Upholding the Trust of the American People

Floor Speech

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlelady, first, for yielding and for her kind words. But I thank her even more for what she's done this afternoon. She has come to the floor--my good friend from Texas--and has rendered one of the most informative highlights of the career of this Attorney General since he has held the office.

I would like only a few minutes to say a few words about the Attorney General because he began when in the Clinton administration I got the courtesy that's normally given to Senators--we have no Senators--so I got the courtesy of recommending to the President the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and District Court judges. Although the District of Columbia has long had a large African American population, for most of its 200 years there have been no African American United States attorneys. Even though the United States attorney in the District of Columbia handles not only what he does for, for example, my good friend in Texas, that is Federal matters, but because there are some limits on our home rule, also handles all of the local criminal matters. Using a 17-member distinguished committee of citizens who vetted a great number of candidates and gave to me the top three, I chose the man who is now Attorney General as the first African American U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. He acquitted himself so well that he became an assistant Attorney General and finally Attorney General of the United States.

We are accustomed to seeing Attorneys General get in trouble. The last two Attorneys General were virtually chased out of office because of the mistakes they had made. I think that's because the Attorney General is close to the most controversial business of the President of the United States. I'm not surpriseMs. JACKSON LEE. I am so grateful for your leadership.

I am going to conclude, and have some further comments; but before you yield, I just want to pose a question to you, Congresswoman, because, if nothing else, we can both agree together so it won't look like one person is saying it.

For an officer of the court, for the highest ranking law officer of the United States, the American people need to understand that the charge of perjury is one of the most devastating charges. Forget about your career, because all of us who are barred, who are members of the bar, are officers of the court--of all courts. Some are able to practice in the Supreme Court, in various Federal courts and otherwise, and as an officer of the court, even in the representation of your client, perjury is the ultimate charge.

That is why I'm so baffled and felt compelled to come to the floor to raise the question of why lawyers on the Oversight Committee and lawyers on the Judiciary Committee would even offer a charge of perjury under the circumstances of what I have just defined.

Let me just say this. In a letter to the Judiciary Committee, the Attorney General said:

The Attorney General takes the disclosure of classified information by those who have committed to protecting it very seriously, especially as such disclosures can cause grave damage to our national security.

The Attorney General also has the utmost respect for the vital role the media plays in an open society.

Then it goes on to talk about his commitment to protecting these vital sources. Then it goes on to again restate this whole question of investigation versus prosecution. It says:

At the outset, it is important to note the difference between an investigation and a prosecution.

And it goes on to lay out probable cause again. That's lawyer talk.

But it is very clear that the General wants to lay out for the Members of Congress in an open way--by the way, I don't know if we could both stand up here and count how many side meetings and staff meetings that they had with the Attorney General on the gun walkings, what we call Fast and Furious, and now the meetings and letters that are going back, the ongoing contempt charge issue that is going on. This Attorney General has made himself available.

The real question I just want to pose to you, as I yield for your answer, is what it means to be charged with perjury as an officer of the court. What General, what lawyer would take it lightly--though some generals have gone to jail for perjury--that has been proven in a court of law?

Ms. NORTON. And charged on the basis of some evidence.

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And some evidence.

In this instance, we have one line that was stated that, No, I will not prosecute, versus the fact of the signing of an affidavit that did not result in a prosecution.

Congresswoman?

Ms. NORTON. Your point about an officer of the court is something that most Americans may be unaware of.

Every piece of paper that a lawyer files before a court of any kind--it may seem perfunctory--is subject to perjury precisely because when you're admitted to the bar, you become an officer of the court. So you risk your professional life because you could be disbarred not only for committing perjury, but even for misstatements in an offering before a court. That's the high standard to which we, who are members of the bar, are held. And for that reason, it would be unseemly for any lawyer, much less the highest lawyer in the land, to risk perjury.

And I submit that not only has perjury not been committed; the word ``perjury'' should never have entered into this conversation without the slightest bit of evidence. That's what ``reckless'' means, and I thank the gentlelady for the question.d that the Attorney General would be a target. I am surprised that he would be accused so recklessly of, for example, perjury. I believe he will be vindicated shortly because it's so clear, on the face of this matter, that there has been not even a scintilla of an attempt to mislead the Congress or anybody else.

I think of Ambassador Susan Rice, who was yesterday appointed to be the National Security Advisor, the closest advisor to the President on foreign affairs, and of what she went through. She now has been thoroughly vindicated and yet she lost the possibility of being Secretary of State on the allegation that she had somehow misled the Congress in reporting on Benghazi.

Now, of course, the truth is out. All the emails are out. She wasn't part of any of the emails. She was the one who read the statement from the CIA. We now know that the statement was written by the CIA and that the State Department participated in writing it. The State Department was concerned that the State Department would be blamed for what was really a cover. The attack against the temporary U.S. compound in Benghazi was essentially a cover for a CIA operation. And so the CIA got into it. The State Department got into it. All of the intelligence officials got into it.

