Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend so much, bringing back

the account of what happened. And I can remember--I majored in history in college--reading about General Eisenhower ordering American troops, Allied troops, to go gather people from the German communities near the concentration camps where so many Jews were being killed, ruthlessly killed.

It is horrific to even contemplate what went on. And Eisenhower had ordered that, apparently, they bring the community citizens and have them help clean up the concentration camps. And the reason that was given was so that they could never say these things didn't happen--and I thought at the time that really is going perhaps too far--because these people turned a blind eye to what was going on. Surely they suspected. They knew there was ash going over their communities. Surely they suspected.

But I never dreamed we would reach a day when what Eisenhower feared would occur actually came about, and that is a time when people are finding it popular to deny that the Holocaust ever happened. So I am grateful that Israel has this Yom HaShoah, the Israel Holocaust remembrance day. But it should not just be for Israel. America needs to stand with Israel.

There are those who are calling for extermination of Jews around the Earth again. It is unbelievable. It is unbelievable. It has been shocking to see anti-Semitism growing again around Europe. To me, as an American, it has been even more shocking to see growing sentiment on U.S. college campuses denying that the Holocaust ever happened. That is the ultimate irony: having institutions of what are supposed to be higher learning in the United States of America, where at one time we had the best universities, everyone wanted to come to the U.S. for universities; but now we have institutions of higher learning that are actually the epitome of dumbing down and destroying history, rewriting history, which would make them institutions of the least learning, certainly not higher education. So it is important that we take time, we remember the horrors.

I was just talking to my friend Claudia Tenney from New York about the Jewish woman who came and spoke to her seventh grade class and then, as I understood, spoke to her child's seventh grade class. And that is so important, but the Holocaust survivors, we are losing them day after day. It is up to us. I am so grateful to my friend, the good Joe Wilson, for securing this time so we could talk about the Holocaust.

The Bible makes clear that you must teach about what God has done. We would never, ever want to see another Holocaust. After the horrors of the Holocaust, that what was prophesied for thousands of years has now happened, there is an Israel; it is making, has made, the desert bloom. But we should never forget, as long as this Earth is populated by human beings, another Holocaust is possible. And the blood would be on the hands and head of everyone who has denied that it was even possible.

Mr. Speaker, it has been an interesting week here. I always appreciate following people speaking who want to limit waste in our Federal Government.

I only heard a little snippet, but it caught my ear. I heard something mentioned about EPA Director Scott Pruitt gave a raise to two people who shouldn't have gotten them.

Actually, I can elaborate a little bit on that.

One of his staff had recommended a raise to two people without the Director's permission, and they didn't get the raise. It didn't happen.

He is one of the most effective people in that job. He is one of the reasons the economy is doing well. And jobs for minority members are at an all-time high record-setting. So I can understand when a Cabinet member like Scott Pruitt is doing an incredible job and the economy is exploding as a result doing so well, people being employed, and making more.

Mr. Speaker, I can also report, having spent 2 weeks in my district a week before and a week after Easter--I am hearing it from people in jobs you wouldn't even think of that--that the economy is doing well. It is pretty typical for people telling me, who are in retail, whatever it is, their sales are up 30, 40, or 50 percent from where they were after the first quarter, even last year.

I really don't believe we would ever have gotten a tax bill if we had not had the undying commitment to get something done that we had from President Trump. So it is a good thing. It is going to be a good year. When the economy is going good, it is a good thing. I have been here 13 years, but I have noticed that if Republicans are in the majority and the economy is being turned around--I know President Obama had said we will never see 3 percent growth in the economy again, it would take a magic wand, Trump would have to have a magic wand to get the economy growing by 3 percent ever again--and another piece of good news is we have found out that President Trump, as President, has already made enough changes, through people like Scott Pruitt and others, so that the economy has already hit 3 percent growth; and we hope by the end of the year it will be much better. So good news.

My friend is concerned about waste. It is not what was initially reported, but I am thrilled to see the concern about waste. I know that is one thing that both sides of the aisle now will be concerned about.

But it is interesting. When the economy gets to going so well, that is when I usually see my friends across the aisle get more concerned and start using the term ``corruption.''

And why not?

I know back in 2005 and 2006, when there were Democrats being arrested and there was trouble across the country with corruption on both parties, and we started hearing the term ``corruption, corruption, corruption,'' it was a huge help to the Democrats. They won the majority. Then, as soon as people saw how bad the corruption had become under the Democratic majority, we were able to get the majority back.

Now the key is to do something with it. Obviously, we saw yesterday that it is not enough to just bring a balanced budget bill to the floor that doesn't have a spending cap that would have forced taxes to go up. That is not going to be enough to convince Americans that we are serious about cutting waste in our spending. We are going to have to actually avoid things like that outrageous omnibus that passed with over 60 percent of Democrats voting for it and over 60 percent, apparently, of Republicans voting for it.

There is another bit of good news. I do think this part of the news is a help

to the economy, and one of the reasons we are seeing a help to the economy.

I know there are some megawealthy folks out there who want to see no border like the Clintons were pushing for. They had megawealthy friends. They want as much illegal immigration coming in as they can. Never mind that there are criminals coming in, there are people who want to harm our Nation, and people here, never mind that. If people can be rewarded who are big donors, then good, let's have open borders.

But that is not the position of the people who elected President Donald Trump. We need to be about the things that allowed us to keep the majority and elected Donald Trump as President. If we don't, the majority will be lost, and then the next couple of years will be spent dealing with impeachment of a President who has been charged with what the prior administration did.

There is an interesting thing called projecting. One group commits horrendous offenses, then before the other side can properly investigate what that group did, the offending group starts projecting their offenses as if they were done by the opposing side.

There is an article entitled: ``Attorney General Jeff Sessions Announces New `Zero-Tolerance' Illegal Immigration Policy,'' and that is making a difference. We are having an immense problem as the call has been for more and more amnesty legalizing people here illegally. It has caused a flood of people coming across our southern border, so Attorney General Jeff Sessions' announcement is a big help. It appears that it is helping to slow the rate of people flooding to the United States.

Hopefully, the announcement by the President to call for National Guard troops on the border is also helping, because when people know they are going to be turned away, they realize, ``Why should I even make the trip?''

But I would commend our National Guard. Of course, under the doctrine of posse comitatus, normally they are not to be used against U.S. citizens, that is the law under very tight exceptions, but they don't have to.

If the National Guard is allowed to go to the border, not like in the prior administration or even the prior troops that the Bush administration sent, if they are actually allowed to go to the border and stand there--I mean, the busiest sector for a long time now, for a few years or so, has been the McAllen sector. It was Arizona, but as that border was toughened up, McAllen down in south Texas, that sector became a busier sector. I think it had to do also with the activity of the drug cartel in Mexico that covers that sector of our border. Probably, if that surge coming up from Central America through Mexico, any of them were to make it, that is probably where they are going to be coming.

I have been there at night, and all night, many nights, and it is very clear, when Governor Perry sent game wardens, DPS troopers just to stand on the high bank on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande River, there are coyotes. I have been there with our folks, the Border Patrol that are doing the best they can there, and some of our DPS, and both have night vision gear. And the Texas DPS folks allowed me to use some night vision gear, and we were able to see some coyotes hiding behind the trees across the way. They were waiting for people on the U.S. side of the border, the Rio Grande, to move out of the way, because the coyotes, apparently, their lives can be in jeopardy. If the raft they use to bring across illegals is destroyed, then their lives may be destroyed by the drug cartel or the gang that was working for the drug cartel, so they don't want their raft to be destroyed, they don't want to get caught.

The experience is, since I have seen it so many hundreds of times, the people coming across in the rafts, they want to be caught, because they knew from the Obama years that when somebody gets there, they don't tell them, ``Go back. You are not going to be allowed to set foot on U.S. soil.'' Oh, no. Once you get across, then it is time to in- process you. We have our questions to ask as we in-process you. We may put you in a facility and provide you food, three meals a day, take care of your needs, or we may just let you provide us the address that the drug cartels gave the person coming in illegally, or the family or group, the address being where the drug cartels wanted those individuals to go to work. Because as I have heard them say many times, ``Oh, well, they told us I could work off the rest. $7,000 to come in. I had $1,500, we had people in the United States that sent $2,000,'' these kind of stories over and over.

It is not on the list of required questions, but some of our folks would ask anyway, ``How much did you pay? Well, you don't have that kind of money. Where did you get it?''

Then there was always at least $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 that had not been paid. ``Oh, they are going to let me pay that off when I get to the address they are sending me.''

So what an amazing business model to have potential employees, basically indentured servants, and you don't pay your employee. No. They pay you a bunch of money to get to come to work for you because you are going to get them across the border.

Then the Department of Homeland Security under the Obama administration--you talk about waste, fraud, and abuse. The Obama administration would then have Homeland Security ship them to the city to which the drug cartel told them they wanted them to go work and gave them an address, and then when they got to the city, then they were allowed to work for the drug cartel to pay off the money that the drug cartel said they still owed them. What a great business model. Your employees pay you to get to work for you, and the U.S. Government will send them to their location.

That is why Border Patrol told me, a number of different ones told me, that the drug cartels in Mexico look at our Homeland Security--this all occurred during the Obama years, as their logistics. They get them across the border, and immediately, Homeland Security takes charge and gets them to where they were needed in the drug trafficking arena. And there were places all over the country.

It is tragic, President Trump has pointed it out, and it is true, despite some of the naysayers, when groups start coming to the United States, whether they come from Central America and are allowed by what should be a friend in Mexico to come all the way through Mexico to come into the United States, there are going to be girls that are raped, there are going to be young women and some older women that are forced into sex trafficking, and there are going to be some people that lose their lives.

The very best thing we could do for the people of Mexico, and I am saying the people of Mexico, not elected leaders in government who have gotten there by the drug cartels, no, I am not talking about people under the control of the drug cartels; I am talking about the people of Mexico, the people that deserve so much better, the best thing we could do is totally secure our border so that the only people who come in come in lawfully.

We are trying to get the proper wording for a bill that will actually tell our Border Patrol, anybody coming into the United States through any place other than a legal crossing area are to be denied the opportunity to step foot on American soil, on U.S. soil. Because, I mean, I've been there, I have seen it.

Texas, the DPS troopers, the game wardens, they won't allow people to step on the U.S. side, but when the Federal folks come along, they say, ``Oh, no, come on in so we can in-process you.'' I watched that over and over during the Obama years.

All we have to do is just say, ``No, you are not coming in through an illegal avenue or an illegal method. You are not coming in. You are not going to set foot here. You come by air, then we are going to turn you around and send you right back. You come across the water, we are not going to let you land. We are going to turn around and send you right back. You are not going to step foot.''

That is apparently what we need to tell our folks. Don't even think about in-processing. If you are going to come in, if you are going to come ask for amnesty or any kind of thing, come through a legal port of entry, come through a legal avenue, and we will have our folks talk to you before they allow you to come in. You need to be legal coming in or you are not coming in.

That is rather basic, but apparently we need something like that to make clear we are serious about enforcing our border.

So it is welcome news. We have an article, this one by Charles Ortel. He is quoting Jeff Sessions: `` `You play a critical part in fulfilling these goals, and I thank you for your continued efforts in seeing to it that our laws--and as a result, our Nation--are respected,' he said.

``The crackdown comes after the Department of Homeland Security reported a 203 percent increase in illegal border crossings from March 2017 to March 2018, according to the memo. The department also noted a 37 percent increase from February 2018 to March 2018--the largest month-to-month increase since 2011.''

I will interject here, the reason is very clear for this. The more that people in Washington talk about the term ``amnesty,'' the word ``legalization,'' the word ``DACA,'' any of these things, it creates yet another surge and another surge.

My position has continued to be consistent. I thoroughly supported President Trump's platform in this area, and it is probably the biggest reason that people went out and voted for President Trump. We are going to enforce our border, we are going to secure it, we are going to build a wall where we need it.

We have got to get that done, because when people talk about DACA, amnesty, legalization, it brings more and more people surging to our border, more people will be pulled into sex slavery, more people will be losing their lives, more people will be pulled into drug trafficking.

All of that hurts our country. It is destructive to Mexico, provides tens of billions of more dollars for corruption. I mean, Mexico, they have got the natural resources, incredible natural resources. They have got some of the hardest working people in the world. They have got the best location, right between two major continents, two big oceans, perfect location. The only thing holding them back is corruption. If we secure our border, it brings an end to the wild corruption that exists in Mexico and further south.

This article says: ``Arrests of people trying to cross illegally into the U.S. from Mexico were actually at a 46-year low throughout 2017, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security.''

So that was great.

