Legislative Program

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I rise for the purpose of inquiring of the majority leader the schedule for next week. I would be happy to yield to my friend, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished majority leader of the House.

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his response.

I would like the gentleman to walk through, if he could, the scheduling process for how the House will further proceed with the impeachment inquiry.

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Mr. SCALISE. I yield to the gentleman.

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I, again, ask the question I had asked last week:

Are we currently in an impeachment inquiry, as the Speaker said we are a few weeks ago?

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. As this determination moves forward, there is a growing cry for fairness. And I know we talked a little bit about that last week, but we saw it again this week with more closed hearings, more hearings where both sides were not allowed the same equal rights that have always been provided in impeachment inquiries.

And, of course, when you look through our Nation's history, fortunately, there are not that many instances where Congress had to try to impeach or inquire about impeaching a President--three times.

In fact, in all three cases, it started with a vote of the full House, and it started with a fair set of rules. And in the last two that were the most public, where you saw the proceedings on television, you saw both sides vote for Nixon, where you had a divided government. You had a Democrat House and a Republican President.

And then, for the Clinton impeachment, you had a Republican House and a Democrat President. They used the same set of rules. Both sides got to call witnesses, both sides got to subpoena. The President's legal counsel actually got to be in the room and, maybe most importantly, the public got to be in the room.

Members of Congress, even if they weren't on the relevant committees, were allowed to watch these hearings. That is not going on today. These hearings are going on in secret in a secret room.

A number of my colleagues and I went down to see what was going on, to see the hearings and the proceedings. It turned out, what we found out in the SCIF, which is designed for classified briefings, it wasn't a classified briefing. The chairman, himself, acknowledged that it was not a classified briefing. In fact, it included a Department of Defense official. And members of the Committee on Armed Services asked if they would be able to participate in that hearing, and they were denied the ability.

And so when the press can't see what's going on, when the public can't see what's going on, when Members of Congress try to see what is going on, and the chairman takes the witness and runs out of the room, it begs the question, ``What are they trying to hide.''

What kind of tainted document are they creating, if it is an impeachment inquiry?

And if it is not, then stop trying to use two different sets of rules. But if it is--and the Speaker, herself, is the one who said it is an impeachment inquiry--at a minimum, use the same standards that have always been used for that serious of a process. The House of Representatives has a constitutional ability to ultimately make this kind of decision.

And, again, it has only been done three times, but in each of those cases, there were fair sets of rules used, so that you could actually find out what was happening. And if there was something that reached the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, it was not based on what one person decided, but based on everybody being able to present the evidence, everybody being able to bring witnesses forward. That is not happening right now, and it ought to change.

And I would hope, and ask the gentleman, if this is going to continue moving forward, if there is going to be any credibility to whatever report would come out of it.

There is much less credibility if it is done in secret with one person and one person only getting to choose who comes forth to testify, as opposed to an open process, as has always been the case in our country's history.

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I would imagine the gentleman would also agree that the chairman of the Intelligence Committee should also not be above the law. He should not be able to write his own rules of impeachment, his own rules of engagement, in secret.

These meetings are being held in secret. In fact, when some of us went into the room today, he ran out with the witness.

What are you trying to hide when, as any kind of secret hearing, people run out of the room as soon as the lights come on? What is really going on?

If you want to talk about numbers-- Mr. HOYER. Read the paper.

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Mr. SCALISE. The sad part is, the only way you can find out what happens in those secret hearings is reading the paper because somebody on the majority staff is, against the direction of the chairman, selectively leaking information to the press.

The press knows more about this impeachment inquiry than voting Members of Congress. Mr. Speaker, 75 percent of this Congress is denied access to those hearings, 75 percent.

Maybe you can read what was leaked by somebody on your majority staff, Mr. Speaker. Maybe that is where you can get your information because that is the only place to get information. That shouldn't be where Members of Congress have to go to find out what happened.

By the way, you talk to some of the people who were in the room, and they were directed by the chairman not to say anything. He can say something or somebody on his staff can say something, and he hasn't done anything to control the leaks. But then they say, actually, there was a lot of other testimony that contradicted what was leaked to the paper. But nobody really knows because they are denied access.

