November 14, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 182 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages H8873-H8876]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, these are interesting times, and I build 
more respect for my friend from Arizona every time I hear him speak. I 
am very grateful for his presence and his efforts.
  At this point I would like to address this ongoing issue, ongoing for 
only about 3 years, because it was immediately upon President Trump 
being elected President that we immediately started hearing all of the 
saber-rattling that we have got to impeach this guy, he is not 
qualified, he is crazy, he has committed crimes.
  And we have been hearing for nearly 3 years: there is no question, 
there is lots of direct evidence, President Trump has committed crimes, 
a lot more than you might think; in fact, a lot more than 
circumstantial evidence. Oh, it is overwhelming.
  We have heard from so many people for nearly 3 years--well, actually, 
over 3 years now--over 3 years.
  Then we get down to it. The great hope was the man that I believe did 
more damage to the FBI than all of the FBI directors for the last 50 
years, a guy named Mueller.

[[Page H8874]]

  


                              {time}  1730

  He ran off thousands and thousands of years of our best FBI 
experience. Apparently, he just wanted yes-people. He didn't want 
people who had enough experience to tell him when he was on the wrong 
track.
  He said he had no reason to apologize when he destroyed the lives of 
innocent people. And yet, that is the person who was put in charge of 
this investigation.
  What did he do? He went out and hired over a dozen people who 
absolutely despise Donald Trump, put them to work trying to destroy our 
sitting President. They harassed him and his family, business 
associates, people in the administration, threatened their families, 
threatened them.
  Even after all that, after virtually 2 years, nearly 2 years of 
investigation by the Mueller cabal, they had nothing. They had nothing. 
I think Mueller would have been happy to keep investigating and using 
up millions and millions of taxpayer dollars, tens of millions, as he 
had been doing. Fortunately, his investigation came to an end.
  After thousands of witnesses, they had nothing. No Russia collusion. 
A hoax is what it turned out to be.
  When it was clear there was no Russia collusion--of course, it is not 
a crime to collude. It is a crime to conspire.
  There was no Russian conspiracy between anybody with the Trump 
campaign and the Russians. But it is very clear, the Russians, what 
they really wanted, for people who have really dug into this, they 
wanted and what they always want, always have wanted, back when it was 
the Soviet Union, they want to divide America. They want to destroy 
this Republic.
  Unfortunately, they found allies, willing or otherwise, here in this 
country, to take absolute lies that were created, were spun up, were 
twisted--had the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, the FISA 
court, manipulated fraud upon the FISA court, which has exposed to me, 
as a former judge and chief justice, that since we have seen nothing 
from the FISA court of outrage, as a good judge should have when they 
realized there has been a fraud upon the court, nothing, which tells me 
we either need to totally get rid of the FISA court or we need to have 
some dramatic changes.
  We certainly need to change the FISA judges themselves because either 
they were unwilling and unknowing accomplices with the fraud upon the 
court, or they knew what was going on and he or she, or they, were 
proud to play a part in trying to destroy the Trump campaign and the 
Trump Presidency.
  I think it is interesting, this call between President Trump and 
President Zelensky, July 25, I mean, when so many people--we find out 
now so many people were on the call, including at least four 
stenographers taking down every word.
  I mean, I have been in courts for my whole adult life, and you might 
have a stenographer miss a word here and there. They are amazing. They 
hardly ever make mistakes. But if you have four stenographers sitting 
on a call, you are not going to have four stenographers miss anything 
when they consult each other and work together. That is just not going 
to happen.
  I had one of the best court reporters in the world, and, you know, 
there was a mistake now and then.
  You put four people like that together, like we are taking down the 
President and President Zelensky's call, and they don't make mistakes.
  But it had to send shivers up the spines of anybody in our 
intelligence community that had worked with Ukrainians, Russians, 
former MI-6, Italians, Australians to try to destroy President Trump. 
It had to send shivers up their spine. It had to get them very 
concerned.
  Oh, my gosh. This President is going to close in on us because this 
new President, we understand he is honest. That is what we keep 
hearing, that he wants to end corruption in Ukraine.
  This whole body, I think there were maybe 10 or 12 or so that didn't 
vote for the bill in 2014 that talks about Russia, I mean--not Russia, 
but Ukrainian corruption, and how we need to push them to end that 
corruption. So, I mean, everybody on this floor basically knows. And I 
think the ``no'' votes were based on some other reason, not on a desire 
not to end corruption. We all had the same goal, just concerns about 
different parts.
  The fact is, people know. There has been a lot of corruption. It 
sounds like President Zelensky wants to end it. You put that with a 
President who doesn't mind rattling cages and trying to drain the swamp 
and trying to change the way we do things for the better, and of 
course, it offends those whether they say they are part of the deep 
state or not. It is the people that work here that have never been 
elected here but think they run this country, and those in embassies 
who, beyond what they are assigned to do, they think they run foreign 
policy. We have gotten a taste of that through these hearings and 
through these witnesses and through their testimony.
  The star witness yesterday, Mr. Taylor, I don't impugn his military 
service, but I know if he had been the kind of gossipmonger in the Army 
or at West Point that he has turned into at the State Department, he 
sure wouldn't have gone very far. His next OER in the Army would have 
destroyed his career. In West Point, he would have gotten the lowest 
peer review ratings. He would not have done very well at all.
  This is, apparently, a different Mr. Taylor than the one that went 
through West Point and served honorably and well in the Army.
  But as Ambassador Sondland testified, and our friend   Jim Jordan 
read yesterday, Ambassador Taylor recalls, and this is Sondland's 
testimony, that Tim Morrison told Ambassador Taylor that Sondland 
``told Mr. Morrison that I conveyed this message to Yermak on September 
1, 2019, in connection with Vice President Pence's visit to Warsaw and 
a meeting with President Zelensky.''
  Astounding. That is where Mr. Taylor says he got his clear 
understanding of what had happened.
  If you look at his testimony, you get a real sense of how this 
honorable serving military member, fine graduate of West Point, has 
been tainted over the years.

