Congressman, thank you for the introduction.
I certainly remember our joint oversight work when we were both chairmen.
And, as many have guessed, congressional oversight is my top priority.
It’s no surprise to anyone, I’ve built a career doing oversight of the Executive Branch.
I also want to emphasize equal opportunity in oversight– it doesn’t make any difference to me if it’s oversight of a Democrat or Republican administration.
Congressional oversight is a constitutional responsibility for every member, not just Chuck Grassley.
If you’re not a chair or ranking member of a committee, it doesn’t matter.
Every member, no matter what their status, has an obligation to hold the federal government accountable to the American people.
This is as simple as the checks and balances you learned in eighth grade civics.
That’s our responsibility to our constituents–to make sure the president faithfully executes the law according to the constitution.
That’s our responsibility to the country and We the People.
Now, oversight isn’t easy. It’s not for the faint of heart.
It’s filled with frustration, political attacks, obstruction and other efforts by many to prevent you from getting the facts and the evidence.
The trick to oversight – if you want to call it that – is pretty simple. No matter which party’s in the White House, you must pursue the facts and the evidence without fear or favor.
Let the facts breathe. Let the evidence tell the story. Let the sunlight expose the governmental wrongdoing.
The executive branch has always been combative with Congress regarding oversight.
And in recent years, it’s become even worse.
Because of that, the importance of whistleblowers has never been higher.
They can shine a light on government that government won’t shine on itself.
I remember one of my first whistleblowers was at the Defense Department, Ernie Fitzgerald. I call him the grandfather of whistleblowers.
President Nixon in the infamous Watergate tapes said of Ernie after he testified in Congress: “Get rid of that S.O.B.”
Ernie was ultimately fired.
But in 1982 he finally got his job back. He provided me evidence of substantial waste and abuse of taxpayer money relating to the C-5 aircraft.
Oversight must be done without fear or favor.
I had the same approach when I began my investigation into Crossfire Hurricane.
When I was Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I did a transcribed interview of Donald Trump Jr. when Donald Trump was President of the United States.
My staff also interviewed other Republicans during my investigation.
My Democratic colleagues and the liberal media sang my praises until my work began to show that Crossfire Hurricane was a political hitjob by the other side of the aisle.
More precisely, it was smoke and mirrors funded by the Clinton campaign and DNC.
And the Obama/Biden Justice Department, FBI, Intelligence Community and partisan media happily went along.
In 2020, several years after starting my inquiry, Senator Johnson and I were able to get footnotes in an Inspector General report declassified.
That information showed that Christopher Steele’s sources were connected to the Russian government, supported Hillary Clinton and that Russian intelligence was aware of Steele’s anti-Trump work even before the FBI opened its investigation.
One intelligence report even assessed that the Steele dossier may be part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.
The Justice Department failed to even apprise the FISA court that the FBI had a counterintelligence case on one of Steele’s key sources.
So, it was very clear that the Clinton campaign and the DNC colluded with Russians. They used a former British spy, Fusion GPS, and a law firm to create a fake dossier and then tried to cover it up.
With all these red flags, the Justice Department and FBI proceeded anyway with its political case against Trump.
Crossfire Hurricane is a textbook example of government weaponization.
None of these facts would’ve been known without congressional oversight.
Oversight must be done without fear or favor.
In August 2019, Senator Johnson and I began our Biden family investigation.
And let me tell you: our investigation received more incoming fire from political attacks than I’ve seen before. When that happens, it usually means you’re right on target.
Let me give you a snapshot.
On July 13, 2020, then-Minority Leader Schumer, Senator Warner, then-Speaker Pelosi and then-Chairman Schiff sent a letter, with a classified attachment, to the FBI. That letter expressed a purported belief that Congress was the subject of a foreign disinformation campaign.
The letter was targeted at the Grassley-Johnson investigation.
The classified attachment included unclassified elements that attempted – and failed – to tie our work to a Russian agent.
Of course, the unclassified elements were leaked to the press to support a false campaign accusing us of advancing Russian disinformation.
Aside from my printed remarks, let me emphasize this –our colleagues told the FBI to give us a briefing, which they set up for the sole purpose of leaking it to the press.
The press and Democrats conveniently left out that our oversight work was rooted, not in things we believed or were told, but in official U.S. Government and Obama/Biden administration records.
Then-Minority Leader Schumer and then-Ranking Member Wyden tried to offer a resolution in the Senate wrongly disparaging our Biden investigation. They violated the Senate rules in their efforts and were shut down.
That’s how far your colleagues will go, working with the press, the executive branch and law enforcement agencies to denigrate your oversight.
On July 16, 2020, mere days after the July 13 letter, then-Ranking Members Wyden and Senator Peters wrote a letter to me and Senator Johnson asking for a briefing from the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force.
