Recommending That the House Find Stephen K. Bannon in Contempt of Congress
Floor Speech
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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, today, Donald Trump said the insurrection took place on November 3. No, Mr. Trump. I am sorry. That is what we call an election in America; an election that was validated by more than 60 Federal or State courts, including before eight judges nominated to the bench by President Trump himself, and all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, all of them rejecting every claim of electoral fraud and corruption that was advanced.
We know an insurrection when we see one in this body, because we lived through one. Under the banner of this continuing and deranged big lie, the Stop the Steal movement brought down a violent insurrection against this Congress in an attempted coup against Vice President Mike Pence. They interrupted the counting of electoral college votes for the first time in American history. They caused the worst attack on Congress since the War of 1812; and they injured and wounded more than 140 police officers, Capitol Police officers, Metropolitan Police Department officers, and others, breaking their noses, breaking their necks, breaking their vertebrae, breaking their arms, breaking their legs, breaking their hearts and their spirits.
We are investigating the attack on American democracy because we are Americans. We are investigating the attack on Congress by domestic enemies of our Constitution because we are sworn to do so by our oaths of office.
But now, the big lie has become a big coverup. After being impeached twice by the House, after losing in 61 different courts, after seeing a 57-43 vote against him in the U.S. Senate, in the most sweeping bipartisan Senate Presidential conviction vote in American history, Trump now tries to get his followers, like Steve Bannon, not to testify here and not to turn over evidence that they have about this vicious assault on American democracy.
In America, when you are subpoenaed to testify in court or in Congress, you show up, period. You can invoke your Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to specific questions if you think you committed a crime. You can claim executive privilege to specific questions if you think you are President of the United States. But you cannot blow off a subpoena in America. You cannot sit on your couch and defy the people's representatives in Congress.
So we must enforce the rule of law here, my colleagues. We must do it. If you act deliberately, with sneering, cavalier contempt for the American people and their representatives, we will hold you in contempt. We will get to the truth of the violent assault on America.
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