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“ISSUES OF THE DAY” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H4768-H4770 on June 5, 2018.
The Department is one of the oldest in the US, focused primarily on law enforcement and the federal prison system. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, detailed wasteful expenses such as $16 muffins at conferences and board meetings.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ISSUES OF THE DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Higgins of Louisiana). 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, so we hear today from the Mueller investigation, as he was appointed by a man named Rosenstein that we now know was completely disqualified from being able to select or name a special counsel for a number of reasons. For one thing, he would be a witness, because one of the issues was did President Trump obstruct justice when he fired Comey. And the President relied totally, or largely, on the memo that was prepared by Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. He would be a material witness.
You can't be involved in an investigation if you are a material witness.
Rosenstein, as it would happen, also had worked with a guy named Mueller and Weissman when they were working on an investigation into Russia's illegal efforts to get U.S. uranium. And, in fact, they kind of had to jointly and severally put the quash on information about that investigation, because if they didn't, then the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., CFIUS, including Hillary Clinton, would not have been able to vote to allow the sale of uranium that would end up in Russia's hands. And if that sale hadn't gone through, there is no question all those stockholders that benefited would not have been so anxious to put $145 million in the Clinton Foundation and probably Russia wouldn't have been as quick to pay $500,000 for a speech from former President Clinton.
{time} 2015
But there are all kinds of implications there. Of course, we know from previous special counsels from the Department of Justice, all of them, until Rosenstein and Mueller, made a thorough effort to select lawyers and investigating officers who appeared to have no political bias going in.
What did Mueller do? He specifically went for the people that loved Hillary Clinton and hated Donald Trump, went out of his way to do that.
Some have complained, well, Weissmann has a history of putting innocent people out of work, destroying lives, not only making them unemployed, but making them unemployable and, as the Supreme Court has said, all for things that were not even crimes. That doesn't seem to deter him, just as it has never deterred Robert Mueller from destroying people's lives, people of integrity, honest, upstanding people, whether it was Ted Stevens--heck, Colin Powell, one of the previous Cabinet members, decorated military man, had nothing but just accolades to say about Ted Stevens and what an honorable, honest, upright man he was.
And the Mueller FBI framed him. They hid information that not only would have raised a reasonable doubt that showed unequivocally he was not guilty of having a gift of hundreds of thousands of dollars of addition to his cabin because not only did he pay for it, he paid about 20 percent more than the value because, as he had said before: I have to go above and beyond just to keep people at bay who might want to come after me. I have got to keep my nose so clean.
Yet I guess it could be argued, well, maybe Mueller didn't know that the FBI framed Ted Stevens and convicted him immediately before his election. Well, there is no question he would have known about it as the FBI agent who was singled out by another FBI agent as having engaged in the malicious prosecution, the hiding of evidence, the failure to produce evidence that they had that was exculpatory.
Well, we know that the FBI agent that signed the whistleblowing affidavit, he was driven out of the FBI; and the one that there is evidence under oath that she framed Ted Stevens, she continued to work in the Mueller FBI, which is kind of like Mueller when he was in Boston.
As far as I know, there is no direct evidence that Mueller knew that his FBI agents in Boston were framing Whitey Bulger's competition, but he certainly had to have known that those four people were innocent when he kept putting pressure on the parole board not to release those innocent people, which I guess is another reason it cost taxpayers $100 million to the two individuals and then the two families of the two people who died in prison.
Or Curt Weldon, that was the Mueller FBI. I kept wondering my freshman term, Curt would come to this microphone right here--and maybe that should be a warning to me: if you make Mueller mad, he destroys your life. But somebody's got to stand up to a mean-spirited bully like Robert Mueller. If everybody is afraid of a guy like that, then, I mean, we are Third World governments.
But I kept thinking, you know, Curt Weldon keeps saying the FBI had information before 9/11, they could have done things to stop it, and he kept raising serious questions. I thought Mueller has surely got to answer these. And, yes, I know he had only come to the FBI right before 9/11, so chances are he was not implicated because of his recent arrival as FBI Director before 9/11. But surely he has got to respond somehow. These are serious allegations Curt Weldon was making.
