[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 10 (Thursday, January 16, 2020)]
[House]
[Pages H318-H322]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   CONSTITUTIONAL AND MORAL AUTHORITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin 
(Mr. Gallagher).


                 Protecting Our Waters and Communities

  Mr. GALLAGHER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. Speaker, last week, the House passed H.R. 535, the PFAS Action 
Act of 2019. This important legislation marks a critical step forward 
in addressing the public health crisis caused by so-called forever 
chemicals like PFAS.
  According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, 
certain compounds of PFAS, like PFOA and PFOS, are known to cause liver 
damage, thyroid disease, asthma, birth defects, and even some cancers.
  Unfortunately, for many in northeast Wisconsin, this fight is 
personal and tragic. Anyone who has been to our small corner of the 
country knows that water is part of what makes northeast Wisconsin so 
special and beautiful. Unfortunately, this water, which is so central 
to our way of life, is under threat from chemicals like PFOA and PFOS.
  While until recently, PFAS was an unknown contaminant. Recent studies 
give us a better understanding of the risks posed by compounds like 
PFOA and PFOS. Not only have our communities been unwittingly placed at 
risk by these toxins, but it has taken far too long to get them the 
resources required to mitigate their effects.
  As a result, these toxic chemicals have contaminated local water 
sources and literally poisoned the well from which Wisconsinites drink.
  No one should be afraid to drink or use the water from their tap. The 
fact that this is the case for many across the country, including in 
northeast Wisconsin, and in Peshtigo, in particular, means one thing: 
We must act with a sense of urgency to defend our communities and 
protect the clean water that underpins our way of life.
  As a member of the PFAS Task Force, I am committed to finding ways to 
combat PFAS and its negative effects on our communities.
  Last year, Representative Delgado and I introduced the PFAS Right-to-
Know Act, a bipartisan bill that would require PFAS to be listed on the 
Toxics Release Inventory and require manufacturers, processors, and 
producers to report their usage of PFAS chemicals to the EPA.
  Signed into law last month as part of the 2020 National Defense 
Authorization Act, this bill provides communities with a better 
understanding of where these toxins come from so we can better combat 
their effects. While this was an important first step, there is more to 
be done.
  The PFAS Action Act builds on last year's progress through a number 
of important provisions. It designates

[[Page H319]]

PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances to ensure that all those 
responsible for contamination do their part to clean up and restore our 
waters and habitats. It establishes stronger drinking water standards 
to give States and communities the resources they need to mitigate 
contamination. It strengthens the Clean Water Act to include PFOS and 
PFOA as toxic pollutants.
  This legislation will be critical in protecting waters in northeast 
Wisconsin and across the country for current and future generations. 
When it comes to the PFAS crisis, I would simply argue to my own 
colleagues who may be skeptical of which direction we need to go or the 
need for the Federal Government to get involved that inaction is not an 
option.
  The PFAS Action Act is a thorough, comprehensive, and long-overdue 
solution, and I want to thank Representatives Pallone and Dingell for 
their leadership, as well as my colleagues on both sides of the aisle 
for their hard work in protecting our water and our communities.