``Border officers apprehended approximately 310,000 people in fiscal year 2017--a 25 percent decrease from the previous year.

``The number of apprehensions jumped by 40 percent from February to March, which DHS said was consistent with seasonal trends.

``Sessions said the `unacceptable' border situation is a result of Congress' failure to pass legislation that would close `dangerous loopholes' and fund President Donald Trump's proposed border wall.''

So one of the big problems I had with the omnibus bill, it not only didn't provide funding for the wall, here we have a majority in the House, majority in the Senate, and basically it was a slap at President Trump: ``Not only are we not giving you money for the wall, but we are going to put $1.5 billion in there and say it is only to replace fences, and they have got to be open where you can see through them.''

What a slap at the President, what a slap at the people that are trying to control our border, secure our border.

Another article from CBS News about the same policy, the same announcement. That was from April 6.

Then this from The Hill, Michael Stopa: ``Jeff Sessions sends California a strong message on immigration.''

It starts: ``There is more than a little historical irony here. In response to the Trump administration's initiatives to restore order in and respect for the Nation's immigration laws, the California State Legislature passed, and liberal politicians and business and entertainment elites of the State are vocally defending, three laws which openly defy the Constitution and challenge the Union.''

It is basically a declaration of secession from California. That is my interjection.

This says: ``The California regulations are dedicated to maintaining a traditional way of life and protecting economic and political power built on the manual labor and, eventually, the votes of an illegal class of workers.''

``By protecting the institution of illegal immigration, the California laws not only usurp Federal prerogatives (to the detriment of less affluent Californians) but also undermine law enforcement far beyond the borders of the State. Therefore, the Justice Department this week initiated court proceedings against the rebellious State, challenging the constitutionality of the three statutes.

``So, deriding California's ``irrational, unfair, and unconstitutional policies,'' Attorney General Jeff Sessions began his march to the sea. It is a script just made for Hollywood. According to the Los Angeles Times, the three laws which the Justice Department is challenging make it a crime for businessowners to voluntarily help Federal agents find and detain undocumented workers, prohibit local law enforcement from alerting immigration agents when detainees are released from custody and create a State inspection program for Federal immigration detention centers.''

Now, Mr. Speaker, let me interject here. This part here, ``prohibit local law enforcement from alerting immigration agents when detainees are released from custody,'' that needs a little further elaboration.

What California is saying, if they are in custody, then they have been charged with a crime, or they have been accused of a crime, or there is probable cause to suspect them of a crime.

So when California passes laws saying these people who are in custody, because we have probable cause to believe they are criminals, we don't want the Federal Government to know that we have illegal aliens who we have probable cause to believe committed crimes, we want those people in California, in San Francisco. We want those criminals, those people there is probable cause to show committed crimes, we want them in our State, we want them in our town; and so we are passing a law, let's keep these criminals in California, for Californians, taking jobs Californians would do if they were paying a little more for them, but these people here illegally, some of them will take them, others will get welfare. Others will apply for child tax credits and get thousands back they didn't pay in.

That continues to happen and, hopefully, will be coming to a stop soon, once we get the IRS under control and get the IRS to begin following the law as they so boldly and brashly offended and violated during the Obama administration.

We couldn't believe that there was so much money being paid out in child tax credits. How is that happening if people are illegally here?

Well, it turns out, even though the law says you have to have, basically, a valid Social Security number to get more money back than you paid in, the IRS, some time back, decided, you know what--I know they intended well. They thought, gee, there are a lot of people working that would pay taxes if they had some number to allow them to pay taxes. So even though the law doesn't allow it, we are going to give these working people taxpayer ID numbers, and then that way, they will file income tax returns, and we can get all these billions of dollars in taxes from people that are working here that are here illegally.

But that went a bit awry because as soon as people began figuring out, wow, I am filing a tax return, and even though the law requires I have a valid Social Security number, the IRS is sending me back thousands of dollars, all I have got to do is file and claim I have a whole bunch of children somewhere, and they will send me a check.

Well, it is time for that to come to an end. It is time for the law to be enforced. Some of these things, we don't need new laws, we just need the law enforced.

What these articles are saying is that the new Attorney General is intent on enforcing the law as it is, even though a place like California is spurning its own citizens and saying, we would rather have people who commit crimes than allow the Federal Government to move those who commit crimes amongst us.

It is an unbelievable story. That is not governance; that is insanity.

Well, I am thrilled the Attorney General is taking a stand for law enforcement. It has been so badly needed for so many years.

This article from Robert Moore and Matt Zapotosky, believe it or not, from the Washington Post, they can get an article every now and then of interest. This is from Las Cruces, New Mexico.

``Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose Justice Department has come under intense criticism from President Trump and some congressional Republicans in recent days, repeatedly praised President Trump in a speech to law enforcement officials Wednesday about immigration enforcement.

``'You might even say we have got a new sheriff in town,''' and that is pretty true.

But here again, the report comes back that there is this increase, big increase, people flooding to our border because of all the discussion about legalization, amnesty, DACA. Until the border is secured, this body has no business taking up any legislation or even talking about legislation that will legalize anybody that is here. Let's get the border secured, then we can work it out.

I have no question whatsoever. In my mind, we could get a bipartisan legislation passed from the House, through the Senate, the President will sign it, after the border is secured. But until the border is secured, we are luring more people to their deaths, into sex trafficking, just by dangling this shiny object, coming to the United States, and luring people into their detriment.

If the government were an individual or a company, and it was saying things that lured people in to an area where they were harmed, then that person or that company could be sued and would have to pay out incredible judgments for this attractive--what is called an attractive nuisance.

They are lured in by promises of legalization, amnesty, DACA, all this, and yet, some get here, lose their lives on the way, or once they get inside the border trying to get somewhere, many young women lured, or forced, rather, into sex trafficking, drugs. That is an outrageous, attractive nuisance. But since it is the government, you can't sue them.

Hopefully, we can do something about that, if a State or local government were trying to get the language right, so that if you are a State or a local government, and your policies encourage people to come to the area illegally, and to the detriment of local citizens, you know, the local government should be liable.

This from Laura Jarrett and Evan Perez, earlier this year: ``Federal authorities are actively investigating allegations of corruption related to the Clinton Foundation, the charity of Bill and Hillary Clinton, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter.''

The reason I am bringing this up, Mr. Speaker, is so many people are saying nothing is being done and, actually, the reason they are saying that is we have an ethical Attorney General, unlike previous years, who doesn't make a big announcement about investigations that are quietly, ethically taking place.

So a lot of people, because they are used to having Justice Department officials like Mueller and Comey leaking things, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, leaking things out there that should not be released and they should not be releasing; now we have a Justice Department, at least at the top, they are not leaking stuff, so you don't hear about it much. And that is why I think these articles are important.

``The FBI and Federal prosecutors are looking into whether donors to the foundation were improperly promised policy favors or special access to Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State in exchange for donations to the charity's coffers, as well as whether tax-exempt funds were misused, the official said.

``The investigation''--and this is not an illegal leak. This is a legitimate story.

``The inquiry was first reported by The Hill, which cited law enforcement sources and a witness who was interviewed.

``It's unclear precisely what, if any, new evidence ignited the current Federal investigation, after initial inquiries had stalled prior to the 2016 election.''

Oh, it reports: ``The investigation, led by the FBI field office in Little Rock, Arkansas, is being overseen by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the State, according to the source.''

They are not putting out information about who and what they are doing like, obviously, Mr. Comey had gotten into the habit of doing.

A representative for the Clinton Foundation dismissed the substantive allegations as unfounded.

But the article goes on: ``The current probe of the foundation comes at a sensitive time for the Justice Department.''

``Some Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have cheered Trump on, while others within the party, and many Democrats, have raised concerns in recent months.''

But this article says: ``The fundamental thing is you cannot be Secretary of State of the United States of America and use that position to extort or seek contributions to your private foundation.''

CNN was told on New Day in 2016: ``That is a fundamental violation of law and that does appear to have happened.''

``The fact remains that Hillary Clinton''--this is from her spokesperson--she ``never took action as Secretary of State because of donations to the Clinton Foundation.''

And naturally, that would be the right thing to say because it is a crime to do that.

But the fact is, and apparently the investigation is into the over $100 million in donations that were made to the Clinton Foundation that appears to have dried up and gone nonexistent after Hillary Clinton lost the election.

So what are you to conclude? Hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into the Clinton Foundation while she is Secretary of State and while she has a chance to be President, and as soon as people realize they could pay but there would be no play, there would be no pay-for-play, that you would not be able to keep paying for the opportunity to see the Clintons or get some favor from the State Department or get some favor from a potential President, dried up, people weren't rushing to give donations anymore.

This from Daniel Flynn, March 20. ``As Washington obsesses over alleged collusion involving the Russians and the current administration, a separate investigation in Little Rock looks into alleged corruption involving the previous administration and the Russians.

`` `FBI agents are interviewing people,' Joseph DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney hired by the President on Monday, told The American Spectator over the weekend. `That is a big deal. I can assure they are interviewing people because our firm represents one of the people they have interviewed.' ''

``DiGenova says the investigation has been `underway for some time' and involves the Clinton Foundation, `which includes Uranium One and its various transactions.' DiGenova notes that he did not know whether investigators have empaneled a grand jury or not. For many, the FBI expending resources on interviewing witnesses and investigating the massive foundation for months indicates that if a grand jury does not already exist, one will soon.

``Sources tell The American Spectator that the investigation began focusing on Uranium One, a Canadian energy company sold to a state- owned Russian company, before broadening to a much wider range of issues. Though the Clinton Foundation calls Manhattan home and the State Department operates in Foggy Bottom, Eastern District of Arkansas U.S. Attorney Cody Hiland presides over the investigation because the foundation also boasts ventures, including the Clinton Presidential Center, in Little Rock. The foundation reports on its website that `we work on issues directly or with strategic partners from the business, government, and nonprofit sectors to create economic opportunity, improve public health, and inspire civic engagement and service.' These partners, given Hillary Clinton's role as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, made observers uneasy prior to her assuming that role and led to special transparency and ethics rules ostensibly embraced by the foundation. Given uranium's role in nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, and the U.S.'s position as a minor player in uranium

production, the specific case of Uranium One involves more than mere corruption.

`` `What I've always wanted is a grand jury to look at it,' Peter Schweizer, who exposed the Uranium One scandal to a wide audience in Clinton Cash and exposes a number of alleged pay-to-play schemes in his new book Secret Empires, explained to The American Spectator. `The common sense of the average America will determine pretty quickly that there was pay to play involved.' ''

In any event, the deal which then put about a fifth of the uranium of the United States under the control of the Russian Government required the approval of various Federal Government entities, including Hillary Clinton's State Department. Rosatom, the energy company owned by the Russian Government, obtained that approval and optimally gained full control of Uranium One.

Just incredible.

So, good news. That is being investigated under the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. There is some good news, and I look forward to real Russian collusion being exposed after proper investigation and the projecting, which has occurred by people who did collude improperly with the Russian Government in the past administration, actually being held to account for what they did but what they continue to say others in the Trump administration did in order to try to run out the statute of limitations on their wrongdoing.

Well, the statutes of limitation haven't all run, the investigations are ongoing, and I still hold that hope that springs eternal in the human breast that real justice will be done.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I come into the conclusion of a very interesting day and week. Our current Speaker of the House, of course, has announced that he is not going to be seeking reelection. I think he made it clear before he was elected Speaker that he really wasn't seeking the position. He didn't really want the position. He had other things in mind. He enjoyed his chairmanship, but he ended up stepping up to the plate, being elected Speaker. And for his willingness to serve, he is to be applauded.

I have appreciated having a Speaker who, even when we disagreed, I knew he always tried to be honest and was somebody that wanted to do the right thing. So I appreciate that very much. We hadn't always had that, and I appreciated having that from Speaker Paul Ryan.

Some of my colleagues have said: ``Gee, Louie, we have gotten calls saying you ought to run for Speaker again.'' And so I really appreciate that, but I need to make clear: Back in December of 2014, after the Speaker--at that time, John Boehner--had pushed through a CR/Omnibus bill that immediately broke many of the promises that got Republicans elected back to the majority in November of 2014, after the promises, so many of our promises and the Speaker's promises were broken in that December 2014 CR/Omnibus, a number of us realized, we have got to have a new Speaker. We can't go through 2 years like this, these kinds of outrageous, broken promises with the country suffering under ObamaCare, so many problems that were before us.

So we began to try to get enough Republicans. We did the numbers. We knew that if all of the Republicans voted, we needed 29 Republicans to vote for any living person to be Speaker who was not the current Speaker, John Boehner.