Well, he ultimately did respond. The FBI did a raid on Curt Weldon's adult daughter's lawyer office before, I think it was around 6 a.m., and, amazingly, the only people who knew were FBI; and yet all of the media was there to witness the raid, on television, newsprint, radio. They all showed up.
And they are not the only ones to whom it was leaked, because protestors showed up immediately at Curt Weldon's office accusing him of crimes, caught red-handed, stuff like that. That was 2 weeks before his election that he narrowly lost.
Apparently, that is how Mueller responds.
You know, with all the complaints about bullies these days, you would think that adults in Congress would say: Do you know what? We don't want adult bullies either. We don't want to give adults the power, unlimited, unbridled power, to just go after anybody they want any time they want.
Manafort doesn't seem like somebody I'd ever want to hang out with, but, for heaven's sake, to knock down his door in the wee hours, drag him out of bed at gunpoint, when you just want to do a search--in fact, it would have been better, from a law enforcement standpoint, if they had done the raid when no one was home. But it wasn't about finding something; it was about raw, sheer intimidation.
So what do we hear in the way of raw, sheer intimidation from the Mueller cartel? Well, now we are told that a message that Manafort sent to a partner, somebody he did business with, that that was a crime. It is all about threatening people. It is all about bullying and scaring people.
And what authority is it that Mueller has? Well, that's interesting, because he doesn't want to produce that document. Congress has asked for it. We have absolute authority, and if we were doing our job, we would stop the Mueller investigation, pass an immediate law that not one penny could be spent without committing a crime on any investigation Mueller is undertaking until he shows us what authority he has.
You can't just give somebody unbridled authority, and then he doesn't even have to report to anybody unless it is the person who was disqualified that appointed him to be special counsel when he, himself, should have been disqualified. If he had had any decency or ethics about him he would have said: ``Do you know what? This is going to involve Russia. I was involved in the Russia investigation. I was FBI Director and, actually, there are some touchy issues there I was involved in, and I could be a witness because, you know, actually, the truth is we closed up information so that the sale could g through that Russia would get our uranium, and then Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation get $145 million. So, yeah, I was really involved in that.''
The last people who ought to be involved in an investigation now as special counsel about Russia would be Robert Mueller, Weissmann, and Rosenstein, but there they are, back together, investigating, while the statute of limitations is running out on any potential crime they may have committed that should be investigated by a second special counsel.
I have been saying this for a year now: We need a second special counsel. This is serious stuff, and people across the country, even some Democratic friends of mine, are realizing: Wait a minute. Trump's not getting the same treatment that Hillary Clinton got. It is pretty clear there are two different standards of justice.
Some people who care about justice--and, yeah, they are politically involved, but they care about righteousness and justice--don't want to see us go into being a Third World banana republic, which it appears to much of the world we have moved into becoming.
This latest allegation Mueller throws out about tampering with a witness, well, you know, under section 1512: If you kill or attempt to kill somebody, it might be a witness--nope, that doesn't apply.
Or if you use physical force or threat of physical force--no, that didn't apply.
Cause or induce a person to withhold testimony--no, didn't do any of that.
Didn't hinder, delay, prevent communication--nope.
Let's see. Well, did he knowingly use intimidation, threats, or corruptly persuade? No. No, that really didn't apply.
All right. How about whoever corruptly alters, destroys, mutilates? No, he didn't do any of that.
So how about obstructs or influences or impedes any official proceeding? No, really didn't do that, didn't attempt to do so.
Or intentionally harasses another person, thereby hinders, delays, prevents, or dissuades anyone from attending or testifying--nope, that didn't happen.
Reporting to law enforcement--nope, that didn't happen. He didn't even turn the message over to the FBI.
Arresting or seeking to arrest--nope.
Now, Mueller may be involved in these, but it doesn't sound like Manafort is.
Causing a criminal prosecution--no, none of those apply. Oh, well, maybe. Oh, that is an affirmative defense.
You know, there is something Mueller's good at: scare people, throw out highbrow allegations just trying to intimidate.
