[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 30 (Thursday, February 13, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S963-S964]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Trump Administration

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, last week, the Senate voted to confirm Pam 
Bondi as U.S. Attorney General. I was proud to support her nomination 
both at the Senate Judiciary Committee level and on the Senate floor.
  Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a markup on the nomination 
of Kash Patel for Director of the FBI. Likewise, I was happy to support 
his nomination in committee, and I look forward to supporting him here 
on the Senate floor as soon as that vote comes before us.
  One of President Trump's most important pledges during the campaign 
was to end the politicalization and the weaponization of the Department 
of Justice, including the FBI. Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, I think, are 
outstanding picks to fulfill this pledge, which is very important. I am 
pleased the Senate is moving to confirm them with no delay.
  I believe that the FBI and the Department of Justice are two of the 
most important institutions in America. If you look around the world, 
you see a lot of countries that have a similar economic system to ours, 
and you wonder, why is America uniquely prosperous? Why is it that we 
succeed where others fail?
  I believe it is two things. One is our independent judiciary, and 
secondly, our institutions of justice like the FBI and the Department 
of Justice that are supposed to discharge their responsibilities 
without regard to politics and without regard to the sorts of 
activities we have seen in recent years.
  We know that both of these individuals--Mr. Patel and Ms. Bondi--have 
their work cut out for them.
  The mission of the Department of Justice, after all, is to uphold the 
rule of law, to keep the country safe, and to protect civil rights. The 
FBI's mission is to protect the American people and to uphold the 
Constitution of the United States.
  Under the Biden administration and even before that, the Department 
of Justice and the FBI failed to achieve those noble and worthy goals. 
Of course, back even during President Trump's first term of office, 
there was the infamous Crossfire Hurricane FBI investigation. There was 
the so-called Russian hoax based on a phony piece of Russian propaganda 
known as the Steele dossier, which ultimately we found out was part of 
the opposition research that Hillary Clinton's campaign collected 
during her campaign against President Trump back in 2016. This was 
dressed up to make it look like a credible bit of intelligence, when, 
in fact, it was Russian propaganda, we ultimately found out, Russian 
disinformation.
  Two weeks ago, during his hearing at the Judiciary Committee, Kash 
Patel told me that the rule of law is one of the fundamental precepts 
that make America an exceptional nation. Without the rule of law, he 
said, ``we go back to the Uganda that my father fled.''
  Kash Patel's adherence to the mission of the FBI and its parent 
Agency, the Department of Justice, is a stark contrast from what we 
have seen in recent years. We saw, for example, Merrick Garland's 
misguided memo in October of 2021 directing the FBI to work with U.S. 
attorneys to ``discuss strategies for addressing threats from parents'' 
who were taking an active role in their children's education by 
participating in parent-teacher meetings and school board meetings.
  Similarly, we have the FBI Richmond Field Office that sent a memo in 
2023 suggesting that traditional Catholics might pose a threat as 
violent domestic extremists.
  So we know that there is example after embarrassing example of how 
the FBI and the DOJ have gotten off track.
  A report from the House Judiciary Committee highlighted, for example, 
the FBI's misguided attempt to artificially inflate the number of 
domestic extremism threats by claiming Americans who were exercising 
their First Amendment rights were somehow potential domestic terrorist 
threats, not to mention the FBI's role in censoring information related 
to Hunter Biden's criminal activities.
  A Senate report from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 
Committee, in 2020, detailed many of Hunter's and his associates' 
unseemly--and likely illegal--activities, including payments from 
Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh, and Chinese nationals and revealed that the 
FBI may have had knowledge of these activities for some time and done 
nothing.
  In September 2020, when the House Judiciary Committee sent a followup 
letter to Director Wray, related to Hunter Biden's alleged misconduct, 
the FBI stonewalled them and refused to confirm or deny any ongoing 
investigations.
  I know that is a common response by the FBI. Well, they are not going 
to talk about ongoing investigations, and, certainly, we understand 
