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Ranking Member Nadler delivered the following remarks at the beginning of the hearing:
“Mr. Chairman, before I turn to the issue before us this morning, I must comment on a truly disturbing phenomenon. Whether or not the Attorney General’s decision to fire Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was justified, none of us should take pleasure in this ending to the career of a man who has dedicated his life to the Bureau. Yet President Trump relished it. He took to Twitter to celebrate. And when he was done dragging Mr. McCabe through the mud yet again, he set his sights on his real target—Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
“‘A total WITCH HUNT,’ he declared again yesterday morning. And in response to this attack, the Majority here has said nothing.
“We have asked, time and again, for this Committee to take action. In letter after letter, we have asked you to hold hearings on the President’s overt attempts to undermine the Department of Justice. We have asked you to conduct basic oversight of the Administration, to help us secure the information we all need to do our jobs, and to protect an ongoing criminal investigation from a President who clearly does not want the investigation to continue and to find the truth.
“And what is your response? Silence. A complete abdication of our constitutional responsibility to hold the executive branch accountable to the American people for its misconduct, misguided policies, and general abuses of power.
“What will it take, Mr. Chairman? How far must the President push before the Majority will stand with us and tell him that he is wrong?”
Today, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) sent a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), urging him to investigate attacks on Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigators, and to call in Christopher Wylie, a whistleblower who helped found Cambridge Analytica, the Trump Campaign data firm that acquired the personal information of millions of U.S. Facebook users.
On February 8, 2018, all House Judiciary Committee Democrats sent a letter to Chairman Bob Goodlatte calling for immediate hearings examining the U.S. election infrastructure after a senior U.S. Department of Homeland Security official revealed that Russia hacked U.S. voter rolls. The letter asks the Majority for emergency hearings to look into potential vulnerabilities of our election infrastructure, foreign threats posed, and to examine what steps the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and the State Department may or may not be taking to ensure the integrity of future state and federal elections.
On December 14, 2017, Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler and House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Elijah E. Cummings sent a letter to Chairman Goodlatte and to House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy urging them to issue subpoenas for documents from Cambridge Analytica and Giles-Parscale—two Trump Campaign data consultants—after they refused to deny communications with foreign actors during the 2016 presidential election.
On July 20, 2017, all House Judiciary Democrats sent a letter to Chairman Goodlatte urging a hearing with senior leadership of the Department of Justice regarding Trump’s contempt for the Department, as expressed by his complaints about Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s recusal from the Russia investigation and attacks on the credibility of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
On June 21, 2017 sixteen House Judiciary Democrats sent a letter to Chairman Goodlatte urging a hearing to examine events related to—but extending beyond—any investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 election. These events include the firing of FBI Director James Comey, allegations of obstruction of justice by President Trump, and the inconsistent application of the Attorney General's recusal from these and related matters.
On March 10, 2017 all House Judiciary Democrats sent a letter to Chairman Goodlatte urging him to conduct greater oversight of the Trump Administration with respect to ongoing connections between his associates and the Russian government.
On January 24, 2017, all House Judiciary Democrats sent a letter to Chairman Goodlatte urging a hearing on President Trump’s potential violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause.
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