Our staff and theirs had already received a briefing.
We didn’t need another one.
The FBI caved. In August 2020, Senator Johnson and I had that infamous briefing from the FBI.
The contents of that briefing were later leaked to the Washington Post even though the FBI had promised us confidentiality.
That leak was another effort to falsely label our good government oversight work as Russian disinformation.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote a piece about that briefing titled, “The FBI’s Dubious Briefing: Did the bureau set up two GOP Senators at the behest of Democrats?”
Ultimately, Senator Johnson and I released two reports in 2020 as part of our Biden family investigation.
We gave a series of floor speeches in 2022 making public bank records connecting the Biden family to communist China financial interests.
When we gave our floor speeches, we asked this question and never got an answer:
To our Democratic colleagues and partisan media, are those authentic bank records Russian disinformation?
Radio silence from them after the noise they made all those years about what we were trying to do.
If we’d stopped our oversight after receiving the attacks, we wouldn’t have obtained the evidence.
Oversight must be done without fear or favor.
Another powerful example of government misconduct is James Comey’s actions during the Clinton investigation.
In 2017, I obtained a draft of what I call Comey’s exoneration statement closing the investigation.
His original version acknowledged Secretary Clinton had violated the statute prohibiting gross negligence in the handling of classified information.
In other words, his original version said she violated the law.
A later version deleted that legal language and downgraded it to “extremely careless.”
Moreover, when Comey began drafting her exoneration statement, the FBI hadn’t yet interviewed Secretary Clinton or 16 other relevant witnesses.
Then, in 2019, after years of pressing the State Department, I learned that Clinton’s personal server arrangement caused 91 security violations.
Thirty-eight people were responsible for those 91 violations.
The State Department uncovered an additional 497 violations but very oddly couldn’t identify the responsible parties.
It’s no surprise that Clinton’s mishandling of highly classified information went unpunished by the Obama/Biden administration.
Joe Biden’s mishandling of highly classified information went unpunished by the Biden administration.
Politicians in this town wonder why the American people have lost faith in their governmental institutions.
It’s because of this weaponization of the government against truth and justice.
It’s pretty obvious. Similar fact patterns are treated differently when they should be treated the same.
That’s why we need more whistleblowers to come forward to bring sunlight to very dark corners of the government.
The IRS whistleblowers have done that.
Many of my whistleblowers – those who’ve chosen to come forward or provide me records – have done that.
Most recently, with my and Comer’s release of the FBI-generated 1023 about the bribery allegations against the Biden family.
I’ve never made any accusations of President Biden being guilty. I only want to make sure the FBI does its job of law enforcement.
This FBI document contains information from an FBI Confidential Human Source, not some random person.
That FBI source had been on the taxpayer payroll since 2010, during the Obama administration until recently.
He received hundreds of thousands of dollars.
His information was used in criminal investigations and prosecutions.
The FBI said he was given authority to commit illegal acts for the FBI during investigations.
The FBI said to Congress their source was “highly credible.”
So credible was this source, the FBI used that credibility as a basis to withhold the 1023 document from Congress.
So credible was this source that the last time he gave the FBI information was December 2023.
The Biden administration refused to tell Congress what it had done to investigate the truth and veracity of the 1023 document – or lack thereof.
Before seeing the document, I wrote to the FBI asking for more information on it, but didn’t receive an answer.
Accordingly, Congress made the document public to force an explanation.
One way or the other, what did the FBI do with the document? Did they investigate it or not?
That’s what we wanted to know and that’s what the FBI refused to say.
We suspected political bias in what the FBI was up to, but after making it public and forcing the FBI’s hand, the FBI finally interviewed their own FBI source after possessing the 1023 document for three years.
At that point, after 13 years on the FBI’s payroll, the Biden administration considered him a liar and then indicted him.
The FBI exposed their own source – by name – to the world after telling Congress he’s credible, that we’d endanger his life by saying anything and they had to protect him.
Which, by the way, that document didn’t name him. We didn’t know his name until he was arrested.
Folks, when people asked me what I thought, my response was this:
First, under the circumstances presented, Congress can’t sit on a document like that without making it public. We owe it to our constituents and the American people to make government transparent.
When government’s transparent, it’s more apt to be accountable. It’s the essence of good government.
Second, the government must explain itself and show its work.
Third, to any congressional investigator, the indictment is years of more oversight.
Except for my listening to the Department of Justice and FBI whistleblowers, that highly credible liar would still be on the FBI payroll.
Many have asked what the next oversight steps are.
Well, Senator Johnson and I’ve obtained the names of the FBI agents involved in that 1023 document. So, we want to hear from them and their side of the story.
Oversight must be done without fear or favor.