Do you know, if you take the voting Members of Congress who are not allowed in that room, it represents over 230 million American citizens who are denied representation in those impeachment hearings, over 230 million Americans who are denied access because 75 percent of voting Members of Congress are not allowed in the room?

You can talk about who is allowed in the room. Everybody should be allowed in the room. The press should be allowed in the room. Cameras should be in the room, like in previous impeachments.

If you want to try to remove a President--maybe you don't agree with the 2016 election result, and you are concerned about what might happen next year. That is not why you impeach a President, by the way.

But if you really do want to search for the truth, you search for the truth in public. The people of this country ought to be able to see what is happening. It shouldn't be a selected story in the newspaper that was leaked by the majority staff. It should be something every Member of Congress who is going to be asked to vote on this actually can find something out about.

We can't go and read the transcripts. Seventy-five percent of us can't. Yet, that is the process that is going on right now.

If you want to call that fair, maybe it is fair to you, but is it really the justice that we look for across the street at the Supreme Court?

Imagine if only one side--the accused couldn't present witnesses. You could accuse anybody of anything. And you have that ability, as you are doing right now, and then you tie the hands behind the back of those you are accusing because they can't even be in the room.

The other side can't even bring witnesses forward. There are witnesses that our Members would like to bring forward who were in that room, yet they are not even allowed that opportunity. That is not fair. Maybe in the Soviet Union that is fair, but not in the United States of America.

It is not how you should be running an impeachment operation to try to take out a President of the United States when we have an election next year. Let the people of this country make that decision, not one person sitting in a secret room downstairs, keeping other people out. When Members of Congress who are trying to find out what is going on walk in the room, he runs out of the room with the witness.

Is that really the fair process that this country deserves? It falls well short. We can absolutely do better than this.

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, the law requires the President to verify that there is not corruption involved with the taxpayer money that is in question. That is a law we passed. I believe the gentleman from Maryland voted, as I did vote, for that law. It is a good law to say that if we are going to send taxpayer money to a foreign country, we ought to make sure that there is no corruption.

There were claims of corruption in Ukraine. In fact, a lot of the interference in our election by the Russians went through Ukraine in 2016.

Now, President Trump wasn't the President back then when this country was allowing Russia to interfere with the election.

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Mr. SCALISE. But he is looking into it, as he should be.
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Mr. SCALISE. Again, we can talk about why we needed to root out corruption, why we want to find out what happened in the 2016 election where the Russians tried to interfere, because we don't want it to happen again.

We also know, as it was discussed on that phone call, that President Trump sold Javelin missiles to Ukraine so they could protect themselves against the Russians, the aggression that the gentleman was talking about on the eastern front, where the previous President allowed the Russians to come into Crimea when Ukraine was asking us to help them.

Ukraine, back when President Obama was in office, was asking us to sell them those same Javelin missiles, and President Obama wouldn't do it. He has never answered why he wouldn't, but it is a fact that he didn't sell the Javelins. But President Trump did and allowed Ukraine to defend themselves against the Russians.

In fact, they talked about maybe buying more, but they were already allowed to buy what they needed to defend themselves, and I am glad they were. It helped a friend.

But you talk about all of those things that are going on right now with impeachment. The real issue is what is not happening here in this Congress.

I will refer you to a different newspaper, as you want to talk about newspapers, the front page of The Washington Times: Democrats writing more subpoenas than laws. Impeachment inquiries sideline Pelosi's agenda.

In fact, if you look at the difference between subpoenas and bills that came out of this House that are actually signed into law, you have produced 56 subpoenas. You have produced only 46 laws. That is 20 percent more subpoenas that you have produced than laws to help people across this country.

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Mr. SCALISE. I would be happy to yield when we talk about all the things that this House could be doing that it is not, like lowering drug prices, like getting better trade deals with our friends in Mexico and in Canada and in all the other countries that are lined up that would love to come behind USMCA that can't right now.

They can't because there is this infatuation with impeachment, in a one-sided way, in a closed way, in a Soviet-style Star Chamber.