Together they issued a statement which now has been found not to have misled the Congress. If the joint statement didn't mislead the Congress, imagine the vindication now of Susan Rice, who only read a statement that she had no part in developing and had no reason to believe--since it came from intelligence sources--that it was anything but the facts as they knew it. And indeed, it turns out they were the facts as they knew it.

I mention Ambassador Rice because of her recent appointment and because she stood accused in the same way that the Attorney General does.

Now, the gentlelady from Texas, my good friend Representative Lee, and I sit on two committees who have spent a lot of their time investigating the Attorney General. Please note that this is a Congress that has no agenda. Had it not been for these so-called scandals I'm not sure there would be anything to do in this House. They tend to go home early, to come late. There is nothing of much consequence on the floor. And indeed, I'm grateful for the appropriations period because at least there is something of substance to come to the floor.

If you don't come here to legislate, if you come here to malign, if you come here to keep the President from getting legislation, then you run out of ideas. We're now at the lowest deficit in 50 years, so they can't continue to talk about that the way you did before. They won't come to the table, as the American people have said they want, for a balanced deal. So we've got a floor where nothing happens and where people went home today--I think the last vote was around noon. There's nothing happening here.

Well, the vacuum has been filled by the committees, who have, each of them--there were five committees--looking into these various matters. Today, there was a Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on which I serve looking into the misuse of money by the IRS, except it turns out that was before this President's Executive order. The worst of the IRS misuse of funds during a travel session began in the last administration, much worse in that administration, and, by the way, in prior administrations. But it's now all over, long ended. But for House Committees, it's another way to go after the IRS.

All of us have been very critical of the IRS. We still don't know what really happened there. But without knowing it, there are some on my committee who are tracing it back to the President of the United States without a scintilla of evidence. That, 50 years ago, would have been called what it is--McCarthyism.

So, when the gentlelady comes to defend the Attorney General who has been attacked, I come simply to join her and to thank her.

In our committee, for example, we spent, perhaps, most of last year on the so-called ``gunwalking,'' where there was the tragedy of a border security agent who was killed. Our committee over and over again asked for the full slate of witnesses. If we'd had those, then we would also have had the last Attorney General from the Bush administration as well as his lieutenants because that's who started the gunwalking, and this Attorney General, of course, stopped it. Over and over again, they raked Attorney General Holder and his top lieutenants over with charges of perjury. Unable to prove them, they went so far as to try to subpoena documents that the President believed should not, in fact, become a part of the public record, so he invoked executive privilege. Why did he do that? Once he invoked executive privilege, then he, too, was accused of being part of a coverup.

Yet it is, in fact, the case--and here I'm going to quote--that the Supreme Court has said:

Human experience teaches that those who expect public dissemination of their remarks may well temper candor with concern for appearances. Thus, Presidents have repeatedly asserted executive privilege to protect confidential executive branch deliberative materials for congressional subpoenas.

Otherwise the President cannot expect to get the truth from his Attorney General or from others who report to him.

Then they said the President had asserted executive privilege too late, when they ran out of other excuses, except the reason that he asserted it when he did was he was hoping they would negotiate the matter. You don't come up with executive privilege when you think reasonable men and women will come to a reasonable conclusion.

The failure to look at the root causes of the gun walking tragedy involving two administrations, to call no official from the administration that was responsible for thinking of the idea of gunrunning in the first place and for carrying it on for some time does demonstrate a Congress engaged in fairness. If this Congress is not known for its fairness as a general matter, I'm not sure why, perhaps, we should expect that the high-profile Attorney General, who has become, as some of the press has reported, something of a proxy for the President of the United States, himself, would then get fairness.

The gentlelady mentioned the coconspirator matter. She and I are both attorneys. We are accustomed to indictments in which the prosecutor names a ``coconspirator,'' never attempting to prosecute that person, but because the information has to allege precisely what happens, he will name a person. No person in the press has ever been, and there was never an attempt to prosecute anyone in the press. However, those involved are at a disadvantage: we cannot be told what they were going after because it is an intelligence and a secured matter. That leaves everyone here who is out for the Attorney General free to allege whatever he wants to, unless he has some sense of responsibility.

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I am so glad that you raised that point, because we do not want to suggest that a layman's ears are different from a lawyer's ears, but that is a very important point which you have made.

The frustration is that, on your committee, there are many lawyers. You have lawyers who are investigators, particularly on the majority side. They understand what that concept is, which is that, when you have an indictment, you list names, and those names may be listed as coconspirators. To take that and then translate it into a layman's interpretation--oh, this person is going to be prosecuted--and to then suggest that the Attorney General perjured himself in front of the Judiciary Committee, where he said outright, I have no thought of prosecuting a reporter, and that wouldn't even come to mind, and to take the FBI affidavit which listed--in 2010, by the way, and I think this is 2013--the gentleman, Mr. Rosen, as a coconspirator and that nothing has happened since then, it is almost, I believe, an unfair treatment, an unfair misrepresentation, an unfair mischaracterization for the American people. The Attorney General made it clear in his testimony before our committee, I have no interest, no desire, no knowledge of prosecuting a reporter.