                              {time}  1130

  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is always an honor to be here in the 
House of Representatives and have an opportunity to speak, as so many 
places around the world don't have those privileges, those rights.
  Sometimes people ask, well, if the rights are truly endowed by our 
creator, then why don't people have them all over the world?
  And it is an endowment, these rights, like an inheritance; but the 
only way you get to keep any inheritance is if you are willing to fight 
for it, because, if you are not, in this world, evil people will always 
be trying to take what you have and take it for themselves.
  So we have been blessed to be in a country where we had men and women 
willing to stand up and fight for us.
  My 4 years in the Army, we were never in combat. I still think we 
should have gone, in 1979, to Iran; and if we had addressed the attack 
on our American property, which was the U.S. Embassy, then the 
Ayatollah would have been gone, and there would be tens of thousands of 
Americans still alive today. It is just very unfortunate.
  But at least Soleimani is no longer around to kill Americans and to 
dream up new devices, whether improvised or exploding devices to kill 
and maim Americans.
  It is one of the great ironies that the lead terrorist in the world, 
Soleimani, who ordered, directed, got the best architects to design 
instruments to inflict casualties on Americans--and there were more 
Americans killed or wounded on that road in from the airport in Iraq.
  Some may remember, back in the early days of the war in Iraq, that 
the most dangerous place we kept hearing was on that road in from the 
airport. There were so many IEDs and explosive devices that killed, 
maimed our American military, and they were set to kill and maim 
American military. That was after Soleimani had taken over the IRGC and 
he had his special troops.
  But he was a terrorist. He had been allowed to keep finding ways to 
kill Americans for far too long, and the world is a better place 
without him.
  It was amazing that people on both sides of the aisle could agree on 
that when President Obama ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden, and 
yet so many of those same people with whom we agreed thought it was 
atrocious that President Trump would order the taking out of the lead 
terrorist killing hundreds of Americans. It is just a strange thing.
  Some call it Trump Derangement Syndrome. They just have so much 
hatred for our current President that it doesn't matter that it is in 
direct conflict with what they have said before.
  For example, our chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the minority 
leader in the Senate had some pretty strong quotes back when President 
Clinton was impeached, and now they both say 180-degree opposite 
things, completely contradicting themselves about what impeachment 
should be and not be.
  So it is clear, though, from the Constitution--this is the last 
sentence of Article II. It says: ``The President, Vice President and 
all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office 
on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason''--that is a crime--
``bribery''--that is a crime--``or other high crimes''--those are 
crimes--``and misdemeanors''--and those are crimes.
  So it is very clear, if you are going to impeach and then convict and 
remove a President from office, there need to have been crimes. In 
every one of the prior impeachments--there have only been a few--the 
allegations involved crimes.
  Perjury, as President Clinton was guilty of, is a crime. He was not 
prosecuted. There still seemed to be a permanent feeling that you 
couldn't convict a sitting President of a crime. But he paid a very 
heavy price, being disbarred for perjury and other costs that he had to 
pay.
  But, unfortunately, we now live in a time where right and wrong are 
supposed to be so relative. It all depends. The ends justify the means. 
That is the way you lose a great civilization. That is the way you lose 
moral authority, when right and wrong all become relative.
  In fact, John Adams, as President, in 1797, our second President, 
made very clear when he said this Constitution is meant for a moral and 
religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any 
other.
  If we are going to continue to allow schools to teach relativity of 
right and wrong and that ends justify the means, you can be mean and 
evil and hateful so long as your hate and evil conduct is aimed at 
somebody that you call hateful.
  So we have developed quite a quandary here in the United States where 
so many people--and I know some have said: Oh, I don't hate anybody. 
But President Trump obviously drives them crazy and spurs them to do 
and say things they wouldn't normally do and say, and they certainly 
didn't with President Clinton when he was caught actually lying under 
oath.
  So we have got to get back to teaching right and wrong. There is a 
right; there is a wrong.
  And I know some people say: Well, I am a Christian and, therefore, I 
know God is love, and, therefore, I love everybody, and that is just 
the way God is.
  But I would direct attention to Psalm 6, beginning with verse 16. It 
points out that there are actually some things that God hates, and one 
is a lying tongue; one is a heart that devises wicked schemes; one is a 
person who stirs up conflict in the community. And, frankly, we had 
that among some people who conspired to eliminate a sitting President.
  Actually, they started out conspiring to use taxpayer funds to use 
the FBI, intelligence community, even some defense funds, State 
Department personnel and funds, to prevent Donald Trump from being 
elected. And then after he was elected, those guns were turned on him 
to try to eliminate him from office.

  Obviously, in the current impeachment, there is no treason; there is 
no bribery; there is no high crime; there is no misdemeanor. So those 
pushing these Articles of Impeachment, abuse of power and obstruction 
of Congress, actually ended up being guilty of both of those 
allegations.
  But they are not crimes; they are not high crimes; they are not 
misdemeanors; they are not bribery. But they are guilty of those 
themselves.
  If you go back, as I am thrilled that so many of my friends across 
the aisle are doing now, quoting our Founders, they made clear in those 
early debates that you could not, you should not, could not be able to 
remove a President or someone because you don't like the way they are 
doing things or maladministration; or you think they are not doing 
something quickly enough and so you would say they are obstructing 
Congress; or you don't like the way they did something so you would 
say: Oh, they are abusing their power--even though the Obama 
administration did the very same things, just much worse.
  I thought it was worse when I met with a big group of weeping 
Nigerian mothers whose children were kidnapped and chained to beds, 
normally raped multiple times a day, from what we were told. I asked 
the pastor who was trying to assist so many of these Nigerian women: 
Where are the fathers?
  He said: That is part of the tragedy. The fathers know that their 
little girls are chained to beds and being raped