  You look at his testimony, first of all, he says something like--he 
answered a question. He had never seen aid conditioned on political 
interests. And yet, what he probably had in his mind is he had never 
seen aid conditioned on something he disagreed with.
  Most of our aid is conditioned on something. If it is not, we need to 
find it and get conditions on it.
  As I have said ever since I have been here, you don't have to pay 
people to hate you. They will do it for free. And yet, our country 
continues to pay dictators that hate us.
  That stuff ought to be stopped. It ought to be conditioned on making 
those countries less corrupt. That is what this House has tried to do 
on both sides of the aisle, in prior years, to end corruption in 
Ukraine.
  But you get a sense of things when--this is his testimony, at page 
11, Mr. Taylor's. Let's see. ``The first summary of the July 25 Trump-
Zelensky call that I heard from anybody inside the U.S. Government was 
during a phone call I had with Tim Morrison, Dr. Hill's recent 
replacement at the NSC, on July 28.''
  That is what Ambassador Sondland was apparently talking about. He got 
that from Tim Morrison, who conveyed a message that Yermak got from 
Ambassador Sondland about Vice President Pence's visit to Warsaw and 
meeting with President Zelensky.
  He goes on, and his next statement, next paragraph: ``By August, I 
was becoming more concerned.''
  Yeah, Mr. Taylor was becoming concerned because he had heard fourth-
hand the President wanted to end some corruption in Ukraine that was 
affecting the United States election.
  I thought that is what everybody here wanted to do. That is what we 
have been hearing from the leftwing, or many call it the mainstream, 
but the leftwing, alt-left media. They have been saying, oh, how 
horrible.
  Well, here you have a President trying to do something about it, and 
Mr. Taylor, the wonderful, honorably serving Army man, is now concerned 
because of the fourth-hand account he got about what the President did.
  Now, we are told: Oh, by the way, I heard about a staffer who 
overheard a conversation between the Ambassador and the President, and 
he mentioned

[[Page H8875]]

