Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I will spend a few minutes talking about a piece of legislation that is bipartisan and deserves this Chamber's consideration.

Last year, around the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I reintroduced the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA. This bill makes minor adjustments to our laws to help Americans who are attacked on U.S. soil get justice from those who sponsored and facilitated that terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

When the Judiciary Committee considered this bill earlier this year, it was reported out without objection. I think the reasons for that are pretty clear. We should use every means available to prevent the funding of terrorism, and the victims of terrorism in our country should be able to seek justice from people who do fund that terrorist attack. We have to maintain our diligence to hold those who sponsor terrorism accountable, particularly on our own soil, and we must leverage all of our resources--or as many as possible--to shut off the funding sources for terrorists. Using civil liability to do so has been Federal policy for decades, and JASTA would strengthen that.

It is my hope that this legislation will serve as a defective deterrent and will make foreign governments think twice before sending money to terrorist groups who target our homeland. Our country confronts new and expanding terror networks that are focused on targeting our citizens, and we need to do everything we can to stop it, including passing this legislation.

JASTA is also important because it would help the victims of the 9/11 attacks achieve closure from that horrific tragedy.

I mentioned that this is a bipartisan bill, and I am glad to introduce it with my colleague Chuck Schumer of New York. But unfortunately the President doesn't seem to share these bipartisan concerns about helping the victims of terrorism or deterring others from funding and facilitating it in the future. Unfortunately, the administration has worked to undercut progress of this legislation at every turn.

Yesterday the White House insisted that the President does not oppose JASTA on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia even though the administration has made that argument in private. In light of his upcoming trip there this week, it appears that the Obama administration is pulling out all the stops to keep this bill from moving forward before the President's visit to Riydah. I wish the President and his aides would spend as much time and energy working with us in a bipartisan manner as they have working against us trying to prevent victims of terrorism from receiving the justice they deserve.

I was glad to see the President abandon an argument that I always found strange, especially coming from him. He didn't seem to care that much about our relationship with Saudi Arabia when he ran through his misguided nuclear deal with Iran, running roughshod over serious concerns raised by the Kingdom. He didn't seem to care much about our relationship with Saudi Arabia when he contended that they should learn to ``share the neighborhood with its mortal enemy Iran.'' In a very real way, the President's opposition to this bill looked like it was asking the victims of 9/11 and their families to pay some of the political price for the President's mishandling of our relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Well, yesterday the White House claimed it opposed the bill because it undermined the principle of sovereign immunity. In the past, the President said U.S. citizens could sue foreign governments and the United States would get sued abroad. Now, sovereign immunity is an important principle to be sure, but the fact is, the White House is misrepresenting the law. We have had statutory exemptions to this immunity for years for business conduct, torts, and many things, including terrorism. We already had these exceptions in the law, and that has been the law for decades. The only real change is allowing victims of terrorist attacks on the homeland to sue even if the defendant is not designated by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism. That is right. All this would do would be to allow victims of terrorist attacks on our homeland to sue even if the sponsor of the terrorist activity was not a State Department designated state sponsor of terrorism. This is a narrow piece of legislation, and it would not upend traditional principles of sovereignty.

Yesterday a White House spokesman claimed that JASTA would lead to liability for U.S. humanitarian aid work. That is just false. I am confident that Senator Schumer and I can make that abundantly clear to anybody who shares that misconception.

The President's attempt so far to derail this legislation that would help the victims of 9/11 pursue justice under the law is completely unacceptable. Unfortunately, this shouldn't be a surprise. The President has steadfastly refused to declassify and release 28 pages of the ``9/11 Commission Report'' that pertain to allegations of Saudi Arabia's support for the 9/11 terrorists. According to some news reports, President Obama has vowed several times to release this information, but he hasn't followed through on that promise yet. His actions to shield the Saudi Government instead of advocating on behalf of his own citizens rings much louder than his words. That doesn't sound to me like the most transparent administration in American history, which is what the President promised the Nation at his inauguration.

The good news is that there is bipartisan support in this Chamber for those who will stand up for these victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and hold the people responsible accountable. I look forward to continuing to work with our colleagues to get this critical legislation passed.

The President has his prerogatives under the Constitution. If he wants to veto legislation passed by the Congress on a strong bipartisan vote, he can do that, but 67 Senators and two-thirds of the House can override a Presidential veto. That is in the Constitution too. So the President needs to step up, instead of trying to kill this legislation by private conversations in the Senate. The Senate needs to do its work: Pass this bipartisan legislation, help the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and hold those who fund and facilitate terrorist attacks responsible. If the President wants to get in the way, he can veto the legislation, and we can override that veto. That is the way the Constitution works.

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