But that is not happening right now. This is what is not happening; this is what is happening. It is not what the American people expected out of this majority.

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Mr. SCALISE. It is factual.

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Mr. SCALISE. Well, first of all, the gentleman is making an assertion that has been disputed--in fact, disputed by the President of Ukraine, this alleged quid pro quo that didn't happen. Zelensky himself said it didn't happen. In fact, he got the money. He got the money.

Now, we had to check to make sure, like the law says, in two different places. We have two different sets of law that require the administration ensure that there is not corruption before they send the money.

I can assure the gentleman from Maryland that, if he would have sent the money over and there was corruption involved, you would be going after him for breaking the law, for not following the law.

You voted for the law. I voted for the law. Again, it is a good law. But then he ultimately released the money.

You talk about the Javelin missiles. He sold that to them before the phone call even happened because it was a friend saying protect us against Russia.

President Obama wouldn't stand up to Russia when Ukraine made that same phone call, yet President Trump did. President Trump said: I will sell you those missiles so you can protect yourself and can defend yourself against the Russians.

And Zelensky, on that phone call, was thanking the President, again, for selling those missiles to them. It has allowed them to push back the Russian aggression and to root out--ultimately, they talked about rooting out and getting to the bottom of the corruption and the interference that happened with Russia in our 2016 election, which I hoped we would be more vigilant to root out together.

It shouldn't just be President Trump wanting to stop it from happening again. All of us should want to make sure that that doesn't happen again.

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, first of all, it is not a question. It is a false assertion that the gentleman is making. And so you can make claims about people, but ultimately, if it is not backed up in fact, you just continue on.

This has been the pattern of this majority, really, since before you took the majority. It has been an assertion to impeach the President, finding something; if there is nothing there, just keep looking.

You had the Mueller investigation; 2,800 subpoenas, 22 months meandering around, looking for something, hoping; and we saw the chairman of the Intelligence Committee said publicly, time and time again, for 2 years, that he, himself, had more than circumstantial evidence of criminal acts. It turned out there were none.

The chairman never showed the evidence that he had. Maybe he went and had a meeting with Mueller and Mueller discarded it. But if he really did have more than circumstantial evidence, he would have brought it forward. He would have shown all of us, but he didn't. He made the assertion, but it was a false assertion.

And if it wasn't false, by the way, I would challenge the gentleman to bring it forward. He ought to have that duty to bring it forward.

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Mr. SCALISE. No, no. We are talking about the Mueller investigation, but it didn't happen. So the collusion argument that was supposedly going to yield some kind of ability to go and impeach the President didn't turn out to be true.

So, instead of stopping and moving on to the business of the American people, instead of more subpoenas--not laws. No lower drug prices because it is an impeachment infatuation. Instead of moving on, they went to this because there was this whistleblower.

And let's go back to the memo of the whistleblower, before the whistleblower complaint. The whistleblower actually wrote a memo. Admittedly, they never even listened to the phone conversation, but they talked to other people.

And if it was so dangerous what those other people heard, they had a legal ability and authority to go and file their own whistleblower complaint, but they didn't. So someone with a political bias, by the inspector general's own admission, a person with a political bias who had access to information that was classified, in violation of law, hears what they want to hear, writes a memo saying it was crazy; it was disturbing. Those were the words that the whistleblower wrote about the phone conversation.

Lo and behold, the phone conversation gets released by the President. It was unprecedented. He didn't have to do it. I might have preferred if he didn't do it because you don't want a pattern where every conversation between world leaders is going to be out in the public.

But, okay, it is now. And all of those assertions that were made were false. It wasn't a crazy conversation. It wasn't a disturbing conversation. It was two people talking about--one congratulating the other on his election. One talking about how he got elected on a platform of rooting out corruption, which he is doing, and we are helping them with. That was the conversation.

So now the whistleblower isn't even going to be brought forward, according to the chairman, because the chairman is the only person who gets to bring witnesses forward.

Then the gentleman talked about Trey Gowdy's committee, the Benghazi Select Committee. He tries to use that as the reference point for holding an impeachment inquiry.

