[Congressional Bills 117th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 844 Introduced in House (IH)]
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117th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 844
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the crime of
lying to Congress must be prosecuted equitably.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
December 8, 2021
Mr. Gaetz submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the
Committee on the Judiciary
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the crime of
lying to Congress must be prosecuted equitably.
Whereas providing false or misleading testimony to the Congress is a crime under
sections 1001, 1621, and 1623 of title 18, United States Code;
Whereas testimony given before Congress, or any of the committees and
subcommittees thereof, must be truthful;
Whereas honest and forthright testimony is essential to the oversight and
investigational authority of Congress;
Whereas the investigative authority of Congress has been an integral part of its
operations since its establishment;
Whereas the ``inquisitorial powers'' of the legislature were even discussed in
the Federal Convention of 1787, prior to the ratification of the
Constitution;
Whereas, in 1792, a committee of the House of Representatives conducted an
investigation into military losses to Native American Tribes, and the
committee was explicitly empowered ``to call for such persons, papers,
and records, as may be necessary to assist their inquiries'';
Whereas Roger Stone, a longtime political strategist, was recently arrested,
with 29 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents and 17 vehicles
arriving at his home for a predawn raid;
Whereas the indictment of Stone revealed that the crimes for which he was
arrested were one count of obstruction of proceeding, five counts of
false statements, and one count of witness tampering;
Whereas Stone is one of a very small number of people who have been arrested for
the crime of lying to Congress;
Whereas it has been widely recognized by Members of Congress, legal scholars,
and historians that lying to Congress is a crime for which very few
people have been prosecuted;
Whereas in a 2007 essay in the Quinnipiac Law Review, Mr. P.J. Meitl wrote that
``almost no one is prosecuted for lying to Congress'', and that ``only
six people have been convicted of perjury or related charges in relation
to Congress in the last sixty years''; and
Whereas the lack of convictions for lying to Congress is not due to the
overwhelming truthfulness of testimony given, as it has been revealed
and proven that many people have knowingly provided false statements to
Congress without facing punishment, including but not limited to--
(1) James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, who was
questioned by Senator Ron Wyden, and was asked whether the NSA
``collect[ed] any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions
of Americans'', to which Clapper replied ``No, sir'', and ``not
wittingly'', a response he later admitted was ``clearly erroneous'';
(2) James Comey, former FBI Director, who was questioned by Senator
Charles Grassley, and asked whether he had ever authorized someone to leak
information to the media, to which he responded ``no'', despite reports
from the Office of the Inspector General indicating his response was likely
untrue;
(3) John Brennan, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), who was questioned by Representative Trey Gowdy, and asked whether
the FBI or CIA had used the so-called ``Steele dossier'' as the basis for
any legal proceedings of any kind, to which Brennan replied ``no'', and
stated further that the dossier ``was not, in any way, used as the basis
for the intelligence community assessment'' of possible election
interference, a statement contradicted by news reports, investigative
journalists, and the sworn testimony of many other members of the
intelligence community;
(4) Andrew McCabe, former Deputy FBI Director, who was revealed by the
Office of the Inspector General to have ``lacked candor'' when questioned
about his unauthorized disclosure of information to the media, including
three instances while McCabe was under oath;
(5) Lois Lerner, former Director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of
the Internal Revenue Service, who repeatedly made false statements to
congressional investigators, and who denied that she had requested overly
extensive and deeply intrusive information from conservative nonprofit
organizations in an attempt to chill their constitutional rights to free
political speech, statements later revealed by the Department of the
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Information to be untrue;
(6) Eric Holder, former Attorney General, who--
G (A) provided false information to the House Committee on Oversight
and Government Reform on May 3, 2011, regarding the origins of the program
named ``Fast and Furious'', subsequently changing his statement during
testimony before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on November 18,
2011;
G (B) provided false information to the House Committee on the
Judiciary on May 15, 2013, when he claimed that he had recused himself from
the Associated Press leak investigation, without any records indicating a
formal recusal letter, required under such circumstances, had ever been
drafted; and
G (C) provided false information to the House Committee on the
Judiciary on May 15, 2013, saying that ``prosecution of the press'' was
something he had never ``been involved in [or] heard of,'' though he had
personally signed off on a search warrant for the personal email account of
Fox News correspondent Mr. James Rosen; and
(7) Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State, who was questioned
about mishandling classified data by Representative Jim Jordan during a
hearing of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, and responded ``there
was nothing marked classified on my e-mails, either sent or received'', a
statement proven untrue by reports from the FBI and the Office of the
Inspector General: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Justice for All Resolution''.
SEC. 2. SENSE OF CONGRESS.
That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the crime
of lying to Congress, as defined in sections 1001, 1621, and 1623 of
title 18, United States Code, must be prosecuted equitably, without
regard to politics or elections.
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