And we tried for like 3 weeks. We couldn't get more than nine people to agree to vote for someone other than John Boehner. The vote was coming up on the House floor on Tuesday, and on Friday night I got a call from Thomas Massie and Jim Bridenstine, two of the finest people who ever served in Congress--two of the smartest as well, people of real integrity. And Thomas said, ``Louie, Jim had a brilliant idea, and we need to talk to you about it.''

And Jim Bridenstine, who, like I say, was brilliant, served our Nation in the Air Force, graduated from Rice University, which has rather high standards of intelligence to be admitted. And Jim said: ``Hey wait, Thomas, would you repeat that part about a guy from Rice having a brilliant idea, you being a guy from MIT?''

And anyway, they got on and they said: ``We are stuck with nine people. We can't get past nine people. We need

29 Republicans to vote for somebody besides Speaker Boehner.'' And if we can get to 29, of course, that was our goal. The whole goal, though--to make a full disclosure--the plan was, if we could get 29 Republicans to vote for somebody besides John Boehner, then that would throw it into a second ballot for the first time since 1923.

There was some point back in the 1800s, mid-1800s, when they had over 60 ballots cast before they elected a Speaker. But that was a goal, and we knew if we got 29 and we got to a second ballot, then we could call for an emergency conference among the Republicans, go down and meet in HC-5 downstairs, and we knew the 29 of us would be belittled, fussed at, and yelled at.

I could say: Look, you can yell at us and call us whatever names you want, but we are not changing our vote. So let's agree to a compromise Speaker.

By that afternoon, we expected to have a compromise Speaker. There were a number of potential people who would have been acceptable. That was the plan.

Thomas, Jim, and I, all three, knew that if I announced, then there would be an awful lot of people in our party who would hate me for the rest of my life or their life, whichever came first. The point that Thomas and Jim made was that we have a number of our Members who have been hearing from constituents who have said: Look, we want you to vote for somebody besides John Boehner for Speaker. There had been a poll done that showed that, as I recall, 61 percent of nationwide Republican voters across the country wanted somebody besides John Boehner as Speaker.

So as some of our Members heard from constituents saying to vote for anybody but Boehner. They said: I would. I would vote for anybody but John Boehner if someone else formally announced. But no one has formally announced, so I am not just going to throw my vote away, and that would satisfy their constituents.

Thomas' and Jim's point was that, if you announce, then they will hear from all of those thousands of constituents saying: Hey, you said if somebody announced, and now a Republican has announced, so keep your promise and vote for somebody besides Boehner.

The thinking of Thomas and Jim was that, if we do that and you announce, then that would make those guys so uncomfortable that had been promising I would vote for anybody but Boehner if somebody announces, that we could finally get to the 29. We have been stuck on nine for weeks now.

So I had asked them to let me give it some thought overnight. The next morning, there was a conference call already scheduled with all nine of us. I said: Let's talk about it in the morning and give me a chance to think about it.

What occurred to me is what I told the other eight Members who had agreed to vote for somebody besides the current Speaker, John Boehner: Look, guys, I have given this a lot of thought. If I am the only one who announces, then you will have both mainstream media and you will have Republican and Democratic reporters casting this as an election between this crazy guy from Texas, even though I feel quite certain that I scored much, much higher than my opponent would have at that time. They will say that he is crazy, and poor John Boehner is dealing with this crazy guy.

I said that what occurred to me is that, if one of you guys sent out word that you were announcing, then I could ask FOX News if I could come on to announce, and during the announcement I could make clear that this isn't about me being Speaker. It is about getting a different Speaker. So-and-so announced yesterday; somebody else may announce tomorrow. It is about getting a new Speaker.

Ted Yoho said: Well, Louie, if that is all it will take to get you to announce, I will send out an announcement this afternoon announcing that I am running for Speaker.

I said: Okay. Ted, if you announce you are running for Speaker, send out that announcement today. As soon as it goes out, I will call FOX News to see if I can come on.

That all happened. Ted sent out the press release. I called FOX News, and they let me on early that morning. I made it back from Dallas to Tyler in time to go to church, and the struggle was on.

But I knew, and all eight of our other patriot Republicans in the House knew, that by my announcing formally as a candidate for Speaker, which would bring about so much response from their constituents demanding that Members vote for somebody besides Boehner now that somebody has formally announced, those people who were made to feel very uncomfortable because of my announcement and the wrath they heard from constituents, some would probably never forgive me and would be angry with me. It would mean that I would never be able to be elected to any position. Even if we had a dogcatcher in the House, I could never get elected to that after I worked to have made that many people angry.

And I made a lot of people angry. People were calling by the thousands up here. I had many Members tell me they had gotten over 1,000 calls from constituents saying: Vote for Louie.

There was one article that got it right, that reported accurately that I was overheard a number of times saying: Look, guys, you know that Boehner is going to be mad at you if you don't vote for him; but you know he is going to be doubly mad at you if you vote for me because of how strongly he feels about me. So vote for anybody. You pick a living person and name them as your vote. We have got to have 29. If we get 29, we will have a compromise candidate for Speaker. Clearly, it would never be me after I made that many people angry.

So overnight, Sunday night, we started getting new people to pledge that they were willing to vote for someone besides Boehner. I encouraged people to vote for somebody besides me so you don't make Boehner totally mad.

Jim Bridenstine said: Louie, I am going to nominate you on the floor, and all I would ask is that you at least vote for yourself if I am going to nominate you so that I am not the only one voting for you.

He had been hearing me tell others to vote for anybody but me; it is fine. We just need to get to 29.

So I said: Absolutely, Jim. If you are gutsy enough to stand up and nominate me for Speaker, I will absolutely vote for myself so that you don't look, in some way, lame.

I will always treasure and appreciate the words that Jim Bridenstine said and the things that he spoke during his nomination, even during so much of the uproar against me by some of my colleagues. It still warms my heart to hear what Jim Bridenstine had to say here on the floor about me.

He has been nominated by our President to be head of NASA. Bridenstine is probably one of the smartest people to be named as head of NASA. He has been in the sky. He has served his country nobly and well, both flying planes and flying the rules of the House here in Congress. He would be an absolutely incredible asset to NASA and to this country once he is confirmed.

I had asked some other people--I imagine Jim knows--but what I have heard from other people is that it is not the Democrats who have a hold on Jim Bridenstine for head of NASA; it is actually our own Senator Marco Rubio. Now, that is what I was told by some people I trust.

If that is the case, I know that Bridenstine didn't support Senator Rubio in the primary for President, but Bridenstine is one of the finest, most qualified, and most intelligent people we could ever hope to have as head of NASA. If what I was told is true, that for some reason Marco Rubio has a grudge against Jim Bridenstine, I hope that he will do the right thing, put that grudge aside, whatever it is, and get this incredibly noble and qualified man into being head of NASA. We can't keep hurting our country with these kinds of actions by Republicans.

So I appreciate very much, Madam Speaker, people calling and encouraging me to run for Speaker, but I knew exactly when I announced for Speaker before, there would be people who would likely never forgive me for making their lives so uncomfortable. I had a goal. I just knew in my soul, if we didn't get a new Speaker soon, we would lose the majority at the end of 2016.

If Congress had been in such dismal shape in 2016, it would have hurt any chance we had of possibly winning the

Presidency. I just knew this country was in such rough shape that we had to do that. Even though it meant people hating me and being angry at me for years to come, it was worth it to try to help my country. I was willing to do that.

So I appreciate the calls, and I appreciate the encouragement, but I was willing to sacrifice any possibility that I would ever be elected to anything by other Members of Congress in order to get a different Speaker.

We ended up with Paul Ryan, and despite our disagreement on some things, I knew he was always trying to be honest, and I will always appreciate that. We all know that we did not lose the majority in the House and our failure under Speaker Boehner did not hurt us and keep us from being able to elect a Republican President. So I think those are good things that arose out of it, but now we need to be looking ahead for the future.

I do think that people--unlike me--who might have a chance to be elected Speaker and who have not done things like anger my colleagues by announcing back in 2015, people who have a chance need to put together a plan of action, something like a Contract with America, not a farce like was put together that Speaker Boehner helped direct, which was the Pledge to America. As soon as we were elected after that pledge, the pledge was abandoned by Speaker Boehner.

We need an agreement: You reelect us to the majority, here are the things we are going to do, and then do them.

I appreciate what my friend Thomas Massie said to a reporter earlier this afternoon. The reporter was demanding of Congressman Massie what he saw would ultimately be the result of a race for Speaker. Thomas Massie said: Well, I see this race for Speaker a lot like NASCAR. There are many, many laps to go, and I am sure there will be some spectacular crashes before we finish that race.

So I think that could very well be the case. There are many, many laps to go in the race for Speaker that we didn't even know about until this morning, and Thomas is probably right. There will probably be some spectacular crashes along the way in that race to be Speaker. We just need people who believe in the power of prayer to be praying for an honest and honorable Speaker who will follow the right plan, and then we will go from there.

Also, I want to touch on this incredible investigation not of a crime--we have long since gotten past a special counsel, Special Counsel Mueller, investigating a crime which, under laws and regulations, is a requirement to even appoint a special counsel. You have to have a crime in order to have a special counsel. As we found out, there was no crime that could be pointed to, yet they raised the question maybe the Trump campaign somehow colluded with Russia.

As we have heard from Comey and so many others, there is no evidence of Donald Trump colluding with Russia or the Trump campaign to change the outcome of the election.

So what the special counsel's job has morphed into, illegally, I might add, is the special counsel no longer being in pursuit of a specified crime in the appointment of special counsel to investigate; but he now has a person target, Donald Trump, and he has taken his job to be search everything you can, now raid his lawyer's office so that you can try to find some crime unrelated to Donald Trump that you could use in evidence to prove against his lawyer, Michael Cohen.

And then, once we have found sufficient crimes, we will tell Michael Cohen: Okay, we have got evidence that will put you in prison for life, or 1,000 years, whatever they are going to do, unless you agree to tell us something--don't care if it is true or untrue; we need you to say it is true--that Donald Trump committed a crime, and then we won't prosecute you.

That has to be what that big raid was all about, because even if Donald Trump told his attorney, Mr. Cohen, anything that had to do with a potential crime for which Mr. Cohen was representing him, they could not introduce that. That would be privileged, covered by the attorney/ client relationship, the privilege. I know absolutely, without any question in my mind, that Donald Trump never made a question admitting guilt in anything because he certainly convinced me that he is not guilty of anything. Nothing that has been proven.

But as The Heritage Foundation established in recent years, there are so many laws that carry criminal penalties that incorporate regulations that unelected bureaucrats have put in place so that if you violate a regulation, then you could be convicted, put in prison.

We have had hearings in prior years in Judiciary Committee. The estimate is probably over 5,000 Federal crimes. And we are not even sure how many there are, but probably over 5,000. And so many of them incorporate regulations: If you violate the regulation promulgated by this agency or department, then you are guilty of a crime, and you can go to prison.

So we heard some horror stories; such as, the gentleman, nerd, up in the northwest trying to create some kind of new, better battery. And he knew the laws and the requirements how to take care of chemicals, and he was very fastidious in doing that, followed the law, legal requirements, on keeping chemicals that he used to try to develop this battery. And one day he is driving along in his little fuel-efficient, small car, and he has three suburbans swoop up: one behind, one in front, one to the side. They force him off the road. They grab him out of his little car, throw him to the ground, boot in the back, handcuff him. He had no idea what he had done, and he didn't learn for quite some time.

But he had sent some chemical to Alaska to be used to help research what he was trying to establish in making a new battery. This was my understanding from the testimony we had at the hearing. So, since he was sending something by mail to Alaska, then, under venue statutes, that allowed the U.S. attorney to prosecute either in his home State, in the continental U.S., or in Alaska; and since he really wasn't friends with anybody in Alaska, they drug him up to Alaska, threw him in jail there with a high bond for no reason other than the Justice Department being ruthless.

And they tried this man for committing the heinous crime of violating a regulation that required, if someone sent this particular substance through the mail, it had to go by ground. He knew that. He checked the box to mail by ground only. He didn't realize that even when you check the box ``by ground only'' there was a regulation that said that wasn't good enough; you also had to get this Federal stamp to put on there that had a picture of an airplane with a line across the airplane so that it wasn't supposed to be taken in the air.

He got thrown to the ground, badly abused, taken to jail in Alaska, tried for a Federal felony because he didn't put a little sticker on with a plane with a line through it. Well, the jury did the right thing. They did a jury nullification and found him not guilty, although technically he was guilty of not putting that little sticker on there. They felt like he had been punished enough. They found him not guilty.

