Repeal of Senate Notification Requirements Relating to Legal Process on Disclosures of Senate Data

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 6019.

Last week's bill to fund the government included a provision, added quietly in the dead of night, that facilitates the transfer of millions of taxpayer dollars from the United States Treasury to the personal bank accounts of eight Republican Senators, and not just any Senators. They were Senators who may have had knowledge of or even participated in efforts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election, efforts that culminated in a violent attack on this very institution.

Since many of my Republican colleagues seem determined to forget the reality of that day, allow me to remind you that, during this attack, Capitol Police officers were maimed while protecting the lives of the very Senators now seeking to enrich themselves at the taxpayers' expense.

Officers lost eyes. They lost fingers. They suffered traumatic brain injuries and had their spinal disks smashed. One was stabbed with a metal fence stake. Another suffered a heart attack after being repeatedly tased. Some tragically lost their lives. Others were so severely injured that they could no longer continue to serve in law enforcement.

The plot to overturn the 2020 Presidential election led multiple grand juries, both State and Federal, to bring felony charges against its organizers and participants. These charges were based on actions like promoting fake elector slates, urging State officials to find votes to change the election outcome, and urging Vice President Pence to stand just a few feet from here behind that very dais and violate the United States Constitution.

According to public reports, one of the eight Republican Senators now eligible for this taxpayer-funded windfall testified before one of those grand juries. At the conclusion of the testimony, that Republican Senator reportedly embraced the prosecutor and lauded the work of the grand jurors as cathartic. That same Senator announced just yesterday that he intends to seek his payout of tens of millions of dollars from Federal taxpayers.

It should be clear to everyone here: Under no circumstances should the power entrusted to us as Members of Congress be used to line your own pockets, period, full stop. Anyone who voted for this appalling provision, including all but two House Republicans just last week, should feel ashamed of themselves.

As these Republican Senators and House Members know, phone records are among the most routine tools used in criminal investigations. They do not reveal the content of any conversations. They simply show which numbers were called, which numbers called them, and when those calls were made.

They are essentially phone bills. If these Republican Senators genuinely believe that their civil liberties were violated or if they are interested in changing the law relating to subpoenas, then they are better positioned than literally anyone on planet Earth to hold hearings, draft legislation, and debate proposed changes in the open. That is not what this is all about. This is about ensuring the law applies to every other American, just not to them.

Let me repeat that: This law applies only to them, not even Members of the House of Representatives, nor should it--not to every other American citizen; just them. This kind of self-serving, self-dealing, one-sided get-rich-quick scheme at the expense of taxpayers is why Americans are so disgusted with this Congress, and it is why I expect that many of those who supported this provision will be dismissed next November.

This lucrative carve-out masquerading as legislation isn't an isolated occurrence. It is part of a broader pattern: the weaponization of the Department of Justice and the United States Treasury to reward allies and to punish perceived enemies.

Let me briefly highlight just a few other examples.

Earlier this year, the Trump Department of Justice agreed to a $5 million settlement with an estate of a January 6 rioter who was killed while attempting to violently breach this Chamber just outside those doors. As the chief of police of the Capitol Police said at the time: ``This settlement sends a chilling message to law enforcement nationwide, especially to those with a protective mission like ours.''

According to public reporting, Department of Justice is also negotiating a settlement of up to $50 million to disgraced former General Michael Flynn over the purported wrongful prosecution, even though he confessed to the crimes for which, incredibly, he now says that he was wrongly prosecuted. You can't make this up.

Other reports indicate that President Trump is seeking $230 million from taxpayers for himself personally for prior investigations into his conduct. Let's not forget on day one of this administration when President Trump issued blanket pardons to over 1,000 criminals convicted of January 6 crimes, including members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, who assaulted Capitol Police officers. Just last week, a militia member who participated in the riot was re-pardoned for a completely unrelated gun charge--pardoned twice.

What have we heard from congressional Republicans about all of this: about legalized payoffs to Republican Senators, about get-rich-quick schemes unfolding within the Federal Government, and about rewards for friends and retribution against opponents? We have heard absolutely nothing. The silence is deafening.

Last I checked, this is the United States Congress, not the Russian Duma. We do not create a protected class of elites who can siphon off public money, reward their friends, punish their political opponents, and insulate themselves from accountability. That is not what we are, or at least we weren't until last week, when nearly every single House Republican voted for this disgraceful provision of law after rejecting Democratic amendments to strip it from the bill.

My Republican colleagues had every opportunity to stop this provision from ever becoming law, but they voted for it anyway, and now they just want to turn around and say: Just kidding. We didn't mean it.

What are we doing here? Let's review the sequence of events.

