the world is a better place without him.
It was amazing that people on both sides of the aisle could agree on that when President Obama ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden, and yet so many of those same people with whom we agreed thought it was atrocious that President Trump would order the taking out of the lead terrorist killing hundreds of Americans. It is just a strange thing.
Some call it Trump Derangement Syndrome. They just have so much hatred for our current President that it doesn't matter that it is in direct conflict with what they have said before.
For example, our chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the minority leader in the Senate had some pretty strong quotes back when President Clinton was impeached, and now they both say 180-degree opposite things, completely contradicting themselves about what impeachment should be and not be.
So it is clear, though, from the Constitution--this is the last sentence of Article II. It says: ``The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason''--that is a crime--
``bribery''--that is a crime--``or other high crimes''--those are crimes--``and misdemeanors''--and those are crimes.
So it is very clear, if you are going to impeach and then convict and remove a President from office, there need to have been crimes. In every one of the prior impeachments--there have only been a few--the allegations involved crimes.
Perjury, as President Clinton was guilty of, is a crime. He was not prosecuted. There still seemed to be a permanent feeling that you couldn't convict a sitting President of a crime. But he paid a very heavy price, being disbarred for perjury and other costs that he had to pay.
But, unfortunately, we now live in a time where right and wrong are supposed to be so relative. It all depends. The ends justify the means. That is the way you lose a great civilization. That is the way you lose moral authority, when right and wrong all become relative.
In fact, John Adams, as President, in 1797, our second President, made very clear when he said this Constitution is meant for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.
If we are going to continue to allow schools to teach relativity of right and wrong and that ends justify the means, you can be mean and evil and hateful so long as your hate and evil conduct is aimed at somebody that you call hateful.
So we have developed quite a quandary here in the United States where so many people--and I know some have said: Oh, I don't hate anybody. But President Trump obviously drives them crazy and spurs them to do and say things they wouldn't normally do and say, and they certainly didn't with President Clinton when he was caught actually lying under oath.
So we have got to get back to teaching right and wrong. There is a right; there is a wrong.
And I know some people say: Well, I am a Christian and, therefore, I know God is love, and, therefore, I love everybody, and that is just the way God is.
But I would direct attention to Psalm 6, beginning with verse 16. It points out that there are actually some things that God hates, and one is a lying tongue; one is a heart that devises wicked schemes; one is a person who stirs up conflict in the community. And, frankly, we had that among some people who conspired to eliminate a sitting President.
Actually, they started out conspiring to use taxpayer funds to use the FBI, intelligence community, even some defense funds, State Department personnel and funds, to prevent Donald Trump from being elected. And then after he was elected, those guns were turned on him to try to eliminate him from office.
Obviously, in the current impeachment, there is no treason; there is no bribery; there is no high crime; there is no misdemeanor. So those pushing these Articles of Impeachment, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, actually ended up being guilty of both of those allegations.
But they are not crimes; they are not high crimes; they are not misdemeanors; they are not bribery. But they are guilty of those themselves.
If you go back, as I am thrilled that so many of my friends across the aisle are doing now, quoting our Founders, they made clear in those early debates that you could not, you should not, could not be able to remove a President or someone because you don't like the way they are doing things or maladministration; or you think they are not doing something quickly enough and so you would say they are obstructing Congress; or you don't like the way they did something so you would say: Oh, they are abusing their power--even though the Obama administration did the very same things, just much worse.
I thought it was worse when I met with a big group of weeping Nigerian mothers whose children were kidnapped and chained to beds, normally raped multiple times a day, from what we were told. I asked the pastor who was trying to assist so many of these Nigerian women: Where are the fathers?
He said: That is part of the tragedy. The fathers know that their little girls are chained to beds and being raped every day, and they don't feel like they should stay in a bed when they were not able to protect their daughters.
And I have got to give it to the Obama administration. They did hold up a sign and say #bringbackourgirls. But from what Nigerians in government there were telling me, they were told: If you really want us to take out Boko Haram for you, we have got the power; we have got the money; we have got the military might; but you are going to have to change your laws to allow abortion and to allow same-sex marriage. And if you are not going to do that, we are not going to help you like we could with Boko Haram.
I saw a quote from a Catholic bishop in Nigeria who was basically saying: Our religious beliefs are not for sale, not to President Obama, to John Kerry, to America. They are not for sale.