So he was ready to go home, but the Justice Department was so angry that he had been acquitted that they looked for anything to try to keep him incarcerated. And what they came up with was another statute that said, if anyone ever leaves certain substances unattended for so many days, then they are strictly liable, they are guilty of a Federal felony of abandoning these chemicals. And there is no defense for the fact that you were kept away from those chemicals 100 percent involuntarily, against your will.

So, as I understood from what we got at our hearing, he ended up being convicted of abandoning these chemicals, even though he didn't abandon them. The Justice Department was guilty of that, not him. But those were the regulations. They were properly stored, but he was forced to go to Alaska. He couldn't stay there with his chemicals, and he went to prison for that.

Now, I bring all that up to say that there are probably thousands of cases like that. We heard about a number of others. And The Heritage Foundation's point was that probably most Americans have committed Federal felonies we don't even know about because of some technical violation like that gentleman had that ended up with him being incarcerated for 18 months or so.

So if we abandon the constitutional approach to proving crimes in America that you are innocent until proven guilty and that judges are not allowed to give search warrants, or even arrest warrants, unless-- well, for search warrants, under the Fourth Amendment, items are described with particularity that are to be searched for, and the area to be searched is identified with particularity. You have got to be specific.

And in this case, we have a special counsel who is out of control. I have told the President, I have said in the media: Mueller should be investigated himself. And I can't help but think that Rosenstein, as deputy attorney general, and Mueller, as special counsel, are running out the clock on statutes of limitation for any crimes they may have committed in stifling the investigation under Rosenstein's control as U.S. attorney and Mueller's control as FBI Director into Russia trying to gain control over American uranium.

And we also know that Comey has admitted he leaked information, which should be pretty easy to prove is a crime. He admitted it. He should be investigated. Each time Mueller's special counsel team has leaked information, it most likely has been a crime as well, for which Mueller needs to be investigated and held to account.

Each time there has been a leak about the President that contained information that it was a crime to leak, Mueller should have been all over that. But the trouble, we know, if he were to be investigating the most obvious crimes being committed, then he would be most likely under arrest himself.

We need to know: Rosenstein and Mueller, were they complicit in helping ensure that Russia would end up with such a sizable amount, 20 percent or so, of our uranium? They had a person under cover that was giving them information showing that Russians were committing crimes; and, as far as we can tell, they made sure nothing was done so that nothing would prevent some of the Cabinet members approving the sale of U.S. uranium. That needs to be investigated.

The leaks that we know have been committed that are crimes, they need to be investigated. Obviously that is going to take a second counsel, a special counsel. And no, even appointing a current U.S. attorney somewhere to investigate the special counsel and Comey and Rosenstein, it is going to have to be outside of the current Justice Department, outside the current U.S. attorney.

And it seems pretty clear to me, no one would need as many of the heartless prosecutors as Mueller has hired. It is obvious he is on a witch hunt. Seemed pretty obvious to some of us that, by his outrageous activity in raiding a lawyer's office, he was probably hoping the President would fire Mueller. That is an indication he really doesn't have anything; he has gotten desperate and is trying to manipulate lawyer Cohen and, in the alternative, trying to get evidence that they could use to squeeze Cohen to get him to testify, even creating a crime if he has to. That seems pretty serious.

But you look at the history of what Robert Mueller has been engaged in, the way he destroyed the life of Ted Stevens. He probably would still be a Senator today and be alive were it not for Robert Mueller's

Mr. Speaker, it is with enormous pride that I recognize and congratulate the Grace Community School Lady Cougars on an outstanding basketball season in which they captured the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools Class 5A Basketball Championship.

The team finished this season with a most impressive 27-6 record, managing an undefeated 6-0 standing in their district. There was no doubt the Lady Cougars would be a powerful force in Texas and a basketball team with which to be reckoned.

The path to the championship found the Grace Community team defeating the number one ranked team 42-41 in the semi-final game.

Then, the Lady Cougars faced off with the team from Corpus Christi Incarnate Word to

battle for the state championship title. This match was decided decisively with a 37-31 victory for Grace Community School.

Clearly a team does not reach the ultimate and lofty plateau of excellence without coaches who know their players. There is no doubt that each of the individual players, coaches, and supporting personnel involved with the success of the Lady Cougars will benefit from having participated and witnessed the level of success. That success is only achieved when each individual gives all they have, while working together with focused dedication and passion.

This tribute goes out to all of the athletic staff including Athletic Director Joseph Walker; Head Coach Galen Taylor; Assistant Coaches Mark Taylor, Bri Polk and David Robinson; Managers Clara Roberts and Esther Nwachukwu.

The team members achieving this memorable accomplishment include Addie Daughtry, Jo Murray, Jordan Tauscher, Molly Hicks, Stella Thomas, Reagan Wilson, Emily Edwards, Lauren Evans and Lindsey Hudgins.

An athletic team cannot achieve any true level of excellence without unwavering support from its school and its school leaders including Head Administrator Jay Ferguson and High School Principal Brian Benscoter. That is exactly the kind of support the Lady Cougars experienced from the entire community of Tyler and Smith County. That is why congratulations go to all the outstanding family, friends, and fans who contributed to the success of the Lady Cougars during this championship season.

May God continue to bless all of their efforts both in school and as they one day finish high school and use that same drive and determination to make this country even stronger. Congratulations to the TAPPS State Basketball Champions, the Grace Community School Lady Cougars, as their legacy will endure as long as there is a United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, a very tragic thing occurred for those of us

who care about constitutional rights yesterday. It is a continuation of the travesty that is coming out of the so-called special counsel Robert Mueller.

I am not aware of anybody else in the House or Senate who was as absolutely concerned and livid as I was when I heard about the appointment of Robert Mueller as a special counsel because, from my questioning of the man and from my research from questioning the man during judiciary hearings, I believe he has done more damage to the FBI than all of the FBI Directors put together since J. Edgar Hoover.

He ran off thousands and thousands of years of experience from the FBI in his goofy 5-year up-or-out policy. It works in some areas, but not in law enforcement. That is the one area where law enforcement needs time to build credibility with local law enforcement.

But anyway, these guys were--most of them that he ran off with thousands and thousands of years of experience during his first 10 years, which is the requisite term set up for an FBI Director--those guys were trained to recognize radical Islamist characteristics as to what they were studying, what they believed, things they did, and that was a very helpful thing for the FBI to know.

They began, I guess really got on track after the attempted--well, actually, the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. It was incredible, the amount of information the FBI had discerned about radical Islam during the prosecution of The Blind Sheikh, led by Andrew McCarthy, a brilliant lawyer. He was a fantastic prosecutor. I believe Mr. McCarthy said yesterday, in an interview, that he had three prosecutors helping him with what, at that time, was the most important and high-level prosecution of radical Islamist terrorism in our country.

Since then, back in 2008, there was prosecution and conviction of principles involved in the Holy Land Foundation who were convicted for supporting terrorism. The FBI gathered that evidence as well.

Yet, under Robert Mueller, who came in immediately before 9/11--you would have thought that this man would have enough wisdom after seeing the tragedy befall thousands of Americans--what does he do? He crawls in bed with CAIR, one of the named coconspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial, along with others, and wants to placate them at all costs.

They wanted his training materials that helped FBI agents understand what to look for in trying to find radical Islamist terrorists. They wanted those materials purged, cleaned out of anything that might help educate our FBI agents as to what to look for in radical Islamists, and FBI Director Robert Mueller obliged.

And there was nothing that, I think, draws the distinction about how wrongheaded he was as FBI Director than his responses when I was asking him about the heads-up that they had gotten over the Tsarnaev older brother who was the main Boston bomber, killed and maimed so many people, totally preventable if Robert Mueller had allowed his agents to know what to look for.

But in frustration, I said: You didn't even go out to the mosque to find out if they had been radicalized. You didn't go out there to find out about the Tsarnaevs at the mosque where they worshipped.

He said they did go out to those mosques in their outreach program. It is where they go play patty-cake, sit around, maybe have a meal together on the floor, something like that. And that is great. That is fine to do. It is a good thing to do. But not when you are ignoring your law enforcement function that will prevent so many people in Boston from having their lives tragically ended or tragically altered and a living hell imposed upon them.

But that was our Robert Mueller. If you go back to his days as the acting U.S. attorney in Boston when, even after it was clear to most everybody else that the FBI had helped frame Whitey Bulger, the mob boss' competitors, and put four in prison, it was clear to most everybody at that point the FBI framed these guys. They didn't do it. And yet Mueller was still riding the parole board demanding that they not let them out on parole, which ended up costing the people of Boston and Massachusetts over $100 million for Mueller's horrible aide.

The taxpayers of the United States paid less of a price for the years of harassment that Robert Mueller, with his sidekick, James Comey, did zeroing in on Dr. Hatfill as the person who was spreading bioterror. I think they only paid about $6 million as a result of Mueller's intensity on pursuing the wrong guy, against whom there was not one shred of any evidence that could ever be used.

The only thing they had to justify the many years of torture that the FBI put Dr. Hatfill through was when two dogs--which were later found to have been totally bogus in spotting anything--when they went by Dr. Hatfill, he rubbed their ears, and they seemed to have reacted favorably to having their ears rubbed. That was the only so-called evidence Robert Mueller ever had, and he was relentless.

One thing you have got to give Robert Mueller credit for, he is consistent.

He has destroyed so many lives. He has cost people their lives, but he never apologizes. He always hides behind the words that he is doing his job when he goes about destroying innocent people's lives.

Alan Dershowitz, I disagreed with him so many times on policy matters, but he understands the Constitution. So does Jonathan Turley. As Dershowitz said, he didn't vote for Donald Trump, but he sees what is happening. And he points out in an article published today in The Hill, he says: ``There is much speculation as to the significance of the search of the offices and hotel room of President Trumps lawyer, Michael Cohen. To obtain a search warrant, prosecutors must demonstrate to a judge that they have probable cause to believe that the premises to be searched contain evidence of crime. They must also specify the area to be searched, the items to be seized and, in searches of computers, the word searches to be used.''

The problem is there has to be probable cause established by sworn evidence to justify a warrant. And when anyone gets a warrant to go after a lawyer of someone that law enforcement wants to target the way Mueller and Rosenstein want to target Donald Trump, there has got to be probable cause put in the affidavits.

These guys have gotten so used to sending out bogus national security letters like subpoenas. We found out that while Mueller was at the FBI, the IG says there may have been thousands of letters sent out with no basis in fact. This was under Mueller's direction at the FBI.

He may not have known individual letters, but he let things get out of control because, in his mind, when he or any of the people working for him are going after people they think are bad guys, it doesn't matter what they do. They are in the right. And that is exactly how you can lose a constitutional republic that we have.

Dershowitz says: ``I believe we would have been hearing more from civil libertarians--the American Civil Liberties Union, attorney groups and privacy advocates--if the raid had been on Hillary Clinton's lawyer. Many civil libertarians have remained silent about potential violations of President Trump's rights because they strongly disapprove of him and his policies. That is a serious mistake, because these violations establish precedents that lie around like loaded guns capable of being aimed at other targets.''

``What else does the raid tell us?''

He says: ``It seems likely that special counsel Robert Mueller is bifurcating the investigation: He will keep control over matters relating to Russia, the campaign and any possible obstruction. But he has handed over to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York any matters relating to Trump's personal and business affairs.''

Well, I would submit to you, having been a prosecutor, defense attorney, felony judge, chief justice, that normally when somebody in law enforcement raids a lawyer's office--and in this case, office, home, and, since they were out of the home while it was being apparently remodeled, they raided the hotel room. When a raid on a lawyer's office--and especially personal lawyers--occurs, the guys raiding that are lawyers know, if they find something, even if it is a potential defendant telling his lawyer, ``I am guilty as sin''--we know that didn't happen in

this case because President Trump knows he is not guilty. But even if the target had said that to his lawyer, judges ultimately--even if it has to go to the Supreme Court, that is not going to be admissible. That is going to be protected by the attorney-client privilege.

That is why every defendant who people suspect told his lawyer exactly what he did doesn't have that lawyer's office raided because, if this system of justice is going to work, there has to be two adversarial sides that do the very best they can as long as it is ethical and it is constitutional, following the law.

So the attorney-client relationship means something. It is protected. Courts have made that clear. It doesn't matter what you have got that went between the attorney and client. Now, there were those who say: Well, but, you know, the law, if they are both engaged in fraud, then together--well, you still have got an attorney-client problem with admissibility.