[[Page H320]]

every day, and they don't feel like they should stay in a bed when they 
were not able to protect their daughters.
  And I have got to give it to the Obama administration. They did hold 
up a sign and say #bringbackourgirls. But from what Nigerians in 
government there were telling me, they were told: If you really want us 
to take out Boko Haram for you, we have got the power; we have got the 
money; we have got the military might; but you are going to have to 
change your laws to allow abortion and to allow same-sex marriage. And 
if you are not going to do that, we are not going to help you like we 
could with Boko Haram.
  I saw a quote from a Catholic bishop in Nigeria who was basically 
saying: Our religious beliefs are not for sale, not to President Obama, 
to John Kerry, to America. They are not for sale.
  So some of us were concerned that we could have helped stop some of 
the biggest atrocities going on in the world by radical Islam, but 
money was withheld. Help was withheld in order to achieve a political 
agenda regarding same-sex marriage and abortion, according to people I 
met with there in Nigeria, and seemed to be bolstered by articles that 
have been read back at that time.
  We also know that this Congress has repeatedly, since I have been 
here, made clear we don't want to be giving away money to countries 
that are going to use it for improper purposes.
  Now, of course, that changed a great deal during the Obama 
administration. We are willing to give $150 billion to people that we 
knew there is a decent chance they were going to be using it to kill 
Americans and to terrorize the world, maybe use it, some of it, to 
pursue nuclear weapons. We have been hearing that some of it was used 
by Soleimani to help coordinate attacks against Americans around the 
Middle East because they want Americans out of the Middle East.
  But I have had a bill in most of the Congresses in which I have been 
a Member called the United Nations Voting Accountability Act, and it 
put requirements on our money.