I just want to add, in addition, that we've just introduced a House bill that is similar to the Senate bill that has judicial intervention now, a sort of ramped-up SHIELD Act, which indicates that you would have to go to the courts in certain circumstances to secure some of the information of the press; but there is this distortion as he was questioned on May 15, 2013, and in 3 years, Mr. Rosen has never been indicted, and he has never been prosecuted.

Ms. NORTON. I must say I thank the gentlelady from Texas for that clarification. Not only that, the Justice Department has issued a statement to the effect it has no intent and never has had any intent of prosecuting the coconspirator as is the case and as has been the case for 100 years of the listing of coconspirators.

Just a moment more on this important matter. You mentioned that my committee has a lot of lawyers, like you and me. Your committee is the Judiciary Committee. I surely would have expected more of it than the way they've gone at the Attorney General.

On this matter of the AP reporters, of the AP-Rosen matter, the Attorney General recused himself. I'm not sure why he recused himself, but I imagine it is because, if you're looking for a leak and if you're doing a thorough investigation, you look from the top to the bottom. So, once he'd been questioned just as a President could be questioned, then, of course, he did the right thing, if that's the reason, by recusing himself. But when it came to the Rosen matter, which is simply signing off on the prosecutorial information--a routine ceremonial matter--there was nothing contradictory about that and his statement that he had no knowledge of the prosecution. He had recused himself. Having recused himself, he'd better not have any knowledge of it.

These are fine points we are making, and I'm afraid, for many in the public, they are fine points because, as the gentlelady says, most people are not trained as lawyers, and if they are, they don't want to hear lawyer talk; but these are really important questions if you want to accuse somebody of something.

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Of perjury.

Ms. NORTON. Of something as serious as perjury--and a lawyer at that.

I thank the gentlelady for coming to the floor so that these accusations--these wild and reckless accusations--against the Attorney General have not gone unanswered.

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I am so grateful for your leadership.

I am going to conclude, and have some further comments; but before you yield, I just want to pose a question to you, Congresswoman, because, if nothing else, we can both agree together so it won't look like one person is saying it.

For an officer of the court, for the highest ranking law officer of the United States, the American people need to understand that the charge of perjury is one of the most devastating charges. Forget about your career, because all of us who are barred, who are members of the bar, are officers of the court--of all courts. Some are able to practice in the Supreme Court, in various Federal courts and otherwise, and as an officer of the court, even in the representation of your client, perjury is the ultimate charge.

That is why I'm so baffled and felt compelled to come to the floor to raise the question of why lawyers on the Oversight Committee and lawyers on the Judiciary Committee would even offer a charge of perjury under the circumstances of what I have just defined.

Let me just say this. In a letter to the Judiciary Committee, the Attorney General said:

The Attorney General takes the disclosure of classified information by those who have committed to protecting it very seriously, especially as such disclosures can cause grave damage to our national security.

The Attorney General also has the utmost respect for the vital role the media plays in an open society.

Then it goes on to talk about his commitment to protecting these vital sources. Then it goes on to again restate this whole question of investigation versus prosecution. It says:

At the outset, it is important to note the difference between an investigation and a prosecution.

And it goes on to lay out probable cause again. That's lawyer talk.

But it is very clear that the General wants to lay out for the Members of Congress in an open way--by the way, I don't know if we could both stand up here and count how many side meetings and staff meetings that they had with the Attorney General on the gun walkings, what we call Fast and Furious, and now the meetings and letters that are going back, the ongoing contempt charge issue that is going on. This Attorney General has made himself available.

The real question I just want to pose to you, as I yield for your answer, is what it means to be charged with perjury as an officer of the court. What General, what lawyer would take it lightly--though some generals have gone to jail for perjury--that has been proven in a court of law?

Ms. NORTON. And charged on the basis of some evidence.

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And some evidence.

In this instance, we have one line that was stated that, No, I will not prosecute, versus the fact of the signing of an affidavit that did not result in a prosecution.

Congresswoman?

Ms. NORTON. Your point about an officer of the court is something that most Americans may be unaware of.

Every piece of paper that a lawyer files before a court of any kind--it may seem perfunctory--is subject to perjury precisely because when you're admitted to the bar, you become an officer of the court. So you risk your professional life because you could be disbarred not only for committing perjury, but even for misstatements in an offering before a court. That's the high standard to which we, who are members of the bar, are held. And for that reason, it would be unseemly for any lawyer, much less the highest lawyer in the land, to risk perjury.

And I submit that not only has perjury not been committed; the word ``perjury'' should never have entered into this conversation without the slightest bit of evidence. That's what ``reckless'' means, and I thank the gentlelady for the question.

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