Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, this morning, I would like to address four issues at varying lengths: recent news on the North Korea summit, the Russia probe, the proposed recission of Ebola funding, and a word about the upcoming Memorial Day holiday. North Korea

First, Madam President, on the very recent news that President Trump has canceled the planned summit with Kim Jong Un of North Korea, the fear many of us had was that the summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un would be a great show that produced nothing enduring. If a summit is to be reconstituted, the United States must show strength and achieve a concrete, verifiable, enduring elimination of Kim Jong Un's nuclear capabilities. Russia Investigation

Second, Madam President, on the Russia probe, today on Capitol Hill, Department of Justice, FBI, and intelligence community officials are scheduled to brief the Members of Congress on a few issues related to Special Counsel Mueller's investigation into Putin's meddling in the 2016 election.

There will be two briefings--one for a House Republican partisan who has relentlessly harassed the Justice Department to reveal sources and methods to him for the sole purpose of interfering with and denigrating the special counsel's investigation. After several requests, the Department of Justice will also brief the bipartisan Gang of 8 on the same information separately later in the day.

While we believe no briefing should occur, it is a good thing that the Gang of 8 will be briefed. The overwhelming fact remains that a separate meeting with a known partisan whose only intent is to undermine the Mueller investigation makes no sense and should be called off. What is the point of a separate briefing if not to cause partisan trouble and create a he said, she said scenario? It is so damaging to the way our officials in the Justice Department have always worked.

Representative Nunes, the architect of this sham briefing, no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt. He lost all claims to objectivity long ago with his ridiculous, late-night charade at the White House and his conduct on the House Intelligence Committee, culminating in a document of innuendo and whitewashing that has recently come to be called the Nunes memo.

The reason Leader Pelosi and I requested a Gang of 8 briefing was because that is the process for Congress to review sensitive and potentially classified information--it has been the process for decades--the reason being, the Gang of 8 is already read into sensitive national security information and because the Gang of 8 is bipartisan. When one party--Representative Nunes, who so clearly wants to distort national security information for partisan purposes--asks for a solitary briefing, there shouldn't be a briefing at all.

Our preference would still be for the Justice Department to cancel the briefing today, but if it goes forward, there should be one briefing and one briefing only: bipartisan, Gang of 8.

It is also wholly inappropriate that General Kelly is at all involved in these briefings. The White House should never be allowed to interfere in an ongoing DOJ investigation, but it is absolutely beyond the pale that they are interfering in an investigation involving the President and his campaign. The person and people being investigated are being briefed on their investigation before it concludes. That doesn't happen in our justice system no matter who you are. Americans will rightly wonder why General Kelly was present. To erase their doubts, he should skip the meeting.

Alongside all the action on Capitol Hill today, President Trump continues to fabricate a false narrative about deep-state bias against his Presidency. This is what a child does. You look at them like they are doing something wrong, and they blame something else. They try to divert your attention. That is how the President is acting.

Yesterday, he tweeted: ``Look at how things have turned around on the Criminal Deep State.'' Well, Mr. President, I direct you to your own Secretary of State. You just appointed him, promoted him. Here is what he said yesterday:

I don't believe there's a deep state at the State Department. . . . The employees . . . at the CIA nearly uniformly were aimed at achieving . . . America's objectives.

That is the President's own Secretary of State, his own former CIA Director, dispensing with this fantastical notion of a deep state.

The President says there were spies in his campaign. It is all in the same vein of his other conspiracy theories. Remember, President Trump said that Obama tapped his phones. That was false. He said before that Russia did not interfere in our elections. That was false. Why should we think the claim that there were spies in his campaign is any different? He makes it up as he goes along to divert attention from the real issue: that Russia tried to influence our election; did influence our election; and there may, may, may--we don't know for sure, but we have to find out--have been collusion with members of President Trump's campaign and even President Trump in that regard. That is serious stuff. We have already had 13 indictments. It is beyond any doubt that Russia did try to influence our election. We need to find out who participated. That is imperative to the future of this country.

The President, acting like he has something to hide, keeps trying to subvert the investigation by simply inventing enemies out of shadows and sowing division in our country. If it were anyone else, we would call it paranoia.

Meanwhile, the President continues to risk our national security by using an unsecured cell phone for some of his communications. When the Washington Post asked a national security expert the odds of a foreign adversary having gained access to the President's unsecured cell phone, the expert responded: ``100 percent, the question is how many foreign powers.''

So while President Trump points the finger of blame in every direction and was relentless that Hillary Clinton broke security protocols, he is guilty of creating a real national security threat every time he picks up his cell phone to call Sean Hannity or Rudy Giuliani. It is amazing. It is utterly amazing, the times we are living in, and it amazes me so that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle still remain silent--still remain silent. Who would have thought. Ebola Funding

Madam President, in early May, President Trump proposed rescinding $250 million meant to combat the Ebola virus and other infectious diseases. Not only are these rescissions a slap in the face of the bipartisan budget process, but they are dangerous to our national health and security.

Just last week, a new case of the Ebola virus was confirmed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and at least two dozen people have already died in this most recent outbreak.

Let's not forget how vociferously our friends on the other side of the aisle criticized President Obama on how he handled the Ebola outbreak in 2014. Once again, Donald Trump totally contradicts what he said in the past with what he is doing now.

Here is what Donald Trump tweeted in 2014:

Ebola has been confirmed in NYC with officials frantically trying to find all of the people and things he had contact with. Obama's fault.

Well, does he now say that it is Trump's fault? What mind-bending hypocrisy.

Now President Donald Trump proposes rescinding the same funding that Congress passed to help handle the Ebola crisis in 2014 and that continues to keep America safe. God forbid this funding is rescinded and Ebola outbreaks reemerge. It would actually be President Trump's fault.

The President should withdraw his rescission request for this funding, as Senator Leahy and his colleagues on the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee asked in a letter this week. That funding should be free for USAID to use as Congress intended. And Donald Trump ought to learn from his past statements. If he can blame Obama for not fully going after the Ebola outbreak in 2014, why is he cutting money for Ebola now? Memorial Day

Finally, Madam President, on a solemn note, before the Memorial Day weekend, I want to express my deep and abiding gratitude to the men and women in the armed services who gave their last full measure of devotion in defense of our Nation and our freedoms. This morning, I am thinking of one veteran: Larry Reilly, Sr., of Syracuse, NY. He was known to us by his naval rank: Chief Reilly. Chief Reilly served on the USS Frank E. Evans, along with his son who carried his name, Larry Reilly, Jr. The Frank E. Evans sunk, tragically, in a training accident just outside the combat zone during the Vietnam war, killing 74. Chief Reilly survived the accident; Larry Reilly, Jr., did not.

Because the Department of Defense did not consider the Frank E. Evans disaster a wartime casualty--it was a short distance outside the combat zone--we will not find the name of Larry Reilly, Jr., on that wall of black stone a few miles from here. None of the names of the 74 sailors who died that day grace the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Chief Reilly spent much of his energies in the years since the war trying to right that wrong, to get his son and his son's fellow shipmates who passed away in that tragedy their rightful place in our Nation's history.

Chief Reilly, I regret to inform everyone, passed away earlier this week. We who knew Chief Reilly remember him fondly. We send our condolences to his friends and his family, along with the message that his cause does not die with him. In his honor, we will continue to pressure the Pentagon to recognize the Frank E. Evans, and those who were killed when it suffered this tragedy, on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

This weekend, as we honor our fallen veterans in big cities and in small towns throughout this grand country, I will be thinking of Chief Reilly and his son. May we never forget the sacrifices they made, along with so many others, so that we may all enjoy the full blessings of liberty.

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