                              {time}  1145

  I almost got it passed as an amendment early on. It just simply 
basically says any nation that votes against the United States' 
position in the U.N. more than half of the time shall receive no 
assistance of any kind from the United States in the subsequent year. 
It seems like in March, somewhere around there, we get the voting 
results from the prior year from the U.N. and you can go through and 
see what percentage of the time each country voted with us and when 
they voted against us.
  I think it would be a great requirement to put on our financial aid, 
and as I have said repeatedly since I have been here in Congress, you 
don't have to pay people to hate you, they will do it for free. You 
don't have to pay them to hate you, they are perfectly happy to hate 
you for free.
  And as I found from being very small in elementary school, you don't 
win the respect of a bully by giving them your lunch money or giving 
them whatever they demand. You have to make them pay a price. Even if 
you don't win the war, if you hurt them--of course, they hurt you 
worse--they decide they will pick on somebody else because they don't 
want to get hurt themselves, and they know you will fight back.
  It is nice here in the United States, we are big and strong enough we 
can take it to bullies, terrorists like Soleimani, and I thank God that 
he is gone and there will be Americans living as a result of him being 
gone.
  So Trump derangement syndrome has caused the House majority to push 
through two Articles of Impeachment. We heard for 3 years all of this 
Russia collusion. As most of us know who have had legal training, 
collusion is not normally a crime, unless it is with regard to stocks. 
Normally the term is used as conspiracy, a criminal conspiracy. 
Somebody came up with a brilliant idea of using the word ``collusion,'' 
and let's accuse Donald Trump of doing exactly what we have done.
  Why else would the President of the United States say to the 
President of Russia, Tell Vladimir I will have a lot more flexibility 
after the next election? So they could give in a lot more than he even 
had in the past.
  It is called projecting. You engage in improper conduct and then 
accuse your opponent of engaging in what you did. That is exactly what 
we have seen here, projecting.
  So you have somebody that gets paid off by corrupt entities in 
Ukraine, and they turn around--and when the President of the United 
States does his job and basically says to Ukraine--when they elect a 
president who got elected on the basis that he was going to end 
corruption--if you have got evidence of corruption, we sure would like 
to see it if it involves American people. You know, please, we would 
like to see what you got if it involves Americans. There is nothing 
wrong with that. It is perfectly legal.
  If you listen to the contention of some people we have heard in 
Washington, the contention basically is: You may have committed a crime 
or engaged in corrupt activity, if you will just run for President then 
we will defend you, saying, you can't go after that person, he is 
running for President. You are trying to use your office for political 
purposes. That way somebody that engages in corruption and keeps 
running for President can never be prosecuted because we will defend 
you because you shouldn't be prosecuted, you are running for President. 
So we can say your position is being used for political purposes, where 
actually if somebody is engaged in corruption it ought to be 
investigated.
  Look what has happened as a result of this Ukraine hoax; it scared a 
lot of people to death, including people that have worked with Ukraine 
in our National Security Council who were aware of some of the money 
passing back and forth with Americans. And what do they do: Oh, my 
gosh, what are we going to do? We are going the get caught up in this 
investigation. Oh, I know, we will claim that when the President asked 
for evidence of corruption by Americans that that is some kind of quid 
pro quo. And even though it is perfectly consistent with the President 
keeping his oath, we will allow that to just be hammered over and over 
again, so maybe we can convince the Ukrainian President if he provides 
the evidence of corruption by Americans then that means the President 
is guilty of some crime.
  They have actually been very successful in backing President Zelensky 
and Ukraine off of investigating crimes of corruption by American 
individuals.
  That is a real victory. No matter what happens on impeachment in the 
Senate, it is a real victory for those who were engaged, participated 
in potential corruption with Ukraine, because they have been able to 
turn the tables, accuse President Trump, and then back the Ukrainian 
President off from investigating their corruption, and all of the focus 
is on President Trump instead of on those who may be guilty of high 
crimes, including bribery. It has been interesting to see the way that 
has politically played out.
  We are told constantly, there is breaking news, the President should 
not have sat on that money to Ukraine. There was nothing illegal about 
holding up the money. And if I were President, I would be holding up 
any money that was going to any country that engaged in or where there 
was rampant corruption, as we knew had gone on in Ukraine, and require 
them to produce evidence that they were actually trying to stop 
corruption. Since the corruption seemed to involve American 
individuals, we have now stopped that investigation by Ukraine into the 
corruption by Americans, and that means that Ukraine is not going to be 
rid of corruption because they haven't been able to adequately pursue 
it. There is no breaking news. There is nothing new if people reporting 
it were fair.
  Again, one good thing from my standpoint about the Trump derangement 
syndrome, we knew there were lots of bad actors among deep staters in 
the State Department, in the Intel community, in the FBI at the top, at 
the DOJ, some of the top people, but it was hard to identify them. 
Well, because of the hatred for Donald Trump that is just in-
articulable, it is so deranging to those that have this level of 
despising the President they keep raising their heads, so we know who 
the people are that are willing to abuse their office and violate their 
oath to the Constitution and loyalty to our own government.

  I didn't hear the first part of Lieutenant Colonel Vindman--I have 
got

[[Page H321]]