And that is why, normally, when someone in law enforcement raids a lawyer's office trying to target their client, they are looking for something that they can use against that lawyer, hopefully, maybe a bunch of violations, no matter what it is, they can use against that lawyer that doesn't have an arguably protected status of attorney- client, just something to do with the lawyer, so that they can tell that lawyer: Here is what we have got now. We had what we believe was a lawful search, and while we were searching, we found all of this stuff that shows you have committed other crimes. So you are looking at going for life or 1,000 years, whatever it is they happen to use in that particular case. However, if you will simply testify that your client violated the law, you don't go to prison at all. You stay rich. Everything looks good for you. It is only your client who suffers.

Well, in this case, it would be a constitutional republic going down the toilet. Mueller doesn't care. He has shown that over and over. He let Eric Holder get away with all kinds of things--some would say even murder in the Fast and Furious operation where one of our own agents died and potentially hundreds of others across the border died as a result of Eric Holder's Department's actions. But they covered up.

But they covered up. They obfuscated how they had violated the law that resulted in death.

Eric Holder said recently in the press about how he knows Mueller and that Mueller is going to get Trump on something.

There is a reason President Obama extended the horrendous 10 years that Mueller was FBI Director for 2 extra years. Any of my colleagues who really want to go back and see who Mueller is and what he did, I can show you. There is plenty to show the damage that this man has done to our country.

He served valiantly in Vietnam. Great. Congratulations. He deserves awards. But that doesn't give him the right to ruin my country after he gets back, and that is what he has been doing. He is bringing us to the brink of a terrible constitutional crisis.

I think he is also trying to provoke the President to firing Mueller because Mueller knows he doesn't have anything right now. This is a last-ditch effort to try to find something, try to get something, get somebody to testify against the President, even if it is a lie just as it was that put Sergeant Derrick Miller in prison for life whose parole hearing I came back and testified before last week. It is not that hard to get people to testify to a lie against somebody else when you are threatening to take everything they care about away.

Rosenstein needs to be stopped. He was involved in the original Russia uranium investigation as a U.S. attorney. He should never have been allowed to appoint a special counsel. If Rosenstein had any decency and ethics about himself, he should have told Jeff Sessions: I am not the guy who can do this because I was involved in that Russia uranium investigation that enriched Hillary Clinton's foundation $145 million; I can't do this.

But since he is not ethical, he is not moral, and he doesn't mind keeping the limitations running while they are looking elsewhere rather than at him and Mueller who is also the FBI Director involved in that Russia investigation where Russia was trying to get our uranium, neither one of them should have been able to accept.

Rosenstein has got to go, and his assistant who so often keeps the good people who supported President Trump in the dark, Tash Gauhar, she needs to go. She needs to go, and Rosenstein should follow right out the door. Those people are doing more damage over there. They have got to go, and then we can try to salvage this country and our constitutional Republic.

By the way, tomorrow we are voting on a balanced budget amendment. I came up here wanting a balanced budget amendment, and Congress wanted it passed here, in the Senate, and across the Nation, but I saw very quickly how easy it was to raise revenue--taxes, fees, whatever you want to call it--and if we don't have a spending cap on a balanced budget amendment, it is a prescription for ratcheting up the level of spending taxing, spending taxing, because we just can't get people to vote for real cuts.

We vote to slow the rate of spending sometimes, but real cuts, we couldn't even vote to do that. We had the horrendous thing called the sequestration that gutted our military which we have been trying to make up for. But every time, we add hundreds of billions of dollars just to do what is right by the military.

Now, to cover for the horrendous omnibus that gave Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi big smiles because of all that they were awarded during that horrendous vote is a huge mistake. I guess it is a cover-our-rear type of action, but it doesn't cover anything. It is like a hospital gown. You only think you are covered. This doesn't cover anything.

Bob Goodlatte has a good balanced budget amendment that includes a spending cap, but that is not the one we are going to be allowed to vote on. We are not going to be allowed to bring an amendment to put a spending cap on this bill. That is why I voted against it last time.

People say: Oh, but you don't have to worry. There is protection in this against things like that terrible omnibus.

Oh? What is the protection?

Oh, if you look--and I did--it says that it will require three-fifths of a vote from the House and Senate to set aside the requirements of the balanced budget amendment and to raise revenue. So to raise revenue, we have got to have a 60 percent vote; and in that horrendous omnibus, it passed with 60.5 percent of the vote.

This terrible balanced budget amendment we are voting on is such a farce. It would not have even stopped us from hurting future generations in this last omnibus bill. It still would have passed even if the balanced budget amendment we are voting on tomorrow were a part of the Constitution already.

Then you say it won't take effect for 5 years. Please. The Senate is not going to take it up. This is to try to make us look conservative after the omnibus bill. I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, I want a balanced budget amendment that means something, not a hospital gown bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 36 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, April 11, 2018, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honor to address this Hallowed Hall, sometimes more hallowed than others, but today was a bit of a sad day for some of us. The Federalist reported the headline: Congress Rushes Towards Spending Vote to Prevent a Shutdown.

``Congressional leaders released a $1.3 trillion government spending plan for the rest of the fiscal year and asked lawmakers to begin voting on it with only hours to read and analyze the 2,232-page text.

``The measure is wide ranging, with funds for fencing on the U.S.- Mexico border, combating opioid addiction and building new roads, along with incentives to bolster reporting to a database for gun-buyer background checks.''

I have got to assert, Mr. Speaker, that this fix NICS bill, as it's been called, leaves in place a practice that has been going on. It grieved me greatly that Republicans would rush to embrace this thing, which allows the practice that the Obama administration started that administrative procedures by unelected, unaccountable-to-voters bureaucrats could decide people were not, in their opinion, entitled to have their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

We have heard accounts of people who didn't realize that they were being questioned in a way that would be used to take their guns away and their right to keep and bear arms to protect themselves, to engage in self-defense, and the VA is the most notorious. Simply asking a question like, ``Who takes care of your checkbook finances?'' and answer anything like, ``Oh, my wife takes care of that,'' then a matter of weeks later, a letter is received saying you don't have a right to have a gun.

It is amazing that the Obama administration would start such an unconstitutional practice, and it is, to me, even more grievous that Republicans would participate in a bill that says it is going to correct a problem and make America safer when, actually, what it does will not make a difference in the mass shootings that have occurred.

But in the tradition of Congress, if there is a problem, too often people in this body feel it is not important that we do something that will make a difference; it is just important that we look like we are doing something. That is really where the fix NICS bill came into play.

It really wouldn't make people safer. It will add some restrictiveness, and it allows this heinous practice of having some bureaucrat at the VA just decide that a veteran who served his or her

Nation valiantly, qualified to use a weapon, can't have a weapon.

Forget the Constitution. We are the VA, and we decide you don't get one. Rather egregious.

But most egregious of all, we have about half a year to go, and we just voted $1.3 trillion to be spent between now and the end of the fiscal year, which ends midnight September 30. Quite tragic.

And we are told, over and over, by pollsters that the American public doesn't want to hear about process, how laws are made, or if some rules are violated. They don't care about those things.

But the fact is, just like America and each State has laws, and if those laws are not observed, we hasten the demise of a Democratic Republic, this little experiment in self-government.

And when it comes to the rules of the House, when we don't go through the normal regular orders, it is called, which just means following the rules for how we pass a law, then the product is not going to be nearly as good.

And that is what we have in the bill that was passed today. It is really immoral. Going back as far as we are aware in North America, parents have traditionally wanted for their child or their children more opportunity, better opportunity, a better life, than the parent had growing up and going forward.

Yet, now for the last 50 years, we have had generations engaged in being all about themselves, and that includes my generation. Not all of us, but enough that we could pass a bill a month or so ago and then pass another one today that heaps hundreds of billions of dollars of debt onto our children, our grandchildren, that they didn't run up.

This is totally different. It is so immoral. It is totally different from what generations of Americans have wanted: something better for their kids.

Yet here we are. It is as if we go into a bank and say: I need a loan. Well, what is your collateral? How are you going to pay? Oh, I am not going to pay. I can't pay. But I have got all my children, got some grandchildren someday, and they will pay.

Well, what do you need the money for? Because I can't stop spending money. I just can't control myself. So I am going to have my kids and grandkids pay someday, because all I can do is spend, and that is where we are.

There is an obligation for each generation to be accountable for their actions to future generations. And there has been so much debt run up.

Of course, when I got here 13 years ago, we had crossed over into $10 trillion in debt, $11 trillion, and all of a sudden, in 8 years, we hit $20 trillion. It was incredible.

The biggest part of that hit during the 4 years where the Democratic majority controlled the House and the Senate, and those 2 years in which the Democrat majority in the House and Senate was also linked up with President Obama, a Democrat in the White House, and the debt exploded.

But when we bring a bill to the floor like came today, didn't go through regular order, it did not go through committee process, and I can't know for sure, I heard there were two, I heard there were four people negotiating. I heard that it was staff members who were doing the negotiation. And for heaven's sake, if we are going to have staff members negotiating numbers that involve $1 trillion that our children and grandchildren will have to pay, let's at least get better staff members to do the negotiation for the sake of our kids. It is really tragic what has been going on.

I was just reading an article a moment ago with a statement from Minority Leader Pelosi, in which she indicated they had won the negotiation, they got lots more of what they wanted than did those in the majority and than did the President himself.

Unfortunately, though the President is an amazing negotiator, he graciously allowed the House leaders and the Democratic leaders to do the negotiating. And I would encourage the President, I know he wants better deals than this atrocity, but we need his negotiating skills involved to get a better product.

This article from Chad Pergram says: ``With $1.2 trillion omnibus bill topping 2,200 pages, Congress needs CliffsNotes.''

I have another from Jacob Sullum: ``Fix NICS bill would help block gun sales to peaceful people.'' And Jacob Sullum is right about that.

This from August 11, 2016, they are pointing out that the background checks, which were proposed in part of this bill that passed in the House today, would not be effective. The headline says: ``Background Checks: Ineffective, unconstitutional, and dangerous.''

It says: ``Background checks were sold to gun owners as a bill of goods in the 1990s. But consider how ineffective, and dangerous, they have become to our Second Amendment rights:

``Number 1, roughly 95 percent of NICS denials are `false positives,' which means most of the people who are being denied are not the people that want to hold up the neighborhood grocery store.

``Number 2, for the last year on record, only 13 prohibited persons were convicted for trying to illegally purchase a gun--when more than 10 million guns were sold.''

Pretty amazing. Only 13. And this was back in the Obama administration. Of course, we know they weren't enforcing the law. They had the weakest gun violation enforcement of any administration in the last 50 years, all the while demanding tougher laws, gun laws and gun restrictions, when they were doing the worst job of just enforcing the laws we had.

So out of 10 million guns that had background checks and were approved for sale, only 13 were convicted of trying to illegally purchase a gun.

The article continues: ``And the inspector general's report in 2016 found that the Justice Department''--and again, this is during the Obama administration--``only refers an average of 32 prosecutions per year under the Brady Law.''

``That is not surprising, since good people can be denied their Second Amendment rights for outstanding traffic tickets, that result in a bench warrant . . . for having the same name as a bad guy . . . or for having engaged in a bar fight 50 years ago.

``Number 3, because of the NICS system, there are now more than 250,000 military veterans who cannot purchase firearms from a gun dealer--and the Obama administration tried to disqualify tens of thousands of otherwise law-abiding seniors in similar fashion.''

I want to inject here. Just because a senior citizen has his or her adult child take care of their checkbook, it does not mean that that senior citizen does not know when their home is being broken into and they need to protect themselves.

Number 4 in this article says: ``And what if you're blocked from buying a gun because you're illegitimately denied by the NICS check? Well, according to USA Today, the Obama administration illegally diverted every single one of its FBI appeal examiners to other duties, making it impossible for the agency to overturn people's denials and creating a huge backlog.

``Number 5, every time a gun dealer contacts the NICS system and a background check is conducted, there is the potential that gun buyers' names will be retained--despite prohibitions to the contrary. This data retention and the potential for gun owner registration is a constant concern for gun owners, given the expansive backup system at the FBI. Not only that, the General Accounting Office found in 2016 that the ATF had illegally retained the names of thousands of gun owners.

``Number 6, forcing law-abiding citizens to get `permission' to exercise a constitutionally protected right can result in harmful delays--and even death. Consider Carol Bowne of New Jersey who tried to get a gun for protection . . . was forced to wait several weeks during the screening process . . . and was ultimately stabbed to death by the man she wanted to defend herself against.

``Gun control is denying the rights of law-abiding Americans, while not making us any safer.''

And that is the thing. We hear these constant proposals for more background checks. A proposal that is being pushed, we have got to have background checks when someone gives or sells a gun to another individual when that person selling or giving the gun is not a firearms dealer, they are not in the business, which means a father to a

son, or a mother to a daughter. This push to get background checks when, as my friend John Lott's research has shown not one mass shooting in the last 100 years has resulted from a gun that was given or purchased in a lawful transfer person to person. So that kind of idea wouldn't help save any lives.