So some of us were concerned that we could have helped stop some of the biggest atrocities going on in the world by radical Islam, but money was withheld. Help was withheld in order to achieve a political agenda regarding same-sex marriage and abortion, according to people I met with there in Nigeria, and seemed to be bolstered by articles that have been read back at that time.
We also know that this Congress has repeatedly, since I have been here, made clear we don't want to be giving away money to countries that are going to use it for improper purposes.
Now, of course, that changed a great deal during the Obama administration. We are willing to give $150 billion to people that we knew there is a decent chance they were going to be using it to kill Americans and to terrorize the world, maybe use it, some of it, to pursue nuclear weapons. We have been hearing that some of it was used by Soleimani to help coordinate attacks against Americans around the Middle East because they want Americans out of the Middle East.
But I have had a bill in most of the Congresses in which I have been a Member called the United Nations Voting Accountability Act, and it put requirements on our money.
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I almost got it passed as an amendment early on. It just simply basically says any nation that votes against the United States' position in the U.N. more than half of the time shall receive no assistance of any kind from the United States in the subsequent year. It seems like in March, somewhere around there, we get the voting results from the prior year from the U.N. and you can go through and see what percentage of the time each country voted with us and when they voted against us.
I think it would be a great requirement to put on our financial aid, and as I have said repeatedly since I have been here in Congress, you don't have to pay people to hate you, they will do it for free. You don't have to pay them to hate you, they are perfectly happy to hate you for free.
And as I found from being very small in elementary school, you don't win the respect of a bully by giving them your lunch money or giving them whatever they demand. You have to make them pay a price. Even if you don't win the war, if you hurt them--of course, they hurt you worse--they decide they will pick on somebody else because they don't want to get hurt themselves, and they know you will fight back.
It is nice here in the United States, we are big and strong enough we can take it to bullies, terrorists like Soleimani, and I thank God that he is gone and there will be Americans living as a result of him being gone.
So Trump derangement syndrome has caused the House majority to push through two Articles of Impeachment. We heard for 3 years all of this Russia collusion. As most of us know who have had legal training, collusion is not normally a crime, unless it is with regard to stocks. Normally the term is used as conspiracy, a criminal conspiracy. Somebody came up with a brilliant idea of using the word ``collusion,'' and let's accuse Donald Trump of doing exactly what we have done.
Why else would the President of the United States say to the President of Russia, Tell Vladimir I will have a lot more flexibility after the next election? So they could give in a lot more than he even had in the past.
It is called projecting. You engage in improper conduct and then accuse your opponent of engaging in what you did. That is exactly what we have seen here, projecting.
So you have somebody that gets paid off by corrupt entities in Ukraine, and they turn around--and when the President of the United States does his job and basically says to Ukraine--when they elect a president who got elected on the basis that he was going to end corruption--if you have got evidence of corruption, we sure would like to see it if it involves American people. You know, please, we would like to see what you got if it involves Americans. There is nothing wrong with that. It is perfectly legal.
If you listen to the contention of some people we have heard in Washington, the contention basically is: You may have committed a crime or engaged in corrupt activity, if you will just run for President then we will defend you, saying, you can't go after that person, he is running for President. You are trying to use your office for political purposes. That way somebody that engages in corruption and keeps running for President can never be prosecuted because we will defend you because you shouldn't be prosecuted, you are running for President. So we can say your position is being used for political purposes, where actually if somebody is engaged in corruption it ought to be investigated.
Look what has happened as a result of this Ukraine hoax; it scared a lot of people to death, including people that have worked with Ukraine in our National Security Council who were aware of some of the money passing back and forth with Americans. And what do they do: Oh, my gosh, what are we going to do? We are going the get caught up in this investigation. Oh, I know, we will claim that when the President asked for evidence of corruption by Americans that that is some kind of quid pro quo. And even though it is perfectly consistent with the President keeping his oath, we will allow that to just be hammered over and over again, so maybe we can convince the Ukrainian President if he provides the evidence of corruption by Americans then that means the President is guilty of some crime.
They have actually been very successful in backing President Zelensky and Ukraine off of investigating crimes of corruption by American individuals.
That is a real victory. No matter what happens on impeachment in the Senate, it is a real victory for those who were engaged, participated in potential corruption with Ukraine, because they have been able to turn the tables, accuse President Trump, and then back the Ukrainian President off from investigating their corruption, and all of the focus is on President Trump instead of on those who may be guilty of high crimes, including bribery. It has been interesting to see the way that has politically played out.
