Prepared Floor Statement of Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Response to Senator Reid’s Political Attack on Judiciary Investigations
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Mr. President, I’d like to take this time to respond to the Minority Leader’s juvenile attacks on my Judiciary Committee investigations and his frequent crying about my previous State Department holds.
Over the past several months the Minority Leader has been obsessed with mentioning holds on nominees that I no longer have.
Holds are often necessary to force the Executive Branch to comply with congressional investigations.
Just ask the Obama Administration.
In a federal court filing during the Fast and Furious litigation, the Obama Administration argued that the court should not even consider the case.
The Justice Department’s brief said courts should not enforce Congressional subpoenas at all.
Instead the Justice Department said Congress should use other powers to get documents.
Here is exactly what the government’s brief said:
“Among other powers, Congress can withhold funds from the Executive Branch, override vetoes, decline to enact legislation, refuse to act on nominations, and adjourn.”
Later in that brief, the Obama administration specifically suggested that Congress can “tie up nominations” in order to get documents.
So, if the Minority Leader doesn’t like Senators using holds to get documents from agencies, perhaps he should talk to his friends in the Obama administration who suggested it.
In addition, he shows his hypocrisy, since members of his own side have held up Obama nominees, and he never said a peep about them exercising their rights.
Further, his attempts to politicize the Judiciary Committee’s oversight work are uninformed and misguided.
And his accusation that taxpayer money is being wasted by engaging in oversight of the executive branch rings hollow.
Secretary Clinton’s non-government server and private email arrangement effectively walled off her official communications from normal Freedom of Information Act and other federal record keeping requirements.
The Freedom of Information Act is squarely within the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee.
The former Secretary’s use of a secret, private server to conduct all of her official business led to an avalanche of Freedom of Information Act litigation.
It also caused inaccurate responses to Freedom of Information Act requests.
For example, in December 2012, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for records of Secretary Clinton’s email addresses.
The Department responded, stating “no records responsive to your request were located.”
That response is misleading, at best.
Senior Department officials knew about Secretary Clinton’s use of private email for official correspondence since they were sending emails to her non-government email address.
They would have known instantly of records responsive to that request.
Yet, those senior officials apparently failed to communicate with State’s FOIA office.
Even then, if State’s FOIA office were to search Secretary Clinton’s government email account, they would find nothing since she operated a private account not subject to FOIA.
Separate from her email address, Secretary Clinton’s non-government server was a secret to high level officials at the State Department who were responsible for Information Technology and Security.
These officials had no idea the Secretary was operating a separate, unofficial system. She did not get their approval to do so.
The Judiciary Committee has interviewed the Chief Information Officer, the former Chief Information Officer, the former Deputy Chief Information Officer, and the Director of Diplomatic Security at the State Department.
The Chief Information Officers oversaw the work of the Information Technology staffer who Secretary Clinton paid secretly to maintain her non-public server.
And yet, they knew nothing about it.
That staffer didn’t ask for permission to have outside employment.
While working at State, he didn’t disclose his outside income on his financial disclosure forms.
Think about that.
Officials whose job it is to know were kept in the dark about this “home brew” email server.
If a government agency hopes to be transparent with the American people, it must first be transparent with itself.
And now we know that highly classified material was transmitted to and stored on Secretary Clinton’s secret server.
This is an issue of national security.
State Department Diplomatic Security personnel have informed the committee that they were unaware of Secretary Clinton using a non-government server for official business.
How then, could they possibly secure it from security threats?
The FBI is investigating this matter as well.
We keep hearing that the FBI’s inquiry is just a security review, and not a criminal inquiry.
However, one witness asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination rather than answer questions about his work on Secretary Clinton’s secret server.
And he is relying on the Fifth Amendment to withhold his personal emails as well.
Recently, the Department of Justice granted him immunity.
So, naturally we are searching for other ways to get information before deciding whether it might be appropriate to seek an immunity order for his testimony.
These are legitimate oversight inquiries.
Further, Secretary Clinton did not turn over all her official emails.
Emails between General David Petraeus and Secretary Clinton, which Secretary Clinton failed to provide to the State Department, were later turned over by the Defense Department.