Let's all be clear: Trey Gowdy's committee on Benghazi was a special select committee to find out what happened.

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Mr. SCALISE. I will ultimately yield, but you mentioned all of these things, and so I want to clear up the things that the gentleman mentioned.

So the Trey Gowdy committee, where four Americans died and we were trying to get to the bottom of that--not to impeach anybody, but to find out how four Americans died when people should have known that there was danger over there and the proper precautions weren't taken. So he had a committee.

Do you know, I would ask the gentleman from Maryland, that Chairman Gowdy allowed the minority to call witnesses? He didn't sit there and say: Hey, I won and you lost, and so I can just roll over you and then back up the car again. That is not what Trey Gowdy did. He was the chairman, but he let the ranking member, the minority leader of the committee, call their witnesses.

That is not happening right now. Not one witness has been allowed by our side. Closed hearings to the public.

If this is something that you are so concerned about, if you are concerned about corruption, why root it out in secret, behind closed doors, with a one-sided set of rules that represents and reflects more how the Soviet Union would conduct something like this as opposed to how the United States of America has always conducted impeachment inquiries? We are talking about impeachment inquiries in secret, behind closed doors.

So, yes, the gentleman raised a lot of issues, and I wanted to go back to each of those.

So what we have asked for is the same fairness that has always been allowed, both sides--not just the winning side, both sides. This is America.

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, if we really are about getting to the facts, to think that you can suggest it is a fair process when only one side gets to choose who the witnesses are--again, the gentleman references Trey Gowdy's committee. Chairman Gowdy allowed both sides, Republican and Democrat, to bring forward witnesses because he wanted to get the facts. If you really wanted to get the facts, would the chairman of the committee, literally, take the witness and run out of the room as soon as other voting Members of Congress showed up? That happened today.

If the chairman really wanted to get the facts out, would he literally close the meetings? Tell all Members, Republican and Democrat, not to go talk to the press. And then somebody mysteriously, selectively leaks things to the press that are negative, in many cases disputed by other testimony that was given in secret, so it can't get out. And so you get one side of the story.

I guess if you are okay with having only one side of a story told, that might be your prerogative because you are in the majority, but don't call that fair. It is clearly not fair if only one side gets to tell their story and the other side doesn't get to bring their witnesses.

The President who you are accusing of possibly committing some crime so high, high crime and misdemeanors is the standard, if you are accusing him of that, you can't lay it out yet, you are hoping and looking around for something, which isn't the process, by the way, that has been used in the past.

If you don't like the results of the election, there is an election next year. And if you don't trust the people of this country to make that decision, do you really go into a Star Chamber and run a Soviet- style set of hearings where only one side gets to tell their side of the story?

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Mr. SCALISE. What is the allegation that is untrue?

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Mr. SCALISE. Who can call the witnesses? Just your side. You think it is fair that only you can call the witnesses, and then you want to get the truth? Are you going to get the facts when you shut out the other side? When you don't let the President have his own legal counsel there, like has always been done.

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Mr. SCALISE. This is not a grand jury. This is the United States House of Representatives.

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Mr. SCALISE. If you want to run a grand jury, go get a jury.

This is the United States Congress. Voting Members of Congress are being shut out of the room, Mr. Speaker. Voting Members of Congress are being shut out of this process. You want to call that fair? Good luck. But it is not fair.

It is a one-sided process to create a document with a determined outcome. It is going to be a tainted document, because it only tells one side of the story. The old saying is, a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich, if they want to. There is a reason for that because only one side can call witnesses.

When we have had impeachment inquiries in the past you don't have to reinvent the wheel. It has only happened three times. And in modern times they have used the exact same standard.

The standard is: Both sides get to call witnesses. That is not going on right now.

It was done in public. That is not being done right now.

It is going on in secret. The press can't go in. You can't go in. I can't go in, unless they run out with the witness.

That is not a fair process. Maybe that is the process that you want to conduct, but don't call it fair, because it is not.

And, ultimately, it is not going to result in a fair document that is going to be determining whether or not a President of the United States is impeached.