We are told constantly, there is breaking news, the President should not have sat on that money to Ukraine. There was nothing illegal about holding up the money. And if I were President, I would be holding up any money that was going to any country that engaged in or where there was rampant corruption, as we knew had gone on in Ukraine, and require them to produce evidence that they were actually trying to stop corruption. Since the corruption seemed to involve American individuals, we have now stopped that investigation by Ukraine into the corruption by Americans, and that means that Ukraine is not going to be rid of corruption because they haven't been able to adequately pursue it. There is no breaking news. There is nothing new if people reporting it were fair.
Again, one good thing from my standpoint about the Trump derangement syndrome, we knew there were lots of bad actors among deep staters in the State Department, in the Intel community, in the FBI at the top, at the DOJ, some of the top people, but it was hard to identify them. Well, because of the hatred for Donald Trump that is just in-
articulable, it is so deranging to those that have this level of despising the President they keep raising their heads, so we know who the people are that are willing to abuse their office and violate their oath to the Constitution and loyalty to our own government.
I didn't hear the first part of Lieutenant Colonel Vindman--I have got family members that are lieutenant colonels, I have known so many serving in the military, in the Army, but he is the only one that I ever heard get high, righteous, and mighty and demand to be called lieutenant colonel, even though most days he doesn't wear a uniform. But he certainly wore one so people that don't normally respect the military, as well as some of us that do, they would go on and on about him being a part of the military.
I asked my staff to get me the transcript of his testimony, and I got it before he had finished, and I am reading through and I am going, My word, Vindman has been violating his oath to his own Constitution. And he certainly is not being loyal to the President when the President is not committing a crime. He is clearly being more loyal to Ukraine.
Then you find out later, well, actually, he was admonished because a superior officer heard him bad-mouthing the United States to some Russians. But that is why it came as no surprise to me. I was thinking he is more loyal to Ukraine than he is to the United States. It was no big surprise when I found out that Vindman was offered the position in Ukraine of defense minister three times, because clearly he had shown the Ukrainian leaders that he was more loyal to them than he was to his own U.S. leaders. That might be a good move for him at some point since he appears to have more loyalty to Ukraine. He may want to take them up on that at some point. Obviously, he would want to wait until after the impeachment trial is over.
I know there are some that want to have live witnesses in the Senate Chamber, just make it a full-blown circus. We should have had live witnesses in the House. That is what they did during the Clinton impeachment. You had fact witnesses that testified before the Judiciary Committee, however, we had a bunch of opinions coming in.
We didn't get the real fact witnesses. And of course, the real fact witnesses, in my mind, would include Alexandra Chalupa, the actions and antics she was involved in, along with Eric Ciaramella, Abigail Grace, and Sean Misko; they had both worked at the National Security Council. They have a lot of information about work with Ukraine, real facts, not just made up stuff, but real facts. They would have been important to get under oath. I still think they would be.
Andrew McCarthy, just a superb former prosecutor, had an article yesterday or today talking about the Senate should just say we are not taking up impeachment until you finish. You want us to do the investigation that you didn't do in the House because you were in such a hurry to get it to the Senate. We are not going to do your investigation, you don't have a high crime, you don't have a misdemeanor, you don't have treason, you don't have bribery. So why don't you go back, and if you come up with a high crime, misdemeanor, bribery, or treason then come see us once you have actually got evidence of something like that.
Unfortunately, the House passed impeachment even though it didn't rise to the level of impeachable offenses. It is an allegation of maladministration, which the Founders said should never be a basis for impeachment, and that is why they didn't include those types of things as a basis for impeachment. That is what they have alleged, and that is what is now down at the Senate straight down the hall. The Senate is going to take them up. I agree with my friend, Andy McCarthy. The Senate should not do the House's job.
The House had thousands of pages of transcripts. I sure wish they would release the Inspector General's deposition, but of course, that is why they did it down in the SCIF. None of the information we were told was classified. The witnesses were told if you have any answer that may involve classified information, just don't answer, which is also a cue, don't answer any questions Republicans ask that you don't want to answer. And that was the reason that so often Republican questions were interrupted with instructions to the witness by the chairman of Intel. That is why Intel did it. They wanted to have them in secret even though they weren't classified, have them in a place where most of us could not be there, including people like those of us on the Judiciary Committee, the true committee of jurisdiction.
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Then they could leak out what they thought might be helpful, even if they were leaks that were not accurate about what was actually testified to, and certainly out of context, to try to build this feeling that the President had done something terrible.
