Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2644

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BOOKER. Madam President, thank you very much.

I want to thank my colleagues from Arizona and Delaware for being here today and for their leadership. I join them in asking the Senate to pass the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act by unanimous consent.

The Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act is a bipartisan bill. Again, I repeat, this is about the legislative branch asserting a commonsense check and balance on Presidential overreach. It is not divided along party lines; it is a bipartisan bill.

This bill is about ideals that we all are aligned with--independence, integrity, and the ability of the special counsel and future special counsels to do their job effectively, without interference from a President. This is a proactive bill aimed at ensuring that now and in the future, we have appropriate checks and balances in place to prevent a constitutional crisis.

The bill is becoming more urgent. We know that there was an attack on our democracy. We know that there were and are foreign agents who attempted and are attempting to manipulate and undermine our democratic institutions. We need to understand what happened and how to prevent it from happening again and to hold those people accountable for their actions.

The preservation of the special counsel investigation is indeed a matter of national security, but we know that the special counsel is in danger. We know he is in danger because even just yesterday, the President was again maligning and mischaracterizing the special counsel investigation. We know there is danger because just a few weeks ago, the President fired Attorney General Sessions and named Matthew Whitaker as the Acting Attorney General to oversee the Mueller investigation. We know that Acting Attorney General Whitaker has a history of criticizing and debasing the very investigation he is now responsible for overseeing. In 2017, he wrote an op-ed calling this investigation into our national security a ``witch hunt.''

This investigation must be allowed to continue without interference. This investigation must continue for our national security. We are all stewards of our democracy. It has been sustained by this ideal: that no one, not even the President of the United States, is above the law. We must act quickly to protect and secure this fundamental democratic ideal. This is a sobered, measured, bipartisan bill that will achieve those ends.

I now yield to my colleague from Arizona.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source