And Members of both sides, 75 percent of the Members of this body, Republican and Democrat, are going to be asked to cast a vote on something that they can't even go and determine and find out about. They can't sit in the hearings. They can't read the testimony. 230 million Americans are represented by those Members of Congress who cannot get access to what is going on in that room. Maybe you can get it from reading leaked press reports.

Is that really how you determine whether or not to impeach a President of the United States? That is not fair.

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I don't know if the gentleman is asserting that we will have a vote on impeachment, that might be breaking news, but if these Members, all of us, are going to vote on impeachment, shouldn't we be able to see what goes on? Shouldn't we be able to have access to the hearings? Shouldn't we be able to have access to the transcripts? Can we now?

I would ask the gentleman, would he release the transcripts now of these hearings so that Members can start preparing? So Members can know what they are going to vote on?

Are you going to keep it in secret and then drop something on the floor after it has been baked and predetermined what the outcome should be before Members really have an idea of what is going on in those rooms that are being denied entrance to those rooms right now? It has never happened before in other impeachment inquiries.

And you can say it is about process. It is about history.

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Hoyer mocked that the process is tainted, that the process is being run like it might be run in the Soviet Union, not in the United States of America. It has never been done like that before.

And you talk about Trey Gowdy, as if we were looking around for something to impeach a President on. We weren't.

You had four Americans die. There are a lot of questions that still haven't been answered about why those Americans died.

And all of us should be concerned about what happened at Benghazi. To ridicule the fact that there were eight hearings on something so alarming? Nobody was fishing around, looking--

By the way, we never tried to impeach the President over anything. All of the things that we disagreed with him on, none of those. Even times when he would sign executive orders that circumvented the law, and we would challenge him in the court, and we won a number of those court cases, but that doesn't mean it rose to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. And so we never went down that road.

But maybe some, in some part of a base, want to see impeachment, no matter what. And some have said that. Some in your own party have said they just want to impeach the President because if they don't, he will get reelected. That has been said by members of your party.

That is not why you impeach a President, because you think he is going to get reelected. The American people make that determination next year.

We have had investigation after investigation. Again, Mueller alone had 2,800 subpoenas. He had the full authority to bring charges against the President on collusion, on obstruction. Even the Attorney General said that he had the authority to bring charges, but even if he did have those, he wouldn't have brought charges on obstruction, because there wasn't obstruction and there wasn't collusion. But he had full authority to bring charges on both fronts, and he didn't. But, again, 222 months of that meandering witch hunt to try to find something. And it wasn't found because it wasn't there.

And then you had the whistleblower, the so-called whistleblower. Who, if you are worried about who is talking to somebody to try to get their stories straight, interestingly, the whistleblower--who, again, was identified to be somebody with a political bias--went and met with Chairman Schiff's staff prior to filing the whistleblower complaint.

Yes, somebody did collude. Real interesting how that happened. Before the whistleblower complaint was filed, they actually sat down with the staff of the majority leader, Chairman Schiff, and lo and behold, you get a political document that comes out with allegations, disproven in many cases, but that is where we are. That is the basis for starting an impeachment inquiry.

That is not really an impeachment inquiry, because we are not following the same rules that have always been followed under an impeachment inquiry, but that is the genesis of this, and that is where we are.

And if that is what the document is going to ultimately yield, it will be a tainted document. But I guess if you want to find an outcome--this isn't a grand jury. This is the United States House of Representatives, and there are 75 percent in this body who are going to be asked to vote on something that they cannot see, they cannot participate in, they have absolutely no access to. That is not what this country is all about.

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Mr. SCALISE. When?

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Mr. SCALISE. I would if it was true, but it is not.

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Mr. SCALISE. You can only read it in the press because of selective leaking. And so that is how Members of Congress are supposed to make a determination on impeachment of the President, based on selected leaks to the press?

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, here is another headline: ``Democrats Writing More Subpoenas Than Laws.'' That is a headline. That is what angers people who want to see their prescription drug prices lowered, but they can't because of this infatuation with impeachment. That is what is holding this country back. That is what is holding this House back from doing the people's work.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask if the gentleman has anything else. If not, I would be ready to yield back.

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