Trump Administration
Floor Speech
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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am going to ask two questions. I am going to tell a story about something that happened recently in Virginia and ask my colleague from Oregon what he thinks about it, and then I am going to hand my colleague from Oregon a picture and ask my colleague what he thinks about it.
To begin with the story--and the story deals with a topic that may not seem that sexy or something but that I think is pretty important: U.S. attorneys and the rule of law. Virginia has two U.S. attorneys, Western District of Virginia and the Eastern District of Virginia.
And those two U.S. attorneys who were put in office by President Trump have both recently been forced out of office--forced out of office because they wouldn't engage in political persecution of Donald Trump's enemies.
Let me describe the situation to my colleague from Oregon. When the Trump administration began, the two U.S. attorneys who had been recommended by President Biden and voted on, confirmed by the Senate, both stepped down, as is the norm.
The Trump administration then elevated in the Eastern District of Virginia an individual by the name of Erik Siebert. First, the Department of Justice appointed him for 120 days, and then that was followed by an appointment by the judges of the court. But his initial appointment into the role was by the Trump administration.
Mr. Siebert began his career as a DC police officer and then served for 15 years as a prosecutor in one of the most important positions in the U.S. Attorney's Offices nationally.
Senator Warner and I interviewed candidates, and we recommended Erik Siebert to the Trump administration. So they had put him in as the interim, and then he had been confirmed as the acting. We recommended him to the Trump administration. The Trump administration nominated him, and the Judiciary Committee--in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote--reported him to the floor of the Senate.
But before the Senate could act on that bipartisan vote by the Judiciary Committee, Erik Siebert was forced out of office, and he was forced out of office because he refused to prosecute, to indict, former FBI Director Jim Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James. He said there was no evidence to support an indictment in the case, and so this individual who had been put in office by the Trump administration was forced out.
In the Western District of Virginia--which covers more of Virginia's land mass but a smaller portion of the Virginia population--Senator Merkley, we had a process like you do in Oregon, and Senator Warner and I recommended two candidates to the White House, and one was a gentleman named Todd Gilbert. Todd Gilbert was a Republican member of our House of Delegates from Shenandoah County, VA, who was the leader of our Republican caucus in our House of Delegates, a strong supporter of President Trump, and he had even been speaker of the house when the Republicans held the majority of the Virginia General Assembly. A very solid individual, very much with Republican bone fides, and supporting President Trump.
But he applied to be the U.S. attorney. He had been a local prosecutor but also a local defense attorney. President Trump installed him as the interim and nominated him for the position.
Before the Senate Judiciary Committee could take him up, the Trump Department of Justice pressured Todd Gilbert to fire the chief deputy who had been the deputy in that office leading criminal prosecutions during multiple Presidential terms. Todd Gilbert refused to do it, and Todd Gilbert was forced to resign as a result.
Subsequent reporting by the New York Times laid out the facts that we believe to be true; that the Trump administration wanted to push out the assistant because the assistant was unwilling to issue indictments that were political in nature against Trump's political enemies and, for that reason, they pressured Todd Gilbert to fire his assistant.
Todd Gilbert, who had given up his position in the Virginia General Assembly to take this position, within a month, walked out of the U.S. Attorney's Office rather than succumb to a politically motivated firing of a long-time, dedicated prosecutor.
In two instances, the chief Federal law enforcement officials in Virginia, installed in their positions by the Trump administration, were forced to leave because they wouldn't agree to bend the knee and genuflect to a politically motivated persecution campaign.
And so my question to my colleague is, You are talking about creeping authoritarianism. What does it say when the Executive makes moves on law enforcement officials, Republican law enforcement officials, because they won't bend the knee and politically persecute people against whom there is no actionable claim?
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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, might the Senator from Oregon yield for another question?
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Mr. KAINE. Thank you. And I will tell a quick story. In fact, I am going to hand you this picture now because my question is going to be for you to describe it. But I will tell a quick story on the authoritarianism front, and this is a very Virginia story, and then I am going to ask my colleague to describe the picture that I just handed him.
So Virginia is an unusual State. Fifty States have mottos; all States have mottos. Almost all States have mottos that are positive: ``Excelsior,'' ``Onward to the Stars Through Adversity.'' My favorite-- because it is so random--positive motto is Michigan's. It is Latin, but the translation is: If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.
How random. I wasn't looking for a peninsula, but I would rather it be pleasant than unpleasant.
Virginia's is the only motto that is not positive. The Virginia motto was designed by the framers of the Virginia Constitution, who were meeting in Williamsburg when the Framers of the American Constitution-- not the Framers. The Declaration of Independence was being drafted and voted on in Philadelphia.
The Declaration voted on in Philadelphia, July 4, 1776. July 5, 1776, in Williamsburg, the Virginia ``B team'' that weren't in Philadelphia, they did four really cool things: They passed the first Virginia Constitution. They enacted the first Virginia bill of rights, which became a model for the national Bill of Rights. They elected Patrick Henry the first Governor.
But the fourth thing they did was they had a four-member committee appointed that spent 4 days in the library of William and Mary to design a state seal. And the State seal, which I am wearing. I wear this all the time. It is an unusual one. It is a woman amazon, representing virtue, standing atop a deposed Monarch whose crown has fallen off.
And the State motto, the only one that isn't a positive, the Virginia motto is a warning. It is a rebuke. It is Latin: ``Sic Semper Tyrannis''; thus be it always to tyrants.
And the framers picked the future verb tense. They didn't say: Down with tyrants. We don't like tyrants. We have defeated tyrants. They used the future verb tense because they believed that tyranny wasn't a form of government; it was a fact of human of nature. It was a fact of human nature that would not go away, and we would always need virtue to be able to defeat tyranny.
And so as you are talking about authoritarianism and where we are, I am just reminded of the fact that Virginians predicted in 1776 that the Nation would need to always be on guard against tyranny.
And in the formation of the Constitution--and my colleague has done a great job of looking at provisions of the Constitution--we invested a lot of power in the hands of an Executive, but then we put checks-- Congress, the courts, a free press. You shouldn't go to war without a vote of Congress. The appropriations power was for Congress, not the President. We put all these checks in place to stop the reality of tyranny.
And as we round the corner into 250 years of American democracy, we are a nation looking in the mirror and asking ourselves the question of whether we still believe in democracy over tyranny. Do we still believe it?
In 1776, 30 percent of Americans were for monarchy. When we tell the story of the Revolution, it wasn't that 100 percent of Americans believed in democracy. Thirty percent were for tyranny and monarchy. It was what they knew or they had a financial tie or a family tie to England or maybe they were worried that democracy would be too messy. It wasn't a foregone conclusion that democracy would be the choice.
Every generation has to answer the question for itself: Do we still prefer democracy over tyranny?
And as we face the 250th anniversary of the Nation's birth, we are confronted with that.
I have handed my colleague a photo. I had hoped to have it on a poster, but the photo was taken today, and I didn't have time to turn it into a poster. But I want to ask my colleague from Oregon to describe what it is you see in that photograph.
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Mr. KAINE. I would love to ask a followup question, if the Senator would allow.
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Mr. KAINE. You know what a metaphor is. A metaphor is something that not only stands for itself but it stands for something else.
As you look at that picture of the White House being demolished today, at the very time as you were standing on this floor talking about authoritarianism hurting the institutions that were put in place 250 years ago, what is your feeling about the true significance of this demolition project going on at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue?
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