family members that are lieutenant colonels, I have known so many 
serving in the military, in the Army, but he is the only one that I 
ever heard get high, righteous, and mighty and demand to be called 
lieutenant colonel, even though most days he doesn't wear a uniform. 
But he certainly wore one so people that don't normally respect the 
military, as well as some of us that do, they would go on and on about 
him being a part of the military.
  I asked my staff to get me the transcript of his testimony, and I got 
it before he had finished, and I am reading through and I am going, My 
word, Vindman has been violating his oath to his own Constitution. And 
he certainly is not being loyal to the President when the President is 
not committing a crime. He is clearly being more loyal to Ukraine.
  Then you find out later, well, actually, he was admonished because a 
superior officer heard him bad-mouthing the United States to some 
Russians. But that is why it came as no surprise to me. I was thinking 
he is more loyal to Ukraine than he is to the United States. It was no 
big surprise when I found out that Vindman was offered the position in 
Ukraine of defense minister three times, because clearly he had shown 
the Ukrainian leaders that he was more loyal to them than he was to his 
own U.S. leaders. That might be a good move for him at some point since 
he appears to have more loyalty to Ukraine. He may want to take them up 
on that at some point. Obviously, he would want to wait until after the 
impeachment trial is over.
  I know there are some that want to have live witnesses in the Senate 
Chamber, just make it a full-blown circus. We should have had live 
witnesses in the House. That is what they did during the Clinton 
impeachment. You had fact witnesses that testified before the Judiciary 
Committee, however, we had a bunch of opinions coming in.
  We didn't get the real fact witnesses. And of course, the real fact 
witnesses, in my mind, would include Alexandra Chalupa, the actions and 
antics she was involved in, along with Eric Ciaramella, Abigail Grace, 
and Sean Misko; they had both worked at the National Security Council. 
They have a lot of information about work with Ukraine, real facts, not 
just made up stuff, but real facts. They would have been important to 
get under oath. I still think they would be.
  Andrew McCarthy, just a superb former prosecutor, had an article 
yesterday or today talking about the Senate should just say we are not 
taking up impeachment until you finish. You want us to do the 
investigation that you didn't do in the House because you were in such 
a hurry to get it to the Senate. We are not going to do your 
investigation, you don't have a high crime, you don't have a 
misdemeanor, you don't have treason, you don't have bribery. So why 
don't you go back, and if you come up with a high crime, misdemeanor, 
bribery, or treason then come see us once you have actually got 
evidence of something like that.
  Unfortunately, the House passed impeachment even though it didn't 
rise to the level of impeachable offenses. It is an allegation of 
maladministration, which the Founders said should never be a basis for 
impeachment, and that is why they didn't include those types of things 
as a basis for impeachment. That is what they have alleged, and that is 
what is now down at the Senate straight down the hall. The Senate is 
going to take them up. I agree with my friend, Andy McCarthy. The 
Senate should not do the House's job.
  The House had thousands of pages of transcripts. I sure wish they 
would release the Inspector General's deposition, but of course, that 
is why they did it down in the SCIF. None of the information we were 
told was classified. The witnesses were told if you have any answer 
that may involve classified information, just don't answer, which is 
also a cue, don't answer any questions Republicans ask that you don't 
want to answer. And that was the reason that so often Republican 
questions were interrupted with instructions to the witness by the 
chairman of Intel. That is why Intel did it. They wanted to have them 
in secret even though they weren't classified, have them in a place 
where most of us could not be there, including people like those of us 
on the Judiciary Committee, the true committee of jurisdiction.

