-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, a Presidential campaign and a political party misreported payments to lawyers as legal expenses and, thus, violated the law.

Now, am I referring to Donald Trump and his trial? No. I am referring to the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

In the 2016 Presidential election cycle, they improperly reported money used to fund the Steele dossier as legal expense, and in doing so, they hid its true purpose, which was opposition research against Trump.

Now, the Federal Election Commission held, 6 years later, that it found probable cause that the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign violated Federal law. They were fined over $100,000. Were they criminally prosecuted? Of course not.

The now-debunked Steele dossier threw our country into crisis and did it for years. In 2020, Senator Johnson of Wisconsin and I were able to get once-classified information declassified.

That declassified information showed that Christopher Steele's sources were, one, connected to the Russian Government; two, supported Hillary Clinton; and, three, that Russian intelligence was aware of Steele's anti-Trump work even before the FBI started their investigation.

This is information that the Justice Department failed to tell the FISA Court. The Justice Department failed to even apprise the FISA Court that the FBI had a counterintelligence case on one of Steele's key sources. The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee colluded with the Russians.

They used a former British spy, Fusion GPS, and a law firm to create a fake dossier and then tried to cover it up by misreporting it under the Federal election rules.

This case is referred to as ``Crossfire Hurricane.'' It is a textbook example of government weaponization. It was to get Trump at all costs as they could.

And now that weaponization has moved to the judicial system, our last line of defense against partisan political cancer.

District Attorney Bragg manufactured a crime by reviving a time- barred, State-based misdemeanor for alleging falsifying business records. To revive the alleged crime and elevate it to a felony, he alleged it was done in furtherance of another crime, and he also alleged interference in the 2016 election by Donald Trump.

So what were these extra crimes? Violation of Federal election law, tax law, and other business records. The judge allowed District Attorney Bragg to essentially prosecute alleged Federal violations in State court, but because it was a State court, Bragg couldn't actually charge Trump for those further crimes, which were Federal in nature.

So what an absolute mess and scary precedent this partisan process has created that is going to be a sore on public policy, statutory law, and a precedent to be carried on by other prosecutors in the future.

This was a case that Bragg initially declined to prosecute, just as his predecessor declined to prosecute. And that was a case that Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York declined and so, too, and as well did the Federal Election Commission.

Now, that prosecutor in Manhattan that failed to prosecute the same things that Bragg prosecuted was well-respected Cyrus Vance, Jr.

Now, we have Bragg taking up what an outstanding prosecutor by the name of Vance would not do. Even liberal legal analysts have noted that this case wouldn't have been brought against anyone other than Donald Trump.

A State prosecutor has no jurisdiction over a Federal crime, whereas the Justice Department does. And here the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission have exclusive jurisdiction over these kinds of matters.

The Biden Justice Department didn't do anything to assert its jurisdictional hook as it routinely does when, for example, States file lawsuits involving Federal immigration law.

Biden's No. 3 official at the Justice Department, Matthew Colangelo, left that perch to work as a line prosecutor in the Bragg office for this specific prosecution.

Eventually, the ``zombie'' case against Trump, as it has been described by legal scholars, was revived just in time for the 2024 Presidential election cycle. In fact, the grand jury came out with a verdict less than 2 months after Trump announced for the election.

Then, the judge allowed the jury to pick from not one but three different secondary crimes that I mentioned earlier that Trump allegedly committed to impact the 2016 election. This means that jurors could disagree on the crime. Yet the judge would still consider the verdict unanimous to convict.

As Andrew McCarthy said in his June 1, 2024, article, ``The jurors were told that they needn't agree on what unlawful conduct Trump had engaged in to conspire to corrupt the election (which remember was not charged in the indictment.)''

This is a judge who repeatedly contributed to a group ``dedicated to resisting the Republican Party and Donald Trump's radical right-wing legacy.''

And McCarthy wrote in his article, ``How can there be guilt beyond a reasonable doubt if the jury doesn't agree on whether prosecutors have proved a key element of the case?''

I could go on and on about the defects in this political persecution. What concerns me most is the damage that is done to our American institutions.

Federal law enforcement, the intelligence community, and now the judicial branch have contorted themselves in ways unimaginable just to try and, at the same time, destroy Trump. In the process, they have broken faith with the laws, with the rules, with ethics, with the truth, and with the American people.

The steel and concrete foundations of our law enforcement and the judicial institutions are breaking apart, piece by piece, bit by bit. It is not the American people who are doing it. It is those charged with running those institutions who are responsible for their shockingly quick decline.

That decline won't stop anytime soon so long as the left and their allies in the media continue to use the judicial system to destroy their enemies based upon make-believe cases.

The leftwing's lawfare crusade has given them what they wanted for a decade now: Donald Trump's conviction on something, anything, just a conviction.

But what the leftwing has failed to foresee is the aftermath of their injecting partisan political cancer into our once storied institutions; that is, they run the catastrophic risk of the American people not caring anymore. Did the Justice Department indict someone on major criminal charges? Well, many people may react with doubt about the merits and the integrity of that indictment because of the Justice Department's past political decisions.

Did the FBI arrest a major criminal? Well, many people may begin to question whether the person arrested is now a part of a political persecution based on made-up information like what happened with the FISA Court and Crossfire Hurricane and everything involving Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

A Democratic judge and prosecution team tried and convicted a Republican in a district that is almost 90 percent Democratic voters. They asked for going to someplace else where they might get a more fair trial, and they got a quick no.

So I hope you get the picture. That is why millions of Americans refuse to take this sham conviction very seriously. Trust is easy to lose, and trust is hard to gain.

Andrew McCarthy stated in his excellent analysis:

What happened in Manhattan was monstrous. The fallout is the antithesis of a constitutional republic that presumes innocence, imposes the burden of proof on the state, venerates its due-process rules, and guarantees equal protection of the law. The antithesis is now the norm. Regardless of what happens to Donald Trump, all of us will live to regret it.

Ultimately, only ``We the People'' can solve the constitutional crisis that politicians, law enforcement, and judicial officers have disgracefully created.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source