It is like the Federal judge said, Mueller's folks don't care, and Mueller doesn't care about Manafort, anything that happened 20 years ago. We have seen it throughout Mueller's history. He finds somebody, whether it is Steven Hatfill, Ted Stevens, Curt Weldon, you know, people who got put in jail for crimes Whitey Bulger was involved in, though he was their FBI informant. I mean, he finds people he dislikes, and then he goes about trying to find a crime that he can pin on them.
And even if they are not really guilty, he is fine with keeping people in prison for crimes they didn't commit if he thinks they are not good people, he doesn't like them. That is how he could tell President Bush that he was 100 percent certain Dr. Steven Hatfill was the guy that was the anthrax killer. He didn't like him. No evidence--
none, zero--yet they destroyed the guy's life.
So it cost taxpayers--Mueller's actions, other people's actions in Boston--$100 million for the way he destroyed Steven Hatfill's life, another $6 million or so payout. You know, he leaves a terrible wake of devastation, lives wrecked, and he doesn't care.
The one thing he is consistent in saying is: I don't owe anybody an apology for anything I have done.
Yeah, it is the way bullies are.
Well, we have got another problem here in the House. We had an IT worker named Imran Awan, who worked for between 40 and 50 of my Democratic colleagues. Now, he sent, apparently, over $100,000 back to Pakistan where he still has family, and he got that from a loan here in the U.S., and he is charged with making a false statement to get the loan.
Yet that is a fraction of what we find from just the reporting of Luke Rosiak, the Daily Caller, this article from October 3, 2017. Unfortunately, the only thing they have indicted Mr. Awan for is basically making a false statement to get a loan, things related to that. But there are dozens and dozens of felonies in which he is implicated from his work here on Capitol Hill.
{time} 2030
This article says: ``A now-indicted IT aide to various House Democrats was sending money and gifts to government officials in Pakistan and received protection from the Pakistani police, multiple relatives claim.
``A Democratic aide also said Imran Awan personally bragged to him that he could have people tortured in Pakistan. Awan's lawyer acknowledged that he was sending money to a member of the Faisalabad police department, but said there was a good explanation.
``The relatives said Awan and his brothers were also sending IT equipment, such as iPhones, to the country during the same period in which fraudulent purchase orders''--and by the way, from what we have seen, there were clearly dozens of fraudulent purchase orders.
Say, for example, an iPad cost $799 and Awan puts down it is $499 as a cost, maybe $300 for an insurance policy or something, but $499, that means it is under the $500 limit for things that do not have to be kept in inventory. So, as long as Awan kept prices on these invoices below
$500, he didn't have to have a listing of all of the equipment.
So he could keep buying iPads, iPhones, and all of these kinds of things for different Members of Congress' offices, and there is no record kept of where those items are. They don't record the serial numbers or anything, as long as it is $499. The trouble for Mr. Awan is, every time he put $499 on one invoice for something that costs
$799, it is a Federal felony, and he is implicated in dozens of these. The evidence abounds.
Yet some of us had an informal hearing and heard testimony about this matter, and he was bragging to people about all of the iPhones and iPads he was sending to Pakistan to the police there, to intelligence friends there, these kinds of things. And because he listed them at
$499, they are not on an inventory so they don't have to be written off when they disappear. That is pretty handy.
But the FBI has had opportunities to have those invoices presented to them. And each time they have instructed: Don't bring any of those documents. We don't want to see any of that. We just want to talk to you. And as I understand, even this week, they continued to report--the FBI investigating--that, yeah, we still found no evidence of anything other than this false statement on a loan. Why? Because they have instructed: We don't want to see the documents that prove those cases.
They are readily available for anybody, any Federal officer who wants to see them, but they don't want to see them. So they can keep reporting to the new U.S. attorney that there is no evidence. No, there is just nothing there. They can tell the Attorney General, yeah, we have looked into it, and there is nothing there.
And yet we hear from the reporter, he continues to talk to the witnesses--Luke Rosiak--and it was 80 percent of the witnesses that have personal information about the crimes the Awan cartel--crime family, whatever you want to call it--have committed, was 80 percent; now between 70 and 80 percent of those witnesses have never been interviewed by the FBI.
