Culture of Intimidation

Floor Speech

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the events of the last few weeks have thrown a spotlight on a culture in Washington which threatens the very fabric of what I just spoke about and that Senator Lautenberg fought for and contributed to, one that would hopefully instill confidence in the American people that what is happening here is in their best interest; that people realize we are the employees of the American people, here to serve their interests. That should be our primary focus.

Unfortunately, we have learned a culture of intimidation has arisen in Washington, and, unfortunately, it has become all too pervasive and threatens to become a cancer that cannot only destroy the public confidence in their Federal Government but also destroy the nature of our democracy itself.

We have learned that IRS agents--we don't know how many yet, but we do know that some--were deliberately targeting different political groups because of their political activities. Remember, this is activity protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. If it weren't for the political activity of the American people, we wouldn't have this great democracy which is the envy of the world. But we have learned the Internal Revenue Service was asking different groups inappropriate questions about their donors, their positions on various issues of the day, and the political affiliations of its officers and directors. We have learned these abuses went far beyond two rogue employees in the Cincinnati field office; that the IRS headquarters in Washington was involved as well.

Of course, the initial story that this was confined to a couple of self-starters and free agents in Cincinnati was laughable. We all know enough about bureaucracies to know that no one, particularly at a lower level to midlevel, instigates any sort of initiative as bold and as toxic as this without some sort of approval from on high, whether it is implicit or explicit.

We have now learned senior officials in the IRS knew about these abuses at least 2 years ago, yet failed to notify Congress or the public. We have learned that one conservative activist from Houston, TX, one of my constituents, Catherine Engelbrecht, was targeted by multiple Federal agencies, including the IRS, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and OSHA.

We have also learned the Environmental Protection Agency is yet another agency that has discriminated against political organizations they do not happen to agree with. And we have learned the Obama administration, in the form of the Justice Department, has treated a reporter as if he were a criminal simply for doing his job.

I have seen the explanation of the apologists at the Justice Department. They said just because they identified James Rosen as a potential criminal coconspirator, they never intended to prosecute him. This is part of an affidavit designed to get at certain records that Mr. Rosen and his family maintained, invading their privacy. It makes no sense they would claim in this affidavit, in order to get this search warrant, that he was a potential criminal coconspirator and at the same time they never intended to prosecute him. Those are simply incompatible and inconsistent statements.

We have also learned the Department of Justice has conducted a disturbingly intrusive and broad investigation into the phone records of journalists who worked for the Associated Press.

At the Department of Health and Human Services we have learned that Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has literally been raising money from private companies she is responsible for regulating in order to fund ObamaCare. That is a conflict of interest, and that is the most charitable thing one can say about it.

We have further learned this culture of intimidation has also given way to a culture of coverups and misinformation. We have learned more about the Obama administration's dishonest portrayal of the September 2012 terrorist attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. We have learned the Obama State Department punished U.S. diplomats, whistleblowers, for cooperating with congressional investigators.

Sadly, these abuses are part of a larger pattern that goes back several years. For example, in 2010, when we were considering the matter of ObamaCare, various health insurance companies began alerting their customers about what they believed the impact of ObamaCare would be on them, and that specifically, if passed, it would force them to raise premiums on their own customers. Secretary Sebelius, at the time, threatened to punish these companies and bar them from participating in the ObamaCare exchanges if they followed through in communicating with their own customers about what the impact of this legislation would be on them.

By the way, the same IRS official who led the division to target political speech is now in charge of administering large portions of ObamaCare, which depends upon the Internal Revenue Service to implement so much of it. At a time when the Internal Revenue Service has lost credibility with the American people, it has no business administering a law that will affect one-sixth of our national economy.

The same culture of intimidation we have seen at Health and Human Services and at the Internal Revenue Service has also been prevalent at the Justice Department. That should be the bastion of justice and equal treatment under the law, but, sadly, it is not. The case of Fox News reporter James Rosen is only the latest example.

In recent days we have learned DOJ officials tracked Rosen's movements, got a search warrant to examine his private e-mails, and even obtained his parents' phone records. They treated him like a criminal, which is quite remarkable because, as I said, he was simply doing his job.

As the Washington correspondent for the New Yorker magazine noted:

It is unprecedented for the government, in an official court document, to accuse a reporter of breaking the law for conducting routine business of reporting on government secrets.

I believe national security leaks should be investigated. But what about going after the leaker? We recognize when reporters are targeted, it becomes especially sensitive, given the role of reporting the news and the freedom of the press guaranteed by the Constitution and the need of our society to maintain the kind of openness that only comes with a free and robust press.

In addition to an overbearing surveillance of individual journalists, the Obama Justice Department also targeted whistleblowers in the notorious Fast and Furious investigation. This is where guns were purchased in bulk in the United States and allowed to walk into the hands of the drug cartels in Mexico.

One Department of Justice official, a U.S. attorney in Arizona, tried to smear a whistleblower by leaking a private document. The Department of Justice inspector general called this behavior ``inappropriate for a department employee and wholly unbefitting a United States attorney.'' Meanwhile, a separate Justice Department official was forced to resign her position when she was caught collaborating with leftwing bloggers to slander both whistleblowers and journalists.

As you can see, my conclusion there has been created a culture of intimidation is not the result of just one incident but a number of incidents and data points that, when connected, I think clearly paint that very sad and troubling picture. This culture of intimidation has become entrenched at Federal agencies and departments all across the Obama administration.

This culture of intimidation was troubling before the IRS scandal broke, and it is even more troubling given all we have learned in the past few weeks. So I hope Congress will do its job on a bipartisan basis--as the Finance Committee, under the leadership of Senators Max Baucus and Orrin Hatch, have already done on the IRS matter--to investigate this in a bipartisan way to get to the bottom of this matter, recognizing this kind of abuse of power on the part of the Internal Revenue Service can be turned not just against conservative political speech but also against people on the political left or anybody in between. This should not and cannot be tolerated.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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