If we are going to do something, at least do something that saves lives, makes a difference.

But we know that, in Rwanda, there was a horrendous period in which 800,000 human beings were slaughtered with machetes. We know that the worst attack with the most horrendous murders in our U.S. history, on our soil, happened on September 11, 2001, and the weapon that was used was a box cutter.

We know that the Boston Marathon bombing, in which people were killed and maimed, a pressure cooker was used.

We know that in Austin, Texas, a sick criminal mind killed two people and wounded a number of others.

There is a lot of talk about ending gun violence without a thought about ending violence.

Oklahoma City, that was ammonium nitrate, that was fertilizer, used as a bomb.

I keep coming back to the quote of President John Adams in 1798, when he said so prophetically and analytically: ``Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.''

That is really where we are. Do we want to end gun violence or do we want to end violence? Some of us would like to end violence. 800,000 human beings that are killed with machetes are just as dead as 800,000 killed with a bomb or a gun. Actually, they most likely suffered a great deal more than if they were killed with a gun.

A gun is like the law itself. It can be used to protect. During my 4 years in the Army, we were trained to use a weapon for protection of the United States and our Constitution. We took an oath to do that. We were never in combat in my 4 years, but that is what we were trained for. It was not an assault weapon. It was a protective weapon to protect our country.

So when we hear all this talk that maybe it is time to again ban assault weapons, any weapon is an assault weapon. Any weapon is also a defensive weapon. It is all about the hands of those who are holding the weapon.

We also know for a fact that the years in which so-called assault weapons were banned, it made absolutely no difference. We also know that in cities where there is the most strenuous gun laws, you often find the most violent number of gun attacks.

The Wall Street Journal had an article some time back talking about the mentality of those who use a gun and kill and engage in a mass shooting. They said that almost invariably these are control freaks. Their idea, their thought is ``I have got to be in control,'' so they want to go to a place where no one else will have a gun. They intentionally want to be somewhere where nobody else has a gun. That is their mentality. They want to be in control.

It is not uncommon to have happen what happened in Austin, when the bomber there was about to be captured, he took his own life because of the fear they are going to lose control, so they take that one last act of control and kill themselves.

So will we save more lives if we let law-abiding people have guns and do what the Obama administration refused to do more than any other administration in modern history, and that is prosecute people who violate the law in trying to obtain a gun illegally? I submit to you that the latter is the best way to go. We are better off allowing law- abiding citizens to have the guns just as the Constitution intended.

Coming back again to John Adams' quote, we have suffered through a time in American history where people on the far left politically have been saying, in essence, there is no real right or wrong. What may be wrong for you may be right for somebody else, so it is all relative. There is no absolute right and wrong.

C.S. Lewis pointed out that it is like music. Although some people will come closer to singing the proper note, just because many can't doesn't mean that note does not exist. The law does exist, and some will come closer to following the law more easily.

The law exists, and it must be enforced. That is one of the things that has made the United States so successful, to become as it was, the greatest country in the history of the world--I would humbly submit, even greater than Solomon's Israel, because Americans had more freedoms, more opportunities, and more assets.

This is the first time that I can find in history, anywhere, anytime, that the number one health problem for a nation's poor was obesity. That just doesn't happen through history, but it is happening here in the United States.

If you go back to the founding, you had people, most of whom were Christians, but all of whom wanted to have a country where Christians were not persecuted for their Christian beliefs. Now we have had the Christian religion so slandered and defamed that, even by government entities, it has been called a hate group. Evangelical Christians-- which just means these are Christians who so love and honor God and believe they are going to Heaven when they die that they want others to have the opportunity to go to Heaven to be in paradise with Jesus. Yet in this perverse time, we have people belittling Christianity and Christian beliefs like has never happened in the history of this country.

I think a majority of Americans believe we have been blessed beyond measure because a majority of Americans did have an abiding faith in God Almighty, and you had a majority that believed that Jesus was not a liar, that He was not a lunatic, but that He was the Lord just as He said:

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one goes to the

Father but by Me.

So a believer in Christianity believes if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, you can't go to Heaven.

So either Jesus meant what He said and He was the Son of God, or He was a lunatic, because that is a crazy statement if it is not true, or He is just a liar, like David Koresh.

Yet now the perversion has come and the attack has come that this religion, the one religion that is completely and truly based on love, that God so loved the world He sent His Son, and His Son so loved the world He laid down His life so that anyone who believed in Him could be in paradise in the next life, that is being called a hate religion, and Christians are being persecuted.

For the first time in American history, America doesn't seem to care about Christians being slaughtered and a type of genocide going on in the Middle East of Christians. The prior administration made very, very clear that their priority was not the Christians who were being slaughtered by the thousands in the Middle East; it was Muslim refugees. And that is why there was such a tiny, tiny percentage of Christian refugees who were allowed into the United States when compared to the percentage of Christians living in the Middle East where the refugees were coming from.

It is a sobering time, and it only makes sense that, when we reach a time when Christianity is maligned, defamed, and persecuted, that it is a time the Bible talks about: Right is wrong; wrong is right. Those that try to hold to the right as God gives them to see the right, that, gee, those folks are said to be crazy, and if not crazy, hatemongers.

They are not hatemongers. But when we get into that period of time, it made sense. Priorities are completely askew, and the generation in charge thinks of themselves and does not think about what is going to happen to that generation's children.

When one thinks about it, and with the scientific advancements we have, we know that a heart is beating inside that little child in the mother's loving womb. It is a real person with a beating heart. Janet Porter and others have talked about, with regard to the Heartbeat bill: What happens if you see someone appearing to be unconscious, lying down? You run over and check: Is there a heartbeat? If there is a heartbeat, then you call the ambulance and you do everything you can to save that life.

Mr. Speaker, it is a dangerous time, and it is time to become a moral nation again.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 3 o'clock and 11 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, March 23, 2018, at 10 a.m.

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.

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.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 44 minutes p.m.), under its previous order and pursuant to House Resolution 788, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, March 20, 2018, at 10 a.m., for morning-hour debate, as a further mark of respect to the memory of the late Honorable Louise McIntosh Slaughter.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and greatly appreciate a moment to speak.

I guess to borrow a bit from Shakespeare's account of what Marc Antony said: I come not to bury Marcy Kaptur, but to praise her.

I got to know Marcy back during the economic disaster where investment banks brought us to the brink of ruin. And though we come from different backgrounds and we have different ideas at times about the best way to go forward, I always know that Marcy Kaptur will be honest with me, that she cares deeply about the country, and that is her driving concern. It is actually easy to talk to people in this body--even across the aisle--when their driving concern is in the best interest of the country.

We shared a passion back after the problems in late 2008, in that I saw someone who was ethical and actually righteous who wanted to see that those who caused the problem that brought us to the brink of ruin were not rewarded, and that also we didn't end up punishing those who had no fault.

I am still concerned that she and I were not able to see that the problems were not rewarded and the innocent were not punished. I am not real proud of how our parties together responded to that crisis, but through all of that, and in the years intervening since, actually 10 years--it was back in 2008--I have come to build my respect for Marcy Kaptur and know that this is somebody--agree or disagree, and we often disagree--but she is going to be honest, and that she has that passion in her heart to do what is best for the country.

There are people who have attributed the comment to different people over the years. My late mother said that our pastor back in 1951, before I was ever around, used it about a married couple, and he said: If two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary.

So here on the floor, it is important that we hear from each other and we get different viewpoints in arriving at what is best for the country. But one thing I have grown to understand and know is that when I talk to Marcy Kaptur, it is somebody who I know will be straightforward, agree or disagree, will be honest, and will be honorable; and that is not a bad way to approach things.

If we had more people with whom we could have those kind of discussions, there would probably be a lot fewer ulcers amongst our colleagues on this floor and the country would be far the better off for it.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend, Congresswoman Waters, for sharing this opportunity. I didn't realize that my friend, Marcy Kaptur, was going to set a new record. All I knew is I didn't really care about the gender, but I care greatly about the person and how she has enriched this body by being here.

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, it is nice when we can talk across party lines about someone's excellent level of service. It has been an honor and privilege to serve with Marcy Kaptur my 13 years here in Congress.

Unfortunately, I want to move from talking about someone with ethical, upright, and righteous scruples to talking about a former FBI Director.

I had concerns back when Robert Mueller was FBI Director. And some people have forgotten, but one of the things that he implemented as FBI Director that I have heard from FBI agents around the country caused a great deal of concern was what he

called a 5-year up-or-out policy, which, in essence--it is more complicated than this, but basically anyone who found themselves in a supervisory position within the FBI offices anywhere in the country, in the world, they were in a supervisory position for 5 years. At the end of that 5 years they had to either come to Washington and most likely ride a cubical, sit at a desk, or they could get out of the FBI.

Most of the honorable, wonderful agents we had in the FBI across the country that so many people here in Washington with the FBI like to point to--why? Because they can point around the country to upright, moral, ethical, honest FBI agents so that you don't look at the top of the FBI as it has been here. Since I have been here in Congress both under the Bush administration followed by the Obama administration, there have been problems at the top of the FBI.

The first time I had an opportunity to question Mr. Mueller, FBI Director Mueller, after getting to Congress in 2005, I was not aware of all of the problems that Director Mueller was creating within the FBI, and so I paid deference, in effect, to his service in the military, in Vietnam. I felt like he deserved that. But then, as I have said about other individuals, no matter how grueling someone's service may have been, Vietnam or elsewhere, it still doesn't give them a right to harm my country either through negligence or intentional misconduct.

This 5-year up-or-out policy--people didn't realize what I was understanding and realizing from around the country--was doing massive damage to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And I kept wondering, ``Why would he do this?''

Now, I understand here in Washington it wouldn't be a bad policy. If you are in a supervisory position for 5 years in Washington, maybe you ought to be bounced out into the real United States, outside this surreal District of Columbia for government service, the paradise for bureaucrats. That would have been a far better policy for the FBI, for probably any bureaucracy here.

For many of the departments and agencies in Washington, that wouldn't be a bad idea: Okay. If you are in a supervisory position in Washington, D.C., for 5 years, at the end of the 5 years you have to go out to the real world, go out to the United States itself, in one of the offices out there and deal with real people in real situations rather than this bubble in Washington, D.C., inside the beltway.

That might have been a good policy, but that is not the one that Robert Mueller utilized.

As I wrestled with that--why would someone implement a policy that forced some of the best people in law enforcement, happened to be in the FBI, in a supervisory position, force them out, why would an FBI Director do that?--it became clear. And I believe it was NPR that had an article, I believe it was, about this policy of Mueller's and how, I believe it was in part of 2007, Mueller's policy ran off around 140 or so supervisors in our FBI offices.

From the FBI agents I knew who were in supervisory positions around the country, some had 20, 25, 30 years of experience. So when one thinks about 140 FBI agents with absolutely priceless, invaluable experience in law enforcement around the country, and Mueller runs them off not because they are unethical--all the cases of which I am aware, they were very ethical. They were good law enforcement officers.

And for those who have been in law enforcement, whether Federal or State or local, I think most would agree with this comment that it takes probably 5 years before someone in law enforcement can gain the respect of other law enforcement officers, and especially if that officer, that agent is with the FBI; because there are too many local, State law enforcement who have dealt with FBI agents who came in, wanted to make a name for themselves, the local officers would do the research, they would do the real tough police work going out, knocking on doors, talking to witnesses, only to have their work, when they finally find the culprit, have, as I have heard local law enforcement talk about, the FBI swoop in, have a press conference, and take the credit for the local work.

So that is a reputation, fair or unfair, that local law enforcement often are thinking about when they see a new FBI agent come into town. They are watching to see: Is this person going to be a selfless team player, strictly in the pursuit of law and order and the rule of law, or are they going to come in and use my work to make a name for themselves?

Over 5 years or so, the FBI agents would gain respect. I have seen it, read about it, and I know that that has, too often, been the case. It takes a while to build that kind of respect among local law enforcement and also to build that kind of respect in the criminal community so that they know that is a no-nonsense person, that the FBI agent is not about ego; it is about following the law and making sure everybody else does.

Yet here Robert Mueller comes in as FBI Director, and he is putting in place a policy that is getting rid of the best of the best that we have in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

And some say, well, you may not realize, but he was a Bush appointee. I know he was. And he took office as Director of the FBI shortly before 9/11, so it would be a bit unfair to blame Robert Mueller for failing to see what was coming on 9/11 because he had just simply not been in office that long.

