Keeping Violent Offenders Off Our Streets Act of 2025

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to the Keeping Violent Offenders Off Our Streets Act, which is a truly strange bill. The bill, first of all, refers to violent offenders, but it is unclear exactly why. It applies to all offenders. In any event, it would redefine the business of insurance to include the posting of monetary bail, criminal bail bonds, and Federal immigration bail bonds.

It would accomplish this dramatic reclassification for the purposes of prosecuting and punishing community bail funds as a form of criminal insurance fraud. Only in surreal MAGA Washington would someone think to change the definition of insurance fraud to include the posting of bail and bail bonds. I can't even begin to reconstruct the giant mental leaps that must have been used to get to this fallacy.

This week is National Police Week, and as we do every year, we recognize and honor the men and women who put their lives on the line for us to protect our communities. Our colleagues have vaguely and inscrutably billed this legislation as pro-police, although they have yet to show how it would support the police or address the articulated needs of police officers anywhere in the country.

The true aim of H.R. 6260, apparently, is to discourage and destroy not-for-profit bail funds that raise money for people who cannot afford to pay bail for themselves. These groups try to address the basic injustice that results when wealthy people can walk free while poor people are held in jail pending trial for no reason other than their inability to pay, which is why the Federal system, as I was arguing in our last bill, eliminates money from the equation entirely and says that the only question is whether a person presents a flight risk or danger to the community.

Now, my distinguished colleague, the author of the legislation, ties the beginning of these bail funds I think he said to 2020 with the killing of George Floyd.

Actually, the history of these funds goes back a lot further than that. It really begins during the period of abolitionism in the Civil War when various people were being jailed for either assisting enslaved people in the Underground Railroad or being arrested for their attempts to interfere with the fugitive slave law.

In any event, money was raised to get people out of jail for those purposes. That lasted through the Civil War, and it went into the Reconstruction period as well, because we know that the criminal justice system in the South was turned into an instrument of incarceration and domination and reimposing discipline on the freed slave population. That is what they were using the criminal justice system for, and so people throughout the country were raising money to try to get people out of jail to repurchase their hard-won freedom.

However, this process of communities raising money to pay bail has persisted all the way through the 20th century and into the 21st century. The ACLU did it. They created a bail fund for people swept up in the Palmer Raids, the Red Scare, and the obscenity prosecutions for people who couldn't afford to get themselves out of jail. It was critical to Reverend Martin Luther King and the SCLC, and John Lewis and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Bail was raised. Bail money was raised to get people out of jail for often pretextual and fraudulent arrests and incarceration throughout the South.

It has continued to be used since then. It was being used during the anti-Vietnam war movement when bail money was raised to get people out of jail, again, in mass, dragnet arrests without regard to what people themselves had done.

It is being used today in the LGBTQ community. It has been used, as the gentleman references, in Minneapolis where we saw exactly what ICE was doing when they shot dead in broad daylight at pointblank range U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti. If they are willing to kill people, then they are certainly willing to rough them up, beat them up, and arrest them falsely.

Yes, the people of Minneapolis, to their great credit, came together to create funds to bail people out of jail when they were mistreated by the police.

Should we twist the law of insurance fraud into unrecognizable knots in order to deter and destroy bail funds and to threaten people with felony convictions like people who go out and sell fraudulent insurance policies?

It is hard to see why we should do that.

By the way, it is not just those we would put on the liberal or progressive side of civil movements in American history because the exact same thing happens with anti-abortion protesters with the pro- life movement.

Mr. Speaker, you had better check with the pro-life movement before you vote for this legislation because they could get swept up with it too. They have raised a lot of money for people who are willing to put themselves in the way of a woman's reproductive clinic, a health clinic. They consider those killing places. Obviously, we have a profound disagreement about that. We believe that people have a constitutional right to their own healthcare.

In any event, set that aside. These people are sincerely motivated in what they are doing, and, yes, they have raised money to bail people out of jail when they get arrested for blockading abortion clinics.

Now, should we describe that as a form of insurance fraud so it can be regulated, and then if somebody misstates something on a form or on a bail statement and they don't properly record it or whatever, then suddenly the whole Orwellian dragnet of the Federal Government can come down on them?