                              {time}  1200

  Then they could leak out what they thought might be helpful, even if 
they were leaks that were not accurate about what was actually 
testified to, and certainly out of context, to try to build this 
feeling that the President had done something terrible.
  Again, this has been going on for 3 years, the investigation. We have 
been told since the day after President Trump was elected that they 
were going to impeach him. They didn't know what for, but they were 
going to find something.
  As Senator Schumer said back I believe it was in 1998 or 1999, during 
the Clinton impeachment, he pointed out that the Clinton impeachment--
even though, as I say, it involved an actual crime of perjury, the 
Clinton impeachment lowered the bar. He said now it will be too easy to 
go after a President and impeach him for a minor crime like perjury.
  Well, he had no idea how low the bar would be made by the Democrats. 
Now, it really is dangerous because they have shown you don't have to 
have a crime. All you have to have is a majority in the House and you 
can help destroy at least 3-plus years of a President's term by keeping 
them under a cloud the whole time.
  I didn't initially support Donald Trump as a candidate, but I really 
think people believed if we can just go after his family, go after him, 
go after business and friends, 6 months in, he will resign. He will 
say: ``I am going back to making money. You can forget this. I don't 
need this,'' and walk away, but they just didn't know President Trump. 
He was not going to walk away. He could see this country was in big 
trouble.
  As Newt Gingrich has said, if Hillary Clinton had been elected, we 
would never have known the extent of the corruption in these 
departments.
  Now we find out even in Defense, as Adam Lovinger found, they were 
paying hundreds of thousands of dollars, I think over a million 
dollars, to a guy named Stefan Halper. It didn't look like there was 
anything they were getting back, and that was his job. Ultimately, they 
don't question Halper's involvement with the Defense Department, making 
all this money, getting rich helping the Defense Department as a 
professor over in London.
  Little did Adam Lovinger know that he was doing work for a number of 
departments by trying to set up Carter Page, setting up Papadopoulos, 
and just helping out trying to bring down a candidate and then bring 
down a President.
  Even the Defense Department got into this effort to prevent the 
election and then to remove a sitting President. Historically, that is 
called a coup d'etat. Sometimes, it is without violence.
  In this case, of course, we found out there was violence at Trump 
events, and they blamed Trump for that. Then we find out, in a secret 
recording, a Democratic operative said: Yeah, we are the ones that hire 
people to go in and start fights so that we can accuse Trump supporters 
of being violent.
  That is also a tactic of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is what they have 
done in Egypt. They had the largest peaceful uprising in the history of 
the world protesting against a Muslim Brother, Morsi, who was shredding 
their Constitution. They arose, demanded he be removed. The Muslim 
Brotherhood went out, started violence, burned down some churches and 
synagogues. Then CNN and others faithfully reported that it was the 
protestors and not the Muslim Brotherhood that did that.
  But it was amazing what the people of Egypt did in their peaceful 
protests against a man shredding the Constitution, much as our 
Department of Justice and FBI top people have done over the last 4 
years.
  Some have said they only began to investigate the Trump campaign in 
July 2016, but we know it was months before that.
  It looks like they were probably investigating different campaigns, 
trying to figure out ways, if that person won the Republican 
nomination, then they would come after them as well. I don't have any 
doubt that would have happened.
  As former Speaker Gingrich has said, we wouldn't have had any idea 
just how

[[Page H322]]

corrupt the intel and these other folks had become.
  If you want a real fact witness, it ought to be Brennan and Clapper. 
Of course, we saw how comfortable they have been lying under oath when 
testifying before Congress. It would be nice if they were held 
accountable.
  It would be nice if Koskinen had been held accountable, if Loretta 
Lynch had been held accountable, because right now, after all these 
abuses during the Obama years, people got very arrogant about their 
abuses of their positions, and nobody has been made to pay. That needs 
to happen.
  But we don't need to have people who are comfortable lying under oath 
come down to testify at a big circus in the Senate Chamber. They should 
adopt exactly what they did under the Clinton rules.
  If they have witnesses, depose them, use the testimony from the 
depositions. Senators from both parties can submit questions to be 
asked, but they ought to follow exactly the rules exactly the way they 
did during the Clinton impeachment. They shouldn't be taking new 
witnesses.
  Like Andy McCarthy says, the Senate should not be asked to do the job 
that the House should have done but did not. He is exactly right about 
that.
  I would encourage, Mr. Speaker, and I hope, the Senate will hold to 
those rules. They were rules that were demanded and agreed to under the 
Clinton impeachment during the Clinton administration. They seemed to 
have been fair rules back then. They ought to enforce them exactly the 
same way: no live witnesses in the Chamber. That is not the place to 
have an investigation.
  There is no high crime; there is no misdemeanor. None of those were 
charged.
  We heard about bribery. We heard about Russia, Russia, Russia. We 
know that the real crimes regarding Russia were committed by 
Christopher Steele; potentially the DNC; and the Clinton campaign, 
which paid Fusion GPS, which paid Christopher Steele, who worked 
possibly with--he said, yeah, it is possible that maybe they worked for 
Putin, the people he got his information from. Maybe they were involved 
with Ukraine. We are not sure.

