Attorney General Investigations

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I just heard the Republican Senate leader warn us not to initiate partisan investigations. It has only been a few weeks since he personally vetoed a bipartisan investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 of this year.

For those of us who lived through that incident, we find it hard to understand why a 9/11-style Commission, divided equally between both political parties, is in any way a partisan investigation and why the Republican leader, who has served for so long in the Senate, would not feel awkward, in a way, walking through the halls of this Capitol and seeing the men and women of the Capitol Police force who have sent us a letter begging for a Commission to get to the bottom of what happened on that day when 140 men and women in uniform were attacked by this insurrectionist mob inspired by President Trump.

So when it comes to investigations, we have offered the most sanitized version of an investigation that one could ever ask for.

So why are we renewing this request when it comes to the information which is now before us? Well, on Friday, the DOJ inspector general announced he would investigate DOJ's use of subpoenas to obtain communication data from Members of Congress and the media, including whether the Department of Justice complied with applicable internal policies and whether its decisions were motivated by improper considerations

What happened was, the previous President, Donald Trump, apparently had some channel into the Department of Justice where he could call for investigations and information and data to be collected about Members of Congress. He highlighted two Democratic Members of Congress who were, coincidentally, members of an investigative committee of the House Intelligence Committee. And then it turns out, in the last 2 days, he called for an investigation of his own White House Counsel.

So it is very hard to follow who was in charge in the White House. The Attorneys General at the time denied having any connection whatsoever to these investigations, and certainly the White House Counsel wouldn't have called for an investigation of himself. So who was running the show? It is a legitimate question because it gets to not only the issue of leaks, which is important, of course, but it gets to the more fundamental question of separation of powers in this government.

If Members of Congress are subject to investigation by a President for something other than corruption, then certainly this can be translated into political pressure on those individuals.

So I find it hard to follow the logic of the Republican Senate leader, who denies an investigation of the January 6 mob violence on the Capitol--a bipartisan investigation--and then turns around and says that the President could investigate Members of Congress without accountability either. You wonder if there is going to be the proper constitutional authority witnessed and exhibited in this circumstance.

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