Secretary Clinton also failed to turn over emails with Sidney Blumenthal, whom Secretary Clinton used as an off-the-books intelligence resource while Secretary of State.
If Secretary Clinton used a government email address for official email, we wouldn’t have this problem.
How many more official emails were not turned over but should have been?
The committee cannot ignore these important issues simply because the former Secretary decided to run for President.
And, to be clear, I started this investigation before Secretary Clinton announced her candidacy.
The Minority Leader suggested that the committee’s work on these issues is a waste of money.
That is nonsense.
Constitutional oversight is not a waste of money.
The Minority Leader fails to understand that Congress is obligated to oversee the Executive Branch.
Without oversight, Congress will not know if there are failures in the Executive Branch’s duty to faithfully execute the laws Congress passes.
But, you know what is a waste of money?
This administration fought tooth and nail in court against Congress for more than four years.
Why? Just to avoid disclosing documents in the Fast and Furious scandal that they eventually turned over.
That is a waste of money.
The Obama Administration has fought against the press and watchdog organizations for years in the Freedom of Information Act litigation over former Secretary Clinton’s email records.
That is a waste of money.
It is shocking that the Obama Justice Department devotes so much taxpayer resources to avoiding transparency.
None of that would be necessary if the administration would just comply with congressional subpoenas and the Freedom of Information Act.
And by the way, how much taxpayer money does the Minority Leader spend having his staff write daily speeches trying to undermine the work of the Judiciary Committee?
The Minority Leader also fails to understand that we are not only focused on Secretary Clinton.
The committee is conducting dozens of investigations on a broad range of issues under our jurisdiction.
Some of the executive branch agencies have complained about the amount of oversight work that the committee does on other matters.
Mr. President, I’d like to submit two letters for the record. The first is from the Department of Homeland Security and second is from the Department of Justice.
Both note the many dozen letters and hundreds of requests that I have sent. And both essentially complain about the volume.
We are hard at work doing the people’s business. And the committee is doing much more than just oversight.
The committee has reported 16 executive nominees and 37 judicial nominees out of committee.
It has processed 27 bipartisan bills out of Committee, 18 of which were passed out of the Senate, and 8 which have been signed into law by the President.
Just last week, the Committee unanimously adopted bipartisan legislation to finally protect FBI whistleblowers who report wrongdoing to their supervisors and provide for independent review of FBI whistleblower cases for the first time.
So much for the Minority Leader’s claim that the committee is partisan.
The committee concluded an investigation into the abuse and misuse of paid administrative leave.
The committee took the results and worked hard with members from both sides of the aisle to actually fix that problem.
In February, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved the bipartisan, common-sense reforms in the Administrative Leave Act of 2016.
Similarly, the committee has worked with Democrats and Republicans alike to overturn an Office of Legal Counsel opinion that allows agencies across government to stonewall their Inspectors General.
We came up with a legislative solution called the IG Empowerment Act, and attempted to pass it in December by a live unanimous consent request.
But the Minority Leader objected to the bill, even though it is supported by 7 members of his own caucus, the New York Times editorial board, and a host of civil liberties and good government groups.
Even the largest circulating daily newspaper in his home state urged the Minority Leader to work with us on a compromise.
But rather than engaging with us in a productive and civil manner, the Minority Leader publicly slandered the bill as a legislative overreach.
He claimed that he was concerned about a provision that allows IGs to issue testimonial subpoenas to fight waste, fraud, and abuse.
When in fact, the Minority Leader voted to give that exact same authority to the Office of Special Counsel in 1989.
That 1989 bill passed the Senate unanimously and became law.
Was that legislative overreach?
Like that bill, the IG Empowerment Act has near unanimous support and is designed to root out wrongdoing from government while ensuring proper safeguards for the use of subpoenas.
So, there is no reason to object to this bill on policy grounds.
Yet the Minority Leader stands in the way of just getting it done.
The Judiciary Committee will continue its work, and during the course of my oversight investigations, I will use every tool at my disposal to obtain answers for the American people.
I will keep faith with my oath of office and We the People.
I yield the floor.
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