the interviews, had some question about the interviews, maybe how they 
were going.
  Oh, my goodness. The investigation, wanted to know how it was going. 
Gee, how horrible that we had a President who wanted to know about 
corruption in Ukraine that was affecting the United States.
  Then we get down--and I think this tells us a great deal about their 
star witness, until his staffer, who was eavesdropping and heard a 
conversation, we are told, when Mr. Taylor says, ``A formal U.S. 
request to the Ukrainians to conduct an investigation based on 
violations of their own law struck me as improper.''
  Well, my understanding was the President wants to know about 
corruption in Ukraine that may have violated American law, our laws, 
work with our U.S. Attorney General to try to get to the bottom of not 
Ukraine, per se, but Ukrainians' effort to affect our election.
  That offends these deep staters in the State Department, these people 
that don't like a President that doesn't see things exactly like they 
do. How dare this President come in and want to exert his foreign 
policy that he got elected to put in place. He doesn't understand. We 
are the ones that run things.
  You see it here. He says that ``struck me as improper.'' I am the 
judge, the purveyor of what is right or not in my realm.
  You find that in a number of people in the State Department. We run 
things.
  Of course, they come in and testify. ``I have worked for this many 
Presidents, carried out their foreign policy.'' Then we find out that 
what means. ``I carry out their foreign policy as long as they do what 
I tell them. Or I ignore them and carry out what I know is much 
better.'' You get that sense.
  He goes on: ``And I recommended to Ambassador Volker we `stay 
clear''' because I, Mr. Taylor, know much better than the elected 
President. I know better than the Attorney General.

                              {time}  1745

  I know better than all of these clowns who are elected or have been 
confirmed by the Senate. Who are they to go around what I think?
  And he goes on: ``To find out the legal aspects of the question, 
however, I gave him,'' the Ambassador, ``the name of a deputy assistant 
attorney general, whom I thought would be the proper point of contact 
for seeking a U.S. request for a foreign investigation.''
  How dare President Trump try to go around the way I, Mr. Taylor, 
think that foreign affairs ought to be handled and the way corruption 
ought to be addressed when it affects the United States? How dare he? I 
am the one who knows these things, not this clown President.
  I mean, it is pretty clear what was in his mind, and it needs to 
stop.
  And I would just suggest, if we have a vote to send this matter of 
impeachment, actually impeach this President for violating the sense of 
propriety of somebody who is so deep in the state and in the intel that 
they don't like somebody coming in trying to drain the swamp, if that 
is what they want to impeach this President over, trying to end 
corruption in Ukraine that affects our election, well, then, the 
Senate, I know some have said, ``Oh, we are not going to have a vote on 
that,'' well, I imagine they probably will, and they are going to need 
to have a trial.
  In looking back and researching this again, you know, there are no 
rules of evidence for impeachment; there are no rules of procedure. The 
Constitution provides for it, the impeachment trial in the Senate. But 
as I understand it, the Senate may have even gone to the Old Senate 
Chamber to have a session out from under C-SPAN cameras to work out the 
rules of evidence and procedure, limit time, limit witnesses, how 
questions are asked, all that. They have to come up with that every 
impeachment, a new set of rules.
  I would point to Article III, Section 3 for a little bit of guidance 
here.
  Article III, Section 3 talks about treason, and President Trump is 
not guilty of any treason. He is not being accused of treason, except 
from people who are suffering from PTSD. That is President Trump stress 
disorder. But otherwise, there will be no charge of treason against 
this President, because it didn't happen.
  But it is such an important issue when you talk about removing a duly 
elected President for the first time in our history. And there is a 
rule on treason. It is in the Constitution: ``No person shall be 
convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the 
same overt act.'' That means direct evidence, no hearsay, two people 
who actually witnessed this despicable act.
  I would submit to the Senate that removing a President properly duly 
elected for the first time in our history, even after there were 
Ukrainians and Russians trying to help the Democrats to keep him from 
being elected--he still won, got a huge majority of the electoral 
college votes. This would be every bit as serious as charging someone 
with treason. The Senate ought to set a rule that says: We have got to 
have two direct witnesses to whatever they are saying he did wrong. We 
are not going to take hearsay to remove a President for the first time.
  I would suggest that if the Senate would do that, they won't even 
have to worry about setting time deadlines, witness deadlines. Just put 
that requirement on, and it will be a very short trial because there 
are no direct witnesses of any allegation that would rise to the level 
of what is being accused here.