Again, this has been going on for 3 years, the investigation. We have been told since the day after President Trump was elected that they were going to impeach him. They didn't know what for, but they were going to find something.
As Senator Schumer said back I believe it was in 1998 or 1999, during the Clinton impeachment, he pointed out that the Clinton impeachment--
even though, as I say, it involved an actual crime of perjury, the Clinton impeachment lowered the bar. He said now it will be too easy to go after a President and impeach him for a minor crime like perjury.
Well, he had no idea how low the bar would be made by the Democrats. Now, it really is dangerous because they have shown you don't have to have a crime. All you have to have is a majority in the House and you can help destroy at least 3-plus years of a President's term by keeping them under a cloud the whole time.
I didn't initially support Donald Trump as a candidate, but I really think people believed if we can just go after his family, go after him, go after business and friends, 6 months in, he will resign. He will say: ``I am going back to making money. You can forget this. I don't need this,'' and walk away, but they just didn't know President Trump. He was not going to walk away. He could see this country was in big trouble.
As Newt Gingrich has said, if Hillary Clinton had been elected, we would never have known the extent of the corruption in these departments.
Now we find out even in Defense, as Adam Lovinger found, they were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars, I think over a million dollars, to a guy named Stefan Halper. It didn't look like there was anything they were getting back, and that was his job. Ultimately, they don't question Halper's involvement with the Defense Department, making all this money, getting rich helping the Defense Department as a professor over in London.
Little did Adam Lovinger know that he was doing work for a number of departments by trying to set up Carter Page, setting up Papadopoulos, and just helping out trying to bring down a candidate and then bring down a President.
Even the Defense Department got into this effort to prevent the election and then to remove a sitting President. Historically, that is called a coup d'etat. Sometimes, it is without violence.
In this case, of course, we found out there was violence at Trump events, and they blamed Trump for that. Then we find out, in a secret recording, a Democratic operative said: Yeah, we are the ones that hire people to go in and start fights so that we can accuse Trump supporters of being violent.
That is also a tactic of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is what they have done in Egypt. They had the largest peaceful uprising in the history of the world protesting against a Muslim Brother, Morsi, who was shredding their Constitution. They arose, demanded he be removed. The Muslim Brotherhood went out, started violence, burned down some churches and synagogues. Then CNN and others faithfully reported that it was the protestors and not the Muslim Brotherhood that did that.
But it was amazing what the people of Egypt did in their peaceful protests against a man shredding the Constitution, much as our Department of Justice and FBI top people have done over the last 4 years.
Some have said they only began to investigate the Trump campaign in July 2016, but we know it was months before that.
It looks like they were probably investigating different campaigns, trying to figure out ways, if that person won the Republican nomination, then they would come after them as well. I don't have any doubt that would have happened.
As former Speaker Gingrich has said, we wouldn't have had any idea just how corrupt the intel and these other folks had become.
If you want a real fact witness, it ought to be Brennan and Clapper. Of course, we saw how comfortable they have been lying under oath when testifying before Congress. It would be nice if they were held accountable.
It would be nice if Koskinen had been held accountable, if Loretta Lynch had been held accountable, because right now, after all these abuses during the Obama years, people got very arrogant about their abuses of their positions, and nobody has been made to pay. That needs to happen.
But we don't need to have people who are comfortable lying under oath come down to testify at a big circus in the Senate Chamber. They should adopt exactly what they did under the Clinton rules.
If they have witnesses, depose them, use the testimony from the depositions. Senators from both parties can submit questions to be asked, but they ought to follow exactly the rules exactly the way they did during the Clinton impeachment. They shouldn't be taking new witnesses.
Like Andy McCarthy says, the Senate should not be asked to do the job that the House should have done but did not. He is exactly right about that.
I would encourage, Mr. Speaker, and I hope, the Senate will hold to those rules. They were rules that were demanded and agreed to under the Clinton impeachment during the Clinton administration. They seemed to have been fair rules back then. They ought to enforce them exactly the same way: no live witnesses in the Chamber. That is not the place to have an investigation.
There is no high crime; there is no misdemeanor. None of those were charged.
We heard about bribery. We heard about Russia, Russia, Russia. We know that the real crimes regarding Russia were committed by Christopher Steele; potentially the DNC; and the Clinton campaign, which paid Fusion GPS, which paid Christopher Steele, who worked possibly with--he said, yeah, it is possible that maybe they worked for Putin, the people he got his information from. Maybe they were involved with Ukraine. We are not sure.