Senate Republicans snuck this outrageous provision into a bill to reopen the Federal Government after months of Republicans insisting that they would only accept a clean funding bill. I can't tell you the number of times, with all due respect, that I heard Speaker Johnson say it over and over again. House Republicans went right along with this.

Now, straight-faced, worthy of an Academy Award, they want to pretend that the Senate may repeal the payoff they just made law? As we head into the fourth and, I pray, final year of this majority, I didn't think anything could shock me more. I was wrong.

The American people are sick and tired of this. They are sick and tired of watching politicians come to Washington to get rich while everyday Americans suffer through an affordability crisis that Republicans don't appear interested in confronting.

They are sick and tired of watching Republicans block a tax credit that will lower health insurance costs for millions of Americans after passing a partisan budget that will throw millions more off of Medicaid, only to turn around and create a slush fund for themselves.

I represent Rochester, New York, the city that Frederick Douglass chose to make his home and to publish The North Star. Douglass reminded us: ``The life of a nation is secure only when the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.''

Ask yourselves: Is sneaking this self-enriching provision into what was supposedly a clean funding bill honest, truthful, or virtuous? I think we all know the answer.

In fact, I am so opposed to this corrupt provision that I actually voted against it last week. I look forward to hearing my colleagues on the other side of the aisle try to explain why they did not.

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Mr. MORELLE. Mr. Speaker, I need to say, as someone who served on the House Rules Committee for 4 years, that we clearly could have put on the floor and made in order an amendment to strike this provision from the bill that had been passed by the Senate.

Most people who took social studies in elementary school understand the bill has to pass the Senate and the House before it is sent to the President. Had we had the opportunity, we would have voted on an amendment. I guarantee it would have passed this House and you would have had the full support of Democrats to strike that provision, and then we could have sent it back to the Senate.

We weren't forced to do this last week. There was an amendment made in the Rules Committee that the Rules Committee Republicans rejected, which would have made in order an amendment that would have stripped this provision from the bill.

That should have been done and could have been done. People made a conscious decision, on the other side of the aisle, not to include that amendment and make it in order. We shouldn't have to be here today trying to mop up the mess that has been created.

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Mr. MORELLE. Mr. Speaker, I have enormous respect for my colleagues and particularly those that serve on the Rules Committee, but this could have been dealt with last week.

There was no reason to pass this. By the way, Democrats were fighting for tax breaks and subsidies that makes health insurance more affordable for millions of Americans who go to work every day. We couldn't do that because the Speaker and Senator Thune, the majority leader, insisted it had to be a clean CR. It had to be a clean continuing resolution with no other provisions, yet somehow this got in there.

This wasn't clean. There is nothing clean about this. By the way, last week when we were considering this, had we made the amendment in order that we seem to be considering right now, it would have passed, presumably overwhelmingly, if what I am hearing from my colleagues is true. We could have sent the bill back to the Senate. I am sorry. I know we didn't want to impose on them and their time to take this out.

By the way, what these Republican Senators are saying was such an egregious abuse is something that every American is subject to, every single one of the 340 million Americans blessed to call this country our home have to go through, except these Senators because they think it is outrageous.

By the way, if you took this to its logical conclusion, a Senator that might participate in the overthrow of the United States Government, let's just say hypothetically was coordinating to do that, could not have the Department of Justice look at their phone records. It is the same thing they can do to every other one of the 340 million Americans, but not these Senators. God, no. They can't have that if there is some reason to suggest that they might have information that the Justice Department can't do it.

By the way, that wasn't the rule back when this happened in 2022. They are doing it retroactively. They are changing the law and going back 3 years and allowing them to sue the United States taxpayers for millions and millions of dollars.

Last night, a United States Senator said he intends to sue for tens of millions of dollars under this provision.

I can't imagine anything that would cause more anxiety to American taxpayers than to see this debate and understand what happened.

Respectfully, I appreciate it, but we could have dealt with this last week. We should have dealt with this last week. We shouldn't be here.

I will support the bill, but by the way, there is no guarantee that the United States Senate is going to take this up. This may all be for show just to make people feel guilty about having voted for this or wanting to convince voters back home that they really weren't complicit in giving this extraordinary bonanza to a handful of elitists who feel somehow aggrieved by the fact that they had information that might have actually been really helpful about looking at the potential overthrow of the 2020 Presidential election.
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Mr. MORELLE. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I hope today's debate was about more than simply a press release, about people trying to absolve themselves, and not just another waste of taxpayer time and money misleading the American people about the intentions of Senate Republicans.

The Senate should act on this measure. They should act on it today. Rarely in life is there a second chance to do the right thing.

I urge my colleagues here to do the right thing, and I certainly urge Members of the Senate to do the right thing, as well.

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