             Military Personnel Have Been Treated Unfairly

  Mr. GOHMERT. Now I want to turn quickly to the issue of some of our 
United States military personnel who have been unfairly treated, people 
who saw it as their patriotic duty to sign up and serve this country, 
risk their lives and limbs and their life as a family member to serve 
this country.
  Greater love hath no one, Jesus told us, that they would be willing 
to lay down their lives for their friends, and that is what these 
people do.
  My group, my 4 years on Active Duty, we were never sent to combat, 
but we have, currently, a Secretary of the Department of Defense who is 
trying to stop efforts and came out and publicly--basically threatened 
the President, don't you dare try to right what you think are wrongs in 
people who I would tell you have been railroaded by a broken military 
justice system.
  The reason Congress created the UCMJ, where military members don't 
even get all the rights that we give to terrorists, to foreign 
terrorists illegally in our country--we don't give our military as many 
rights as they have.
  The reason we had to shortcut, or Congress did, back when the UCMJ 
was passed was because both sides of the aisle understood that, when 
you are in a combat theater, you don't have time to go back and have a 
thorough investigation, gather up all the forensic evidence and then 
come back and have a nice jury trial in America. You have got to deal 
with it quickly and then get back on the battlefield.
  And yet what we have seen over and over, when the military chooses 
for political expedience or political correctness purposes or when they 
want to satisfy a terrible leader like Maliki was in Iraq who created 
all kinds of trouble for that country, we would send a Vice President 
over to stand by him and say we are going to get these guys, or tell 
Karzai, a corrupt family in Afghanistan, oh, yes, we are going to 
prosecute our guys who, turned out, killed people who created IEDs that 
killed Americans, people who were Taliban trying to kill Americans, and 
yet we have hung some of our own people out to dry.
  So we have a letter, a bunch of us do. It should go out in the 
morning, I guess, to the Defense Secretary, and, you know, I put the 
words in there myself that I think, if he doesn't realize that there 
needs to be some corrections within military justice so we don't keep 
sending innocent people defending our country, defending their brothers 
and sisters on the battlefield, if we don't stop sending them to prison 
and bring them back to America for a trial, don't allow the defendant 
to bring witnesses back from the combat theater, oh, no, but the CID 
and our officials will make deals with Taliban or with people in Iraq 
who want to destroy our country and us, if they will come over and say 
terrible things about our military member, we will put them in prison, 
and we will give them visas.

  And that happened with Sergeant Derrick Miller. We got a whole bunch 
of people.

[[Page H8876]]

  Clint Lorance, hoping that the President will act. Apparently got 
slowed down by the Defense Secretary jumping in.
  John Hatley, a first sergeant, two bronze stars, He should have 
gotten a silver star, but that was apparently pulled as a 
recommendation.
  Michael Behenna, Corey Clagett, we have got a whole bunch of folks, 
and we have a Congressional Justice for Warriors Caucus here that is 
working on this.
  And we have got a guy who recognized a Taliban member from the day 
before when he had his AK-47 and grabbed him in the middle of our U.S. 
Army camp in Afghanistan and starts questioning him, and he starts 
lying through the interpreter: Oh, I was here to fix electrical. Oh, 
no, I was here to fix plumbing.
  And that sergeant pulled his gun and demanded answers. The guy grabs 
for the gun and, in the struggle, the Taliban member was shot. That 
sergeant was brought back to America. The translator, who they told 
separate stories--I mean, they told separate stories, but it was the 
same story told separately.
  Yet, after the CID got through promising or somebody promising this 
guy that had been trying to get a visa into America and turned down 
every time: If you will come to America and testify that the Taliban 
member never grabbed his gun, then we will give you and your family 
visas; you will probably be able to get citizenship.
  Oh, okay, then that is my story now, he never tried to grab the gun.
  And you threaten another witness who was there, he is going to prison 
if you don't turn around and change what you have said from the very 
beginning without any influence from Sergeant Miller, and you put the 
guy in prison for premeditated murder?
  You don't have the weapon? Oh, no, you don't let him have the weapon. 
You don't have it examined so that it can show that the fingerprints of 
the Taliban member were on that gun, he did try to grab it. And he is 
sentenced for premeditated murder for the rest of his life.
  Well, we got that turned around. We got it paroled, and thank God we 
did. He is one of the finest people I have ever known, Sergeant Derrick 
Miller here, working for me now, and he is working for our caucus.
  We have a system that is broken, and we need to fix it. And if our 
Secretary of Defense doesn't recognize that, he needs to go, and we 
need to take the money that we have allowed them to use to drag people 
back to America, away from the combat field, away from juries that have 
combat experience, we need to put them on trial in a civil Federal 
court and let them have all the rights and privileges they should have 
as American citizens.
  If you are not going to do it in the combat theater the proper way 
with the proper investigation, let's bring them back. Use your money 
from defense. Use that not in courts-martial but here in the United 
States in a civil court, and that will solve the problem.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________