Obviously, the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC paid foreign individuals to interfere in our election.
It amazes me that even some smart reporters have said all this Ukraine stuff has been disproven. No, it hasn't. They act as if Russia and Ukraine activity--that you couldn't have misconduct in Russia and also have misconduct in Ukraine. Absolutely you could. In fact, we know that countries around the world, including China, have been trying to affect our elections.
For those who have been students of Russia and their current highest leader, Putin, Putin didn't care so much who got elected in that election. We have heard testimony that they provided things to help Hillary Clinton as well. That doesn't come out in the media a whole lot because it is not consistent with what the alt-left media would have you believe.
But they did things to help Hillary Clinton, and they did things to help Donald Trump. They were not as much interested in who got elected as they were about dividing America, and they have been extremely successful with that.
America is divided. It is terribly divided. People get mad at each other in this Chamber and in committees. It is so frustrating. I hope it doesn't get as bad in the Senate as it has here.
But Putin succeeded. And they didn't have to spend hardly any money, not much money, to divide America.
They have tried for so long, yet here, with some unknowing allies, they have been able to divide America like hadn't happened in the last 150 years. It is tragic.
I am hopeful that Senators will understand that the accounts they have seen in the media are rarely factual, that they are going to have to do a little bit of digging, that they are not going to be able to take summaries at face value, and that they need to do some real digging, do some real homework to find out exactly what the facts are. They will be amazed.
I am hoping that people who will be deposed will include Alexandra Chalupa, Eric Ciaramella, Abigail Grace, and Sean Misko. I have said that for months.
Some report stories and say: ``Oh, Gohmert named the whistleblower.'' No, I didn't. I named four fact witnesses. Apparently, all these media folks must know who the whistleblower is to say that I named him.
I have never named a whistleblower. We were told earlier on apparently it was a male, but I haven't named the whistleblower ever. I have named people I think are fact witnesses and that I think would be very good to have in depositions in the Senate. I hope they will be called.
I don't think they need Vindman again. They certainly don't need law professors who are so inconsistent and just have a law professor act like he is really reluctant to talk about impeachment, have people talk about how serious and how reluctant they are, when, actually, like in the case of the Harvard professor, he has been talking about it since right after the election. He has been trying to come up with ways to impeach President Trump. These were not honest witnesses.
Then you have people like Turley, Professors Turley and Dershowitz, who were actually trying to be fair and who have been extremely consistent. I have had profound disagreements with both of those professors on some issues, but I have always found them to be honest.
Some people are shocked that I have liberal friends who are Democrats. When people are honest, you understand where they are coming from. When they haven't lied to you, you can work together. That can happen, and it does happen here.
I hope that this impeachment stuff ends so that we can get back to helping the President help America, as he has been doing for 3 years. He has done an extraordinary job. Until the impeachment is over, apparently, that is not going to happen.
For those who believe in the power of prayer, we need to be asking God for mercy. I would implore people who believe in the power of prayer in the United States: Do not pray for justice because we don't want God's justice to come down on America or we are over.
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We need mercy. We need grace. We need direction, and we need to come back to the place where we recognize there is an absolute right or wrong. It comes from a universal source, as C. S. Lewis talked about, where he came from being an atheist to becoming, ultimately, a Christian.
But the realization started that he could never know that there was a fair and unfair, a right and wrong, a just or unjust, unless there was some ubiquitous universal standard of right and wrong. Otherwise, he would be like a man born blind. If you have never seen the light, how can you know that there is light and dark? You have never seen it. You have never experienced it.
So there has to be something placed in our hearts that gives us an idea of right and wrong, truth and untruth. And just because, as he said, some people come closer to hitting it right, doesn't mean there is no absolute right and wrong, just or unjust.
We need to get back to the point where truth matters, justice matters. And when we have officials, as we still do--we still have some in our Justice Department, in our intelligence department or agencies, in the FBI--and we do need a new FBI Director, he is part of the problem--but until we get back to having people in the Justice Department, in intel, who are honest, honorable, just, upright people, then we will continue our slide toward the dustbin of history.
No Nation lasts forever. The United States won't. But my prayer is that we will come together and do the things that will allow this country to succeed as a Republic with people having freedom for at least 50 more years. Is that too much to ask?
I know people are worried about climate change. We won't make another dozen years where we are right now unless we have some massive reform within our government. We need to come together to do that.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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