that, as a routine matter, there shouldn't be any sort of interference 
in ongoing investigations. But Congress has a unique constitutional 
role of oversight, and, essentially, what Director Wray was saying was, 
he wasn't willing to give the Congress, as an oversight body, the 
information we need in order to do our job.
  Of course, despite these numerous efforts within the FBI and the 
Department of Justice to protect Hunter Biden from accountability for 
his crimes, we know his own father issued a Presidential pardon in the 
final weeks of his Presidency, even though for months he had said he 
would never do such a thing. But then he did, claiming his son was 
selectively and unfairly prosecuted.
  Well, my recollection was Hunter was convicted of one crime by a jury 
but pled guilty to others. So it is not clear to me how President Biden 
can say that he was selectively and unfairly prosecuted for the crimes 
that he pled guilty to.
  It is hard to imagine thinking someone was unfairly targeted when the 
entire government--all the government Agencies involved--did everything 
they could to assist the Biden family and to protect that person from 
justice.
  While it is no surprise that the American people were upset and even 
outraged by this, who could forget the marked differences, the double 
standard, in response to when President Trump was found to have 
sensitive documents in his home in Mar-a-Lago and when President Biden 
was found to have sensitive documents in his home in Wilmington, DE.
  And all the while, during the historic crime wave we have experienced 
in recent years, Merrick Garland directed his Agency not to enforce 
mandatory minimums against most drug crimes. He did this while 
Americans across the country were suffering from fatal drug overdoses 
at record numbers, especially from fentanyl, which took the lives of 
approximately 70,000 Americans last year alone.
  The results of all of these abuses of authority has been a loss of 
trust and confidence by the American people in these important 
institutions: the FBI and the Department of Justice. These institutions 
were no longer believed to be engaged in the fair administration of 
justice based on facts and evidence, as opposed to political 
gamesmanship.
  Now, I realize that Attorney General Bondi and soon-to-be Director 
Patel are going to have a huge task ahead of them to restore these 
Agencies to their core missions and to restore the trust that has been 
eroded of the American people in our American system of justice. But 
both of these individuals have pledged to do just that, and I believe 
they should have an opportunity to do that.
  Pam Bondi, after all, has been a career prosecutor. She then went on 
to be attorney general of Florida for two terms. As a former attorney 
general of my State in Texas, I know how tough that job can be. But she 
has done an outstanding job, and I have no doubt that her promotion to 
U.S. Attorney General by President Trump was well deserved. She is 
prepared for this important job.
  My goal for the Department of Justice and the FBI is to restore the 
nonpartisan functioning of our country's chief law enforcement 
Agencies. The American people deserve an FBI and a Department of 
Justice that they can trust. They deserve to live under a system where 
the guilty are prosecuted and where the innocent are not unfairly 
targeted. They deserve to live in a place where political views are not 
a basis for a criminal investigation and where an accused person is 
still presumed innocent until proven guilty. In

[[Page S964]]

short, we need a Department of Justice that will deal out justice 
evenhandedly, without fear or favor.
  I believe that being Attorney General is probably one of the toughest 
jobs here in Washington, DC, because you are not only the chief law 
enforcement officer for the country, you are also a member of the 
President's Cabinet.
  But even given the difficult nature of the job, Merrick Garland 
practically abdicated his responsibilities as chief law enforcement 
officer in order to be a partisan advocate for President Biden's 
policies.
  President Trump's Attorney General will have a chance to turn the 
page from Merrick Garland's failures by reversing the partisan hackery 
that has been a part and parcel of President Biden's Department of 
Justice. President Trump's Attorney General can restore the Department 
of Justice to its core mission. Pam Bondi can serve President Trump and 
the Nation well by enforcing the law that is on the books and ending 
the weaponization of political enemies.
  Similarly, Kash Patel has an opportunity to turn the page from the 
abuses and the lack of accountability that we have seen at the FBI in 
recent years.
  So I look forward to working with Ms. Bondi and Mr. Patel in their 
noble endeavor to restore trust in our Nation's justice system, and by 
doing so, to restore the trust of the American people.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.