But Director Mueller implemented this policy. And as I struggled with why he would do this--he is running off thousands of years of experience. I mean, just in that, about, three-fourths of 1 year, 2007, where it was maybe, I believe, about 140 supervisory agents who Mueller ran off--not for unethical conduct, not for inefficiency or inability to be a good law enforcement officer, no. He ran them off because they, perhaps, had too much experience.

Anybody who has concern about their own self-image and perhaps--I mean, I was wrestling with why somebody would run off thousands of years of experience within the FBI, and what I kept coming back to is perhaps there is some kind of insecurity that would cause a Director to be concerned that there would be people within the FBI that might not be complete yes-men, who might have more experience and, because they have been there 20, 30 years, be able to say: Director Mueller, I know this appears to be a good idea. That is what we thought 20 years ago or 15 years ago. We tried that, and it failed. And let me explain to you why, and perhaps I can help suggest a better policy or a better approach to this criminal case or this type of case.

When you start running off thousands of years of experience within the FBI, you are creating a great vacuum for experience within the FBI. So that could create situations, and did, where you could have people who were the special agent in charge in the supervisory position for 5 years, and then, because of Mueller's policy and them not wanting to take their family to Washington, D.C., and sit in some cubical or sit at some desk, be a yes-man--they wanted to be law officers.

And so, in many cases of which I had heard, FBI agents said: I am not going to sit in a cubical for Mueller. I am a law officer. I am about investigating and enforcing the law. So I am getting out. I am going to make more money where I am going. I would rather have stayed in the FBI. That is where my heart is. That is where I wanted to be. But Mueller is forcing me out. Yeah, it will be better for my family. I will have better hours. I will make more money. But I am not going to Washington. I want to be here in real America making a difference here.

Those are the kind of people that Robert Mueller ran off. Maybe it was his insecurity. Maybe, some have said, it was a God complex. I don't know. But I know, in my heart, I believe Robert Mueller did more damage to the FBI than all of the FBI Directors put together since J. Edgar Hoover. And it is dangerous when one person runs off so many people.

So when we came to find out--and again, this was during the Bush administration, the second term. Alberto Gonzalez was the Attorney General. And we had been assured that this very dangerous--dangerous because it was so easily manipulated and abused, but it was called the National Security Letters, NSLs. They were like a subpoena, except without the formalities.

Under this law that created what are called the National Security Letters, someone in the Justice Department

could simply write a letter to an individual, to a company, to a bank, and say: I am writing this under Federal law regarding National Security Letters that allows me to just simply send a letter to you, sign the letter, and direct you to deliver to me all of the documents you have regarding this person or this company, whatever the case might be.

They would also put into the letter what the law said, that if the recipient of the letter leaks or tells anybody about that letter, then they have violated the criminal law of the United States and they can be put in prison for leaking, for saying that they had received a letter from the FBI or Justice Department asking for documents.

That is a powerful weapon for the U.S. Congress to hand over to the Justice Department, and especially if it is utilized by one lone FBI agent.

Well, we have been told in Judiciary Committee repeatedly by FBI Director--we have been told informally, talking about the NSLs, National Security Letters, no, there are no known abuses of the National Security Letters. And then there was an inspector general investigation just to see whether there had been any abuse of these National Security Letters.

The report came back from the inspector general that there were potentially thousands of abuses of the National Security Letters where an FBI agent just sent the letter and, under the Fourth Amendment under our Constitution, there was no probable cause that a crime was committed.

There was no evidence that this individual committed a crime. The FBI agent just wanted to find out more about this person; maybe do a fishing exercise to see if there might be something that the FBI agent might investigate.

Perhaps the FBI agent, maybe he didn't like somebody in the community, so he wanted to see if there was anything out there, maybe in his banking records, or in his dealings with other companies. So he sends a national security letter, says give me all the documents you have on this person.

In my mind, that is a violation of every American's constitutional rights. It was a gross deviation from propriety. It violated what FBI Director Mueller told us about how the NSLs were being used as an investigatory tool, and a lot of us got very upset. And I think, to a large degree, that is why the Attorney General ended up stepping down.

In retrospect, it really should have been Robert Mueller who stepped down. They were his FBI agents. He failed to control; he failed to provide proper supervision. And I can't help but think perhaps a contributing factor, maybe the contributing factor to all of the widespread abuses of this power that Congress gave the Justice Department could well have been, probably was because FBI Director Robert Mueller decided to get rid of thousands of years of experience.

These are the agents, the supervisors, the people with the most experience that could have told a younger, inexperienced FBI agent: You may be tempted to do this, but that would be an abuse. Don't even try it. Don't even go there.

But because Mueller had stripped the FBI of thousands of years of experience, there were not the ``gray hairs'' or the ``no hairs'' that were out there to mentor younger FBI agents. Sure, there were some around, but not like there would have been had there been such insecurity or whatever it was that caused FBI Director Robert Mueller to do such terrible damage to the ranks of the FBI.

This is a guy that we were told: He will be an absolutely perfect special counsel. Well, I knew as soon as I heard that he was being appointed that this was a mistake; that this is a guy that did such horrendous damage to the FBI's ranks, to their experience level.

In fact, as I mentioned to FBI Director Mueller on one of the occasions where I was given the chance to ask questions during our Judiciary Committee hearing, in essence, I said: Director, do you realize that if you really applied your 5-year up-or-out policy to everyone in the FBI in a supervisory position, since you think it is such a good idea, you, Director Mueller, would have had to have left before September of 2006?

But instead of being consistent in the way he treated himself as he treated such invaluable FBI agents when he ran them off for no reason other than possibly insecurity, not only did he serve 10 years as FBI Director, which was an insult to all of those he ran off after 5 years, but then President Obama said: Hey, I am going to extend you 2 years.

An ethical, fair man, I believe, would have said: I am sorry, President Obama, but I was so vicious in the way I implemented this 5- year up-or-out policy and ran so many good agents off, it would be inappropriate, not only for me to have served 10 years, but to add 2 years on top of that, 12 years. But Robert Mueller did not do that. He was not fair across the board. He was not consistent.

That brings me back to--here is a report, March 15 of 2012, by NPR, the headline is: ``Report: Prosecutors Hid Evidence in Ted Stevens Case.''

Now, Ted Stevens, as I recall, was the longest serving Republican in the Senate back in 2008. Senator Stevens was running for re-election, and he was considered by many to be one of the most ethical, upright Senators out of the 100 who were in the U.S. Senate. Yet Mueller's FBI decided, apparently, to take out this patriotic, honest, honorable U.S. Senator by what I consider to be abuse of the justice system.

This article from NPR says, it starts with this:

``A blistering report released Thursday found that the government team concealed documents that would have helped the late Stevens, a longtime Republican Senator from Alaska, defend himself against false- statements charges in 2008. Stevens lost his Senate seat as the scandal played out, and he died in a plane crash 2 years later.

``The 500-page report by investigator Henry F. Schuelke III shook the legal community, as law professors described it as a milestone in the history of prosecutorial misconduct.

``Investigators weren't talking Thursday. But Brendan Sullivan, who defended the Senator, had plenty to say. `The extent of the corruption is shocking,' Sullivan says. `It's the worst misconduct we've seen in a generation by prosecutors at the Department of Justice.''

But it is important to note, Mr. Speaker, that this was an FBI case, and it is difficult to believe that the Director of the FBI would have not been personally monitoring, if not personally dictating instructions in such a politically sensitive case as a long-term, sitting U.S. Senator; that if you are going to use and manipulate the Department of Justice to take out a U.S. Senator, you should be extraordinarily sure that you have a legitimate case.

But I don't have the information that would indicate what briefings FBI Director Mueller had over the investigation, but I would humbly submit, Mr. Speaker, either Director Mueller got regular briefings on the investigation and development of the case against Senator Ted Stevens, or he was incompetent in not even bothering to keep abreast of developments in a case that would be so politically sensitive.

But this article says: ``The report''--by the Inspector General--``is based on a review of 128,000 documents and interviews with prosecutors and FBI agents on the hot seat.''

But sadly, the FBI, under Mueller, pushed this case, this investigation, to a head so that it was capable of being tried before the 2008 election in November and, in fact, Stevens was convicted just days before the election, and then I believe he only lost the race for Senate by a couple of thousand votes or so.

But the report says that prosecutors should have shared information that might have obliterated the witness' credibility against Stevens, and they had evidence that their key witness had told the same story 55 different times; but that the FBI got evidence that their key witness had had a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl and then asked the girl to lie about it under oath. And so it is easy to see how he would have been manipulated.

But after telling the story that would have acquitted Ted Stevens, as he should have been acquitted we now know from all the evidence, actually, they were able to push the witness into changing his story immediately before trial in order to testify against Stevens.

Like I said, we do not know exactly what Mueller knew, didn't know, but he surely had to know when the FBI agent who was assisting his supervisor in the case, when he did an affidavit, signed it under penalty of perjury, indicating the improprieties of the agent in charge of the case, which is named Kepner, Director Mueller had to have known that one of his agents said: I cannot live with this prosecutorial misconduct. This is figuratively what he said.

The agent in charge, the FBI agent in charge, hid evidence that would have proved what I believe, beyond a reasonable doubt, Ted Stevens was not guilty. Not just raised a reasonable doubt; would have proved he was not guilty.

As the Alaska Dispatch News asked in their headline from their article in September 2016--actually, June 6, 2012, then updated September 2016, their headline asked: ``Why is lead FBI agent in botched Ted Stevens case still employed?''

So we do know, under Mueller's FBI, that he did such horrific damage, running off thousands of years of experience, years later, after one FBI agent had such pangs of conscience that an innocent man, Ted Stevens, was convicted when he was 100 percent not guilty, the agent that was the whistleblower had been run off from the FBI. That had to have been with Mueller's consent. He was removed from every criminal case, which means you need to get out because you are not going to have a job.

Yet the agent, Kepner, who was in charge of the investigation, manufactured evidence, hid evidence, according to these reports, and she was still working in the criminal division of the FBI.

So when anybody talks to me about how fair and ethical and upright Robert Mueller is, I don't buy it. I have seen the damage he did to the FBI. I have seen the damage he created by not allowing his FBI agents to be trained to recognize radical Islamists.

Sure, after the FBI got notice under Mueller that Tsarnaev, the Boston bomber, had been radicalized and he was a threat to lives and U.S. security, oh, yeah; they sent out an FBI agent to talk to him. And apparently he said: Oh, no, I am not a terrorist.

And then they went the extra step to talk to his mother who said: Oh, no, he is a good boy. He is not a terrorist.

But because of Robert Mueller placating the Council on American- Islamic Relations that was a named party co-conspirator supporting terrorism, he placated CAIR, and he had the training materials for our FBI agents purged so they didn't know what to look for. That is the reason the Boston bombers were on the loose. He needs to resign and go home.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for putting this together.

The loss of Billy Graham to this country, to this world, is more profound than any lips can ever express.

As Ted mentioned, he was born in 1918, and married Ruth in 1943. What a dynamic couple they were. How devoted they were to each other. They had five children. I have come to know and dearly love Anne. I have met and come to know Franklin to a lesser extent.

But he knew, he believed, he preached that you don't go to Heaven by being a grandchild of someone. You have to have that personal relationship with the Lord as an individual child of God. It is not something you can inherit.

He has been called home.

He spent his life trying to persuade people that he loved to accept Jesus with the words that Jesus uttered:

I am the way, the truth, the light. No one gets to the

Father, but by me.

He believed with all his heart that, unless someone professed Jesus Christ as Savior, they had no chance of getting to Heaven.

We know from Jesus that greater love hath no one than a man that lay down his life for his friends. We have paid tribute to people who have laid down their life in one great moment of saving others. We have heard of those type of heroic actions at the school in Parkland in trying to save others.

Yet, this man, for 99 years, or at least after he accepted Christ, laid down his life day after day after day for others, trying to help them come to a personal relationship with Jesus so that he could share eternity with Him in Heaven. That is his belief. That is my belief.

Yet, several years ago, we passed what is called a hate crimes bill. I said at some point it would be used to prosecute a preacher for simply reading Scripture from the Bible, so I can't help but wonder if he has been called home so he can never be charged with a hate crime.

We live in a time when things have gotten so perverse that there are actually people who say that these evangelical Christians are so hateful, so mean, they actually believe that if you don't think exactly like they do, you go to hell.

Well, that is a perversion of the one religion that is 100 percent based on love. God so loved the world, He sent His son. His son so loved the world, He laid down His life for others.

Billy Graham has laid down his life. He has put a marker down. In his memory, we can give no greater memorial than that we persevere and we perpetuate that love in bringing others to eternal life with us.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues for such great words of encouragement. I was hearing it all across east Texas as I was all over the district this past week. People are encouraged when it comes to the economy. People are feeling better about the economy. I am hearing it.