That way they can still report to the new U.S. attorney, to the Attorney General; we looked into it. There is nothing there. There is no evidence. Yeah, because you don't want to look at it. It abounds. And then when we hear that Mr. Awan is spreading the word among his friends from Pakistan that: I have just got to get this deal done and work out a plea where I don't get jail time, and I am already assured I will be able to work back on the Hill.
I was staggered to find out when we took testimony that actually about 3 to 9 months of every year for the last 13 or 14 years that Mr. Awan has been doing work as a computer technician for 40 to 50 Democrats here on the Hill, that he had never had a background check, but 3 to 9 months out of each year he was in Pakistan, and he was using the Pakistani internet to work on three or four dozen Members of Congress' computer systems.
We also learned that, at one point, they put over 40 Members of Congress' data on one server so that anybody that Awan wanted to could access the server and get information on all of these other people. And what happened? Well, that server with that serial number has disappeared, but the FBI has no interest whatsoever--at least so far--
in investigating what happened to the server on which Awan put 40-plus Members of Congress' data.
One, we do know some of the files that existed. We don't know what were in the files, but Awan had actually organized files that had Members of Congress' emails in them. Well, gee, why would Awan want to take Members of Congress' emails and put them in one file? That sure would make it easy if you were going to transfer somebody's emails to somebody else. You just put them all in a file. Put them on one server that lots of people have access to.
It is phenomenal the kind of breach that has occurred on the Hill. There are two kinds of justices, and it breaks my heart. There is the Hillary Clinton kind of investigation, and there is the Donald Trump investigation.
This is really tragic. So taxpayers are paying for Imran Awan's lawyer because he says he is destitute. Yet he sent $100,000 or more over to Pakistan in one transaction, and we know that he has property listed in his bankruptcy. We know that he was in business, took a loan from a guy from Pakistan who has known ties to Hezbollah, and they owed him money.
We can't seem to get the FBI interested in that. There are too many holdovers, apparently, from Mueller's day, and Comey's day. We need to know what was compromised.
And I don't care who the person works for, congressional computers should not be serviced from Pakistan. From information and belief, folks that should know, they tell me Pakistan would be one of the last places you would want somebody getting into congressional computer systems.
He said: Well, what difference does it make? It is just emails and calendars. Well, there are people that would pay a lot of money to have all of the emails from a Member of Congress. We just need the FBI more interested.
Again, I understand, the last guy that started making charges talking about FBI's lack of duty, he ended up being defeated by the FBI raid on his office and his daughter's office 2 weeks before the election. I understand, but somebody has got to stand up and say: Right is right. Wrong is wrong.
There are so many FBI agents that have given their lives, day after day, not making the kind of money they could elsewhere, but enforcing the law. And to have people like Mueller and Comey come along and put a blot on the reputation they poured their honest lives into is a travesty. And the only way we remove the blots is to call out those and make them responsible for the damage that they have done. And it is not happening.
Anyway, I realize I am running out of time. Luke Rosiak has great information here. He has done so much more investigation than the FBI has. I know there are a lot of FBI agents that I know personally that could take this case.
I mean, just not listing a piece of property in your forms here that you have to file, the financial disclosure, could be a crime if you do it intentionally. Sometimes you forget, but for heaven's sake, he didn't forget when he filed bankruptcy. He has got property. He has got all kinds of things that he has never listed, and those are the kinds of things that are important when people are servicing congressional computers. People need to know.
We need people that will be honest enough not to lie to the U.S. attorney and not to lie to the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General--I don't guess it matters to them--but for other people who are honest and trying to follow and enforce the law and the Constitution as their oath requires.
We need a second special counsel. We need to investigate Rosenstein, Mueller, Comey, and Weissmann. And we need somebody assigned to the Awan case that will protect Congress from further breaches and from the Awan crime family for the future.
Now, today, there was a continuance filed moving Awan's hearing from this Thursday to July 3. It sounds like they are trying to do just what Awan has been bragging, that he is going to get a deal. It is not going to say anything about all of the breaches of security, all of the felonies committed in the forms that he filed, none of that. And so he is telling people--at least he has assured people--he can come right back and start servicing dozens of Members' computers on the Hill again. For heaven's sake, we need somebody in the FBI to step up and do their job.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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