  Obviously, the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC paid foreign 
individuals to interfere in our election.
  It amazes me that even some smart reporters have said all this 
Ukraine stuff has been disproven. No, it hasn't. They act as if Russia 
and Ukraine activity--that you couldn't have misconduct in Russia and 
also have misconduct in Ukraine. Absolutely you could. In fact, we know 
that countries around the world, including China, have been trying to 
affect our elections.
  For those who have been students of Russia and their current highest 
leader, Putin, Putin didn't care so much who got elected in that 
election. We have heard testimony that they provided things to help 
Hillary Clinton as well. That doesn't come out in the media a whole lot 
because it is not consistent with what the alt-left media would have 
you believe.
  But they did things to help Hillary Clinton, and they did things to 
help Donald Trump. They were not as much interested in who got elected 
as they were about dividing America, and they have been extremely 
successful with that.
  America is divided. It is terribly divided. People get mad at each 
other in this Chamber and in committees. It is so frustrating. I hope 
it doesn't get as bad in the Senate as it has here.
  But Putin succeeded. And they didn't have to spend hardly any money, 
not much money, to divide America.
  They have tried for so long, yet here, with some unknowing allies, 
they have been able to divide America like hadn't happened in the last 
150 years. It is tragic.
  I am hopeful that Senators will understand that the accounts they 
have seen in the media are rarely factual, that they are going to have 
to do a little bit of digging, that they are not going to be able to 
take summaries at face value, and that they need to do some real 
digging, do some real homework to find out exactly what the facts are. 
They will be amazed.
  I am hoping that people who will be deposed will include Alexandra 
Chalupa, Eric Ciaramella, Abigail Grace, and Sean Misko. I have said 
that for months.
  Some report stories and say: ``Oh, Gohmert named the whistleblower.'' 
No, I didn't. I named four fact witnesses. Apparently, all these media 
folks must know who the whistleblower is to say that I named him.
  I have never named a whistleblower. We were told earlier on 
apparently it was a male, but I haven't named the whistleblower ever. I 
have named people I think are fact witnesses and that I think would be 
very good to have in depositions in the Senate. I hope they will be 
called.
  I don't think they need Vindman again. They certainly don't need law 
professors who are so inconsistent and just have a law professor act 
like he is really reluctant to talk about impeachment, have people talk 
about how serious and how reluctant they are, when, actually, like in 
the case of the Harvard professor, he has been talking about it since 
right after the election. He has been trying to come up with ways to 
impeach President Trump. These were not honest witnesses.
  Then you have people like Turley, Professors Turley and Dershowitz, 
who were actually trying to be fair and who have been extremely 
consistent. I have had profound disagreements with both of those 
professors on some issues, but I have always found them to be honest.
  Some people are shocked that I have liberal friends who are 
Democrats. When people are honest, you understand where they are coming 
from. When they haven't lied to you, you can work together. That can 
happen, and it does happen here.
  I hope that this impeachment stuff ends so that we can get back to 
helping the President help America, as he has been doing for 3 years. 
He has done an extraordinary job. Until the impeachment is over, 
apparently, that is not going to happen.
  For those who believe in the power of prayer, we need to be asking 
God for mercy. I would implore people who believe in the power of 
prayer in the United States: Do not pray for justice because we don't 
want God's justice to come down on America or we are over.

                              {time}  1215

  We need mercy. We need grace. We need direction, and we need to come 
back to the place where we recognize there is an absolute right or 
wrong. It comes from a universal source, as C. S. Lewis talked about, 
where he came from being an atheist to becoming, ultimately, a 
Christian.
  But the realization started that he could never know that there was a 
fair and unfair, a right and wrong, a just or unjust, unless there was 
some ubiquitous universal standard of right and wrong. Otherwise, he 
would be like a man born blind. If you have never seen the light, how 
can you know that there is light and dark? You have never seen it. You 
have never experienced it.
  So there has to be something placed in our hearts that gives us an 
idea of right and wrong, truth and untruth. And just because, as he 
said, some people come closer to hitting it right, doesn't mean there 
is no absolute right and wrong, just or unjust.
  We need to get back to the point where truth matters, justice 
matters. And when we have officials, as we still do--we still have some 
in our Justice Department, in our intelligence department or agencies, 
in the FBI--and we do need a new FBI Director, he is part of the 
problem--but until we get back to having people in the Justice 
Department, in intel, who are honest, honorable, just, upright people, 
then we will continue our slide toward the dustbin of history.
  No Nation lasts forever. The United States won't. But my prayer is 
that we will come together and do the things that will allow this 
country to succeed as a Republic with people having freedom for at 
least 50 more years. Is that too much to ask?
  I know people are worried about climate change. We won't make another 
dozen years where we are right now unless we have some massive reform 
within our government. We need to come together to do that.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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