Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee held our first oversight hearing to learn more about the origins and evolution of the counterintelligence investigation known as Crossfire Hurricane, opened in July of 2016 against a Presidential candidate and his campaign team. I asked Rod Rosenstein, the former Deputy Attorney General, if he knew of a precedent for active FBI investigations against both nominees of the major political parties for Presidential campaign, and he said: No, there is no precedent.
The FBI is not supposed to be involved in our elections and in our politics. Yet you recall what happened on July 5, 2016. Director James Comey held another unprecedented event--a press conference--at which he said that no reasonable prosecutor would prosecute Secretary Hillary Clinton for a crime but then proceeded to detail derogatory information--information that was not his to release but was supposed to be part of a confidential investigation.
Under our system of justice, the FBI is supposed to investigate crime, and then the Department of Justice makes the charging decision. That is when things become public. Yet, when the FBI decides there is not enough evidence to support charging, it doesn't hold a press conference and disparage the character and reputation of the person it is investigating.
I don't know whether Director Comey had an impact on the 2016 election, but I do know what he did was wrong, and, yesterday, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein confirmed his memo to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, which was then attached to Jeff Sessions' letter to the President, recommending that Director Comey be terminated as the FBI Director. The reason was not because he had made a mistake but because he had failed to see the error of his ways and was likely to repeat them again.
The Deputy Attorney General is supposed to be the supervisor for the FBI, and while the chain of command is pretty clear in criminal cases, in this species of investigation known as counterintelligence, which is not primarily to investigate crimes but to investigate security threats to the United States, there was no chain of command. The FBI was running rogue under Director Comey, along with some of the things we have learned about with regard to Director McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and others.
It is really important that we not only make sure we understand what happened--that it was unprecedented and negatively affected Hillary Clinton's campaign--but that it also negatively affected Donald Trump and his campaign, and this investigation continued long after he became President. It resulted in the appointment of a special counsel, who ended up with no evidence with which to charge the President with any crime.
We can't have the FBI interfering with our elections. Yes, it needs to investigate counterintelligence threats to the United States, and it needs to investigate crimes, but it should not be a primary actor in that process, in the public process, by which we elect Presidents. It needs to stay in its particular lane and not become a partisan, in effect, affecting the outcome of Presidential elections, all of which is to say that the investigation the Committee on the Judiciary began yesterday is very, very important. One thing we must make sure of is that this never happens again, and the only way we can make sure it never happens again is to make clear what did happen and where the train went off the rails.
The last 3\1/2\ years have been primarily occupied with this so- called investigation into President Trump and his campaign, then the appointment of a special counsel, and 2 years of Director Mueller's investigation as special counsel. Then what followed that was impeachment. Think of all of the opportunity costs associated with that, the time we could have and should have spent on doing things which would have impacted the quality of life of the American people-- improving access to healthcare, creating economic opportunity, enhancing our national security. These are things we were not doing because we were preoccupied with these bogus investigations and the media leaks by the people who knew better.
Adam Schiff and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence took a lot of sworn testimony during their ``investigation.'' Now that it has been declassified, we know that none of the witnesses--mainly Obama-era officials--knew of any evidence of coordination, cooperation, or collusion with Russian authorities--none of them. Yet Adam Schiff and others on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence had the temerity to go to the microphones and say there was rampant collusion, conspiracy, and collaboration--just bald-faced lies. Of course, the American people didn't know that. We didn't know that because those allegations were reported in the press, and they led into this narrative which has so dominated us over the last 3\1/2\ years, only to find there was no basis for it.
Suffice it to say that the investigations that are being conducted by the Committee on the Judiciary and by the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, led by Chairman Johnson, I think, are very, very important. The facts will come out. We know that Attorney General Barr has deputized Mr. Durham, a U.S. attorney, to see whether there is evidence of chargeable crimes, because there needs to be accountability. America's Space Program
Mr. President, let me just on, maybe, on a happier note, talk about another event. We need a little good news, a little hope, a little optimism in America these days.
Last weekend, America's space program made history with the successful SpaceX crew Dragon launch. It was nearly a decade ago that American astronauts in American rockets were launched into space from American soil. I mean, until last weekend, we were literally captives of the Russians in their providing the rockets or the rides we needed in order to get to the International Space Station. Yet that is not the only reason this launch was so significant. It marked the first time that our astronauts launched in a commercially built and operated spacecraft. I must say that it looked pretty slick to me.
As we work to ensure our country remains a leader in human spaceflight, partnerships between the public and private sectors are going to continue to be very important. That is why NASA established a commercial crew program to link the brilliant minds at NASA with those innovative companies like SpaceX, and this launch gave us just a glimpse into how those partnerships will lead us in the future.
I remember the launch of the Apollo 11 mission almost 51 years ago, and I remember seeing the photos of the astronauts in the command module. They wore bulky space suits, and the surrounding walls were completely covered with switches and dials and buttons. To be honest, not much changed over the next several decades. Even with the last launch on American soil in 2011, the Space Shuttle Atlantis looked pretty similar.
What America saw on Saturday was a glimpse into the future. Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley were outfitted in custom- designed and fitted space suits, and they were seated in front of a sleek touchscreen. It looked like the console of a Tesla, to me, but I am sure it was more sophisticated than that
After the two astronauts arrived at the International Space Station, Behnken referred to the Dragon as a slick vehicle. Yet things don't just look like they were made for the future, for they were designed to work better, last longer, and be safer. The Falcon 9 rocket was made with reusable parts to bring down the cost of human spaceflight. As we return American astronauts to the Moon and eventually to Mars, this commercial launch will have marked a new era of space exploration. It gives us hope and excitement at a time when both of those are desperately needed.
I thank and commend the countless men and women who have made this mission possible, especially my fellow Texans at Johnson Space Center-- the center of human spaceflight for NASA--and then, of course, Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX. He said this launch was the result of, roughly, 100,000 people's efforts when you added up all of the suppliers and everybody involved. When you combine that with the work of the brave and brilliant astronauts, physicists, engineers, mathematicians, and scientists of all stripes who have helped us to have met our space exploration goals over the years, it is clear that America's space program's best days are ahead.
When the final NASA space shuttle crew departed the International Space Station in 2011, it left behind a small American flag with instructions that it be brought back to Earth by the next crew to be launched from the United States. Finally, almost a decade later, it has been united with the astronauts who will carry it home.
On behalf of a proud nation, congratulations to astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, to everyone at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and SpaceX on successfully capturing that flag. We welcome you home in the coming months so we can proudly say alongside of you: Mission finally accomplished.
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