By the way, what is the Federal interest in this anyway?

That is very hard to see. The original law creating a Federal crime around interstate insurance fraud was all based on the idea that the insurance has an interstate nexus because it is being sold across State lines, but the vast majority of protests take place in one town, in one city.

Where is the interstate nexus that would even give us jurisdiction to adopt this dramatic expansion of the law governing insurance fraud?

I would love the distinguished gentleman from Wisconsin to illuminate where is the interstate nexus or character that justifies this dramatic enlargement of law governing insurance fraud in the United States.

I understand that, for some reason inscrutable to me, they want to target basically the Federal system of bail during Police Week. I don't see what the connection is, but, in any event, this is a step way too far. I was willing to go with the Attorney General report out of deference to my friends.

We will support the Attorney General report so we can get a clearer picture of what is going on, but to change insurance fraud law and policy in America to target, when you think about it, a really noble and honorable practice used by both people on the left, people on the right, and people in between, to support those who either deliberately engage in civil disobedience or are falsely targeted by the police, strikes me as a very bizarre thing to do and a strange way to honor Law Enforcement Week.

Mr. Speaker, another gigantic, logical leap in this legislation just occurred to me, which is that the Republicans are blaming the bail funds for this or that person getting out of jail. They have skipped over a major step, which is the judges who are the ones who are actually deciding whether or not someone poses a flight risk or a danger to the community.

If there is a judge who is not doing their job, they shouldn't be on the court. They just shouldn't be there.

As we have seen in the Federal system, the vast majority, if not all, of the judges can act and behave responsibly with respect to the essential criteria for deciding on bail, which we know.

Really, what they are saying is: We like a for-profit system that benefits the bail bondsmen all over America. They make 10 percent--it might be 15 percent now, I am not sure--on all the bail posted. If you are a criminal defendant, and you have shown you are not a flight risk or a danger to the community, you are not done yet. In those cash jurisdictions, they want $10,000 from you.

If you don't have $10,000, you get it from a bail bondsman, but you owe the bail bondsman $1,000. The bail bondsman essentially takes out $11,000 in the loan and gives you $10,000. You give it to the State, and they pocket $1,000. This is extremely lucrative. There are a lot of very wealthy bail bondsmen and -women out there.

That means that it is the court that is responsible. It is not the people who raise the money. Now, they want to say: Well, it is only the rich people who should be able to make bail in the cash jurisdictions.

If you are arrested, if you are a pro-life protester and you do civil disobedience at an abortion clinic--that is your decision to make. I am not going to say it is your First Amendment right. It is not exactly a right, although you have been written into the FACE Act for these purposes. You decide to do it. You are willing to pay the consequences. If you don't have the money, it means your political supporters can't raise money for you.

If you are participating in a peace protest or a civil rights protest, but happen not to be rich enough to pay the bill yourself, they are trying to impede your ability to get money from other people by threatening these bail funds--which are a venerable part of American society--with insurance fraud charges. That is amazing.

Simon), my friend.

Mr. Speaker, it occurred to me to go back to check Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, what happened in their cases. In a cash bail system in Florida, Jeffrey Epstein was freed and allowed to go operate his dubious affairs before he was convicted. In the Federal system, there was no bail. He was denied bail because he was clearly a flight risk and a danger to the community.

The same thing with Ghislaine Maxwell, she offered to put up $30 million to get out of jail, and the Federal system said: We don't do that. We don't release people based on money. You are a flight risk, and you are a threat to the community.

That is the only thing that should count. It shouldn't be like an auction that you go to and whoever can put up the most money gets out of jail free, and then the poor people don't.

Now, they want to go beyond that to say poor people can't even pool their resources and get support from people in the community or other parts of the country because that could constitute insurance fraud. That strikes me as ridiculous.

Mr. Speaker, let me address a few points that are still lingering out there. As I listened to the distinguished ranking member on the Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, and Mr. Menefee, a couple other points occurred to me.

