Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the Committee, House Resolution 446—offered by the Gentlewoman from Washington, Mrs. Jayapal, and the Gentleman from Rhode Island, Mr. Cicilline—is an important measure.
I support it, and urge my colleagues to do the same.
The resolution seeks information about the administration of the Department of Justice at a time when the Attorney General is under direct attack by the President, and the President has openly encouraged the Department to pursue a criminal investigation of his political enemies.
Whatever we think about the political views of Attorney General Sessions, this conduct is not right. It is not normal. And it deserves the immediate attention of this Committee.
That is why, Mr. Chairman, my colleagues and I wrote to you last Thursday, requesting hearings with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. Without objection, I ask that this letter be placed into the record.
That list of leaders at the Department of Justice may be familiar to you, Mr. Chairman. After we transmitted our letter to you, we learned that the President had questioned the credibility of each of these officials in his interview with the New York Times. Without objection, I ask that a transcript of that interview be placed into the record as well.
Now, let me say something that may surprise you, Mr. Chairman: I agree that a resolution of inquiry is not the most effective tool for conducting oversight of the Executive Branch.
As you have observed, “resolutions of inquiry, if acted upon by the House, have no greater legal force or effect than sending the Attorney General or the President a letter requesting this information.”
Our problem, Mr. Chairman, is that the Majority will not allow us to take even this modest step.
We have sent letters to the Attorney General and the President requesting this information—more than a dozen combined to the Department of Justice and the White House. And we have sent letters to you, Mr. Chairman—four, so far, calling for hearings on matters that, in ordinary times, would command the attention of this Committee no matter which party held power.
But we have received no response from the Administration, Mr. Chairman. And we have received no response from you.
I appreciate your reaching out to me yesterday and offering to schedule briefings with the Special Counsel and the Deputy Attorney General. That offer is a necessary step in the right direction—but it is certainly not sufficient if we are to fulfill our responsibilities here.
This Committee has not held a single hearing on events that have the public openly speculating about the line of succession at the Department of Justice. President Trump fired the Director of the FBI because he did not like an ongoing criminal investigation.
In his words, regardless of the recommendation he received from the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, he was going to fire Director Comey because of “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia.”
The President is open about attempting to undermine that investigation now that it is in the hands of the special counsel.
He takes to Twitter to question the integrity of career prosecutors of both parties. He has plunged the Department of Justice into crisis after crisis.
Our Committee has sat on the sidelines through it all.
So what choice do we have but to call this resolution of inquiry before the Committee?
How else are we to remind the Majority that we have a responsibility to protect the institutions that are trusted to our oversight?
The resolution before us today will help us get at the precise scope of the Attorney General’s recusal from matters related to the presidential campaigns.
It will also help us to understand whether the Attorney General has applied that recusal consistently to matters outside the special counsel’s investigation—and why he felt that he could participate in the removal of Director Comey despite that action’s direct connections to the campaigns.
We must have that information in order to do our jobs. And we must do our jobs, Mr. Chairman.
As we wrote in our last letter to you:
“We believe that our failing to act now will allow others to inflict lasting damage to the Department of Justice.
“It will also inflict lasting damage to our Committee—which has, in years past and under the leadership of Chairmen of both parties, rarely shied away from providing meaningful oversight of the Department and its component agencies.”
I urge this Committee to act, and to support the resolution before us today.
I thank the Chairman, and I yield back.