They are encouraged, but after yet another school shooting, another mass shooting, I am hearing more and more people who are asking: Why? Why is this?

Of course, some say, you know, the United States is the only place that mass shootings occur. Of course, that is just false. There are worse mass shootings in other parts of the world.

Some say if we get rid of all guns in the country, then we could end the senseless violence, but when you try to tell that to people who were in Rwanda during the period when 800,000 people or so were slaughtered with machetes for the most part, it goes beyond the question of the weapon.

We have seen airplanes used as bombs for the worst mass execution in our country's history. Of course, Pearl Harbor, bombs were used, bombs themselves. We know in Oklahoma City, apparently it was anhydrous ammonia, fertilizer. We have seen the Boston bombing utilizing pressure cookers.

So if the answer is to get rid of the weapons, we got to get rid of airplanes. We got to get rid of rental trucks. We

got to get rid of fertilizer. Pressure cookers have got to go. Machetes have got to go. Once you start listing the things by which people with evil intent have killed others, you realize this is an endless list. There are people who have exacted violence on others all kinds of ways.

There is nothing more senseless and ignorant. And I don't mean that mean-spirited. I mean that everybody is ignorant of something; some are just ignorant of a lot more things. But the statement that, ``I just want Congress to do something even if it is wrong,'' well, that is how you lose civilizations, by doing something even if it is wrong. But there are plenty of indications, things that we can do, things we can agree on.

It seems absolutely senseless that a school would know about a student who is repeatedly involved in violence, threats upon other students, threats upon other people, but actually not just threats, actual violence. We want to look into this to see if this is really a national phenomenon that some of our schools, to avoid having students continue to be arrested, that they actually try some mediation process so they avoid giving a 17-, 18-year-old student an arrest record, which once they have an assault that is confirmed in court, then certainly that would affect their ability to get a gun at all of any kind.

So, actually, when you start analyzing all of the ways that the system broke down and didn't work, the things that should have protected those precious lives in Parkland, Florida, instead of saying, ``Just do something even if it is wrong,'' how about if we do something that is right? How about if we do something that would actually prevent that kind of senseless violence from being exacted upon innocent people?

I mean, we got a sheriff that I don't know what kind of a department this guy is running. I know when there was a shooting involving a domestic case--and until terrorist activities and mass shootings started occurring, most often if there was violence at a courthouse, it was over a domestic affairs case.

I saw the video. I was already in Congress. I was no longer sitting on the bench in that courthouse, but I saw the video. And as soon as there were gunshots, those deputies--I knew them; I loved them--were running to the sound of the gun. They didn't hunker behind anything. They ran to the sound of the gun.

And that has been repeated around the country. Law officers hear a gun and they run to the sound of the gun. But, apparently, it appears from what we are reading, that the sheriff there had a department that is living in pre-Columbine days.

Just like before 9/11, it was thought that if your plane is highjacked, just don't create a problem; there will be negotiations when you land somewhere.

I still believe to this day there were American heroes on all four of those planes; and if the first three planes had known they were going to be used as a bomb to kill others, there were Americans that would have stepped up and stopped it just like those incredibly heroic Americans did who brought down the plane in Pennsylvania.

So I don't think it will ever happen again. There will always be people who love this country and love life so much that they would give theirs to save so many others. That is what Jesus said is the greatest love, and clearly the fourth flight had that.

But here is a story from the Florida Sun Sentinel. It is entitled ``School shooter Nikolas Cruz: An unending saga of disturbed behavior and red flags,'' written by Brittany Wallman, Paula McMahon, Megan O'Matz, and Susannah Bryan. They document that he did things like-- well, of course, we know apparently he didn't know his father. He knew his adopted father. Of course, his adopted father and mother had died. Apparently they had a wonderful home, swimming pool, lots of comforts; but he didn't have a moral compass at all. Apparently he threatened his mother, threatened his brother, violence on his brother. At least threatened violence on his own mother.

We know from this article, at least, it says the adopted father, Mr. Cruz, didn't own any guns. But Nikolas was diagnosed as having a string of disorders: depression, attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, emotional behavior disability, and autism. His mom told the sheriff's deputies he also had obsessive-compulsive disorder and anger issues. He had counselors in school and at home, according to DCF records. He took medications. We don't know what all medications he took. Maybe there was some relationship there.

We ought to be able to discern how many of these people have taken different types of drugs and which ones they were. We know there seems to be a correlation between people committing suicide and many of the medications that are prescribed to kids who feel troubled.

This article says that Nikolas was a mama's boy, yet he threatened his mother. His mother called the police to say he got physical with his brother and with her. It sounds like a physical assault on his mother.

My late mother was close to 5-foot. I was a lot bigger than she was in high school, but, whew, I knew not to even think about raising a hand.

When he was 14, his mother reported he had hit her with a plastic hose from a vacuum cleaner. A few months later, she told deputies he had thrown her against the wall because she took away his Xbox gaming system. A year later, she told deputies Nikolas had punched the wall after she took away his Xbox. Foul language, insults, disobedience, disruption.

Cruz's behavior was exactly what schoolteachers frowned upon. He went to a different school for a while which offered a program for emotionally and behaviorally disabled children, but, according to the article, Cruz could not control himself.

Now, it talked about in the article that he was 5-foot-7, 120 pounds. I know a lot about being bullied up through junior high, up through eighth grade, because I was very small. I didn't start growing of any size until high school. I may have been the smallest guy on our football team the first couple of years in high school. I know a lot about getting bullied. I know a lot about getting my nose bloodied. I never killed anybody.

I had parents that would make all four of us kids quite angry, but they taught us respect of authority. They disciplined us, and they made sure we were in Sunday school and church every week.

It looks like the school and the community and the sheriff's office all helped Ms. Cruz and Nikolas--and I use ``helped'' loosely--avoid having a criminal record that would have prevented him from having a gun and would have prevented him from killing 17 people. At least, it would be a whole lot more difficult without a gun like he had.

But they all worked together, unknowingly. Of course, it was not intentionally. They thought they were helping him. And what they were doing, what was coming down the road, was a disaster of massive proportions.

We do need to do something that prevents this in the future. Some say, well, it is time to end the personal transfer loophole, so a father can't give a son a weapon.

Well, perhaps if Nikolas' father had taught him--I have got a friend from Florida I was visiting with this weekend, and he said the worst whipping that he ever got was when he pointed a gun, his grandfather's gun, at his brother. He never did that again.

I am not advocating violence on kids. I know the Bible says:

Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the

rod of correction will drive it far from him.

But as a judge, a felony judge, I have seen kids be abused beyond propriety that justified criminal penalty. But we could take some action, it would seem, that would prevent entities, whether it is the Air Force, whether it is the Broward school system, the Broward County Sheriff's Office, from preventing someone from avoiding appropriately having a criminal record that would prohibit them getting a gun. That way, we are talking about something that would prevent this same thing from happening.

When it comes to the personal transfer of weapons, as John Locke was saying the other day, in over 100 years, there has not been a mass shooting that involved a gun received in a personal transfer, whether it is from father to son, friend to friend.

Of course, if there is somebody at a gun show who is not having a background check and they are selling more than one weapon there, there is a good chance they are committing a crime. It is not a loophole at a gun show. Anybody that is there selling guns needs to have the background check done, and they do. And you can't get the gun until it has gone through a proper background check, and you get it from someone who ensures that everything is followed.

I had won a gun at an auction some--I have heard some people say, yeah, we have got to stop that, too, getting a gun at an auction. I had to go through the background check. I had to pick it up at a store. I felt sorry for the store.

But there are stores that sell guns that are constantly having to clear somebody who bought it online, because you cannot pick up that gun until the background check is done, and you go to someone who has ensured the background check is done and then get the weapon. So that seems to be something we could do.

And then we were talking to some of our Freedom Caucus tonight, and unlike the no-fly list, where the Obama administration would not tell us how you got on it and would not give us any idea of how you appeal, how you get off--we would plead for some people who were law-abiding and shouldn't have been on there. Sometimes they get off; sometimes they don't.

But we, as Congress, House and Senate, need to pass a bill that sets up a due process where, if you are on the no-fly list, you can appeal and get off. We ought to make it where, if you had been guilty of assaults, whether in school or in the home, as Nikolas Cruz was, or whether it is in public, that ought to prevent you from getting a gun.

Of course, domestic situations, things often get so heated. I have seen terrible charges alleged against a father or mother during the course of a divorce, and that is something the State legislature could deal with. If it involves some Federal entity, it is something that we can deal with and say this is how you could appeal and get an unjust decision blocking a gun purchase.

But we also know that those people who say, hey, there have been 3 million or so people who shouldn't buy guns who have been blocked from buying guns, well, they don't know the rest of the story. The rest of the story is there aren't but just a few dozen people who get prosecuted out of 3 million.

Someone told me yesterday it was only a few dozen of the 3 million who are ever prosecuted for improperly filing for a gun. There may have been 3 million people denied, but it turns out there were mistakes because of the ways in which the names are checked.

Do you really want to get to the bottom line, Mr. Speaker?

John Adams was President in 1798. Some of these very issues kept coming up. The people who founded this country, they were better read than most students are today even after college. And even those who didn't believe the Bible, they quoted it.

In fact, in this very room and in the room right down the hall where the United States House of Representatives met for the majority of the 1800s, the Bible, during sessions, was the most quoted book in our history. In here, in that room, in the Senate down the hall, the Old Senate, the current Senate, the Bible is the most quoted book in our history, and there would seem to be good reason.

Within the Bible, itself, you find the words:

For the Word of God is living and powerful and sharper than

any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul

and spirit. It is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of

the heart.

But John Adams was President after two terms under President George Washington, under our current Constitution. He knew precisely what the Constitution said. He knew how it had come about. He was Vice President, President of the Senate when the Bill of Rights was created. He was part of that process.

Yet John Adams explained, President John Adams explained, in 1798, the bottom line, that people in this country have got to understand, if we are going to address the kind of violence that has sparked around this country. John Adams explained it. His words were more than prescient. They are perpetually true as long as we are operating under this Constitution.

As he said, knowing, having read many times every word of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, having helped generate this Bill of Rights, he knew what they were. But he said:

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious

people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any

other.

You want to know where the answer is? If people are going to be safe in America, we have a choice. We either start anew, teaching morality, teaching that there is a right or wrong, that not everything is relative, and even if those who don't believe there is a God don't want to hear about it, it is okay to talk about God. You don't have to believe it.

Look at Jefferson's words. He made clear--of course, it always amazed me how he could put the biggest grievance in the original declaration against King George was ever allowing slavery. So on the one hand, he could see the problems created for America by ever allowing the inhumanity of man to man, but he talked about the best hope being the teaching of Jesus, that we should be teaching, the best hope for America.

But if we are going to be safe, we have got to teach morality, encourage religion, not force secular humanism, hedonism on America. It is okay to talk about it. It is okay to teach about it.

In fact, the studies I saw as a felony judge repeatedly indicated the best hope of cutting recidivism of criminals is if they go through an intensive Christian Bible study in prison. So afraid of talking about the Bible, so afraid of talking about Christianity.

There is no official religion in this country, but, as the Supreme Court said at the end of the 19th century, this is a Christian nation. Not everybody was Christian, of course, but it was founded on Judeo- Christian beliefs. It was founded on the Bible. And that is the reason Moses' full face is up there in the middle, because he was felt to be the best lawgiver in the history of the world. Obviously, the Supreme Court doesn't think so much anymore.

We have a choice: teach morality, encourage religion, or, in order to be safe, we have got to give up the Second Amendment. We have already given up parts of the Second Amendment in a part of it. We have given up part of our freedom of assembly. We have given up part of our freedom of speech. We have given up a big hunk of freedom of religion, because this Constitution was only meant to govern a moral and religious people. And unless we are willing to start teaching morality again, we have no hope of being safe under the current Constitution.

I pray to God, and prayers can work. God will hear from Heaven. I pray to God that people will wake up and we won't have to discharge different parts of our constitutional rights in order to remain safe.

I look at the interior of this Bible that belonged to my uncle. It is a New Testament. On the front, engraved in the middle ``May the Lord be with you.'' He had it in World War II.

But inside, at the top, it says: ``The White House, Washington. As Commander-in-Chief, I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the Armed Forces of the United States. Throughout the centuries, men of many faiths and diverse origins have found in the Sacred Book words of wisdom, counsel, and inspiration. It is a fountain of strength and now, as always, an aid in attaining the highest aspirations of the human soul''--signed, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

That is not a mistake that President Roosevelt made. It needs to be one we don't make either.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 59 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, February 27, 2018, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.