One is that our same colleagues who want to crack down on the ability of people to associate and raise money for the purposes of providing bail for people who can't afford it are also the ones who basically want to blow the doors off the hinges when it comes to campaign finance. They believe in an absolute deregulation of money going into the political system. Yet, when it comes to community groups, neighbors, and people across the country in sympathy or solidarity with people who may be caught up in the criminal justice system, through no fault of their own or through civil disobedience--you could say peace protestors, environmental protestors, pro-life protestors--they want to cut down on that form of association and that form of freedom of speech and assembly, which is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Moreover, we don't even know what Federal power is being purported to cover this exercise of Federal jurisdiction. They are pasting this onto the law against interstate insurance fraud, which is a categorical extension of Federal power when people engage in interstate insurance maneuvers and are defrauding somebody out of their money.

But now they want to apply that to money that is raised locally for purposes, like in Minneapolis, of defending people who are arrested in an anti-ICE protest, for example. Where is the Federal interest? Is it the Commerce Clause? It is certainly not the First Amendment because it cuts directly against the First Amendment. I don't think it is section 5 of the 14th Amendment.

What is the asserted basis of our constitutional authority to criminalize as insurance fraud people raising money locally to support local protestors? I just don't get that.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose H.R. 6260 for the aforementioned reasons, but also because the bill does nothing to actually support law enforcement officers on Law Enforcement Week.

For this reason, at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to the Committee on the Judiciary.

If the Republican House rules permitted, I would have offered the motion with a very significant amendment to the bill.

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Mr. RASKIN. My amendment would bring not just rhetorical support, but real support to police officers, specifically, the police officers who defended this Chamber, this Capitol, this Congress, all the Members of Congress, the Vice President, and our democracy during the January 6th attack by creating the January 6th Law Enforcement Heroes Compensation Fund, to provide compensation for any injuries inflicted on our officers that day, as well as any corresponding economic losses.

These are people who serve with us every day. You see them every day, and you may know some of them. More than 140 of them from the Capitol Police, from the Metropolitan Police Department, and several other regional police departments, including the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland were wounded, injured, and hospitalized as a result of the mob attack on our country, where our officers fought valiantly for hours against atrocious violence that one of the officers likened to medieval battle.

Many officers were forced out of policing by the injuries inflicted on that day. Many suffered grievous physical and emotional injuries, including posttraumatic stress, for which they are still being treated and for which they may never fully recover.

One of them I know, Sergeant Gonell, suffered a crushed right foot and a destroyed rotator cuff. Because he could barely lift his arm and he could barely walk, he was forced out of his dream job of being a Capitol Police officer.

He became a Capitol officer because his high school class from Long Island, New York, came and visited the Capitol, and he saw what the officers were doing. He said: One day I am going to do what those officers do, and I am going to protect the Congress of the United States.

In the middle of his career, he was so disabled by the attack that he had to leave it, despite wanting to stay, but he simply could no longer live up to the physical expectations of the job. Now, his family is living on a fraction of the salary that he had before.

We could tell you lots of stories like this. Some of the officers, like Officer Brian Sicknick, who died on January 7, gave the ultimate sacrifice, the last full measure of devotion to this body.

Several took their own lives after this brutal and nightmarish convulsion, an attack incited by the President of the United States as determined by the House of Representatives.

Some of these people are disfigured and disabled for life, but all of them--and their politics are irrelevant. Some of them are Republicans. Some are Independents. Some are Democrats. All of the officers responded on January 6 like heroes, and they deserve our eternal thanks. They deserve more than that. They deserve the actual commitment of this body to help them.

The Trump administration wrote a check for nearly $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt, even though two separate investigations determined that our police officers acted responsibly, lawfully, and reasonably to defend this Chamber and the people who worked in it on that day, yet they gave them nearly $5 million.

Do you know what they have given to the families of the police officers injured and wounded, whose lives were irrevocably changed on that day? Zero. Nothing.

It is time for us to pass this legislation and show that our commitment is real to the police officers who work with us right here every day. That is what we need to be doing, and I urge everybody to support the January 6th Law Enforcement Heroes Compensation Fund.

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I hope my colleagues will join me in voting for the motion to recommit so we can move forward with this absolutely essential legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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