Collins statement on H. Res. 430

"Never before has the House authorized the general counsel to sue without first exhausting all our constitutional remedies to gain compliance with our oversight demands. Proceeding in this manner risks weakening our ability to carry out our oversight responsibilities."

WASHINGTON — Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, made the following statement on the House floor regarding H. Res. 430, which would authorize the Judiciary Committee to initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce certain subpoenas and for other purposes. Below are the remarks as prepared. Ranking Member Collins: Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H. Res. 430, a resolution “[A]uthorizing the Committee on the Judiciary to initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce certain subpoenas and for other purposes.” This resolution is an assault on this body’s constitutional oversight authorities. By proceeding in this unprecedented manner, the House is putting the judicial branch in an unfortunate position. Never before has the House authorized the general counsel to sue without first exhausting all our constitutional remedies to gain compliance with our oversight demands. Proceeding in this manner risks weakening our ability to carry out our oversight responsibilities. On May 8, the Judiciary Committee voted 24-16 to hold Attorney General Barr in criminal contempt of Congress. The committee did not pursue contempt against Donald McGahn. Mr. McGahn’s case is unique, and I will address it in more detail later. Contrary to press reports, Mr. Speaker, we are not acting today on the contempt citation reported by the Judiciary Committee. We are authorizing the House to sue the attorney general, Mr. McGahn and any other official or private citizen any committee chairman deems contemptuous in the future. This is novel, untested and risky. I’ll give it to you, Mr. Speaker, this majority is audacious. The media and Democrats routinely rail against the president for being quick to sue. Well, Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what the majority is doing. Having rushed to contempt, we are now bypassing that remedy altogether and going straight to court. Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley recently wrote Democrats’ litigation strategy “is clearly driven more by political than legal calculations.” These tactics weaken this House, aggrandize the executive branch and cede decision-making to the judicial branch. It is uncertain the House will even be granted standing in court since we’ve declined to exercise all our constitutional remedies — namely, contempt in any of its many forms. This is not the only impediment facing Democrats. At every turn, as discussed in our minority views to the committee’s contempt report, the majority refused to engage with DOJ in the requisite negotiations and accommodations process. During our markup of the contempt resolution, the chairman made several damaging admissions. First, he conceded the attorney general could not lawfully comply with his subpoena demanding grand jury material. Second, he stated the subpoena was the “beginning of a dialogue.” Third, he admitted the subpoena was intentionally broad to give the committee “clout in court.” All along, the goal has been to get to court. Not to get information and conduct legitimate oversight of Russian interference or secure our elections. If Democrats were interested in these good government initiatives, they would have accepted DOJ’s offer to review the nearly unredacted Mueller Report. To date, Mr. Speaker, the chairman has not done so. The goal is clearly to haul the administration into court in an attempt to pacify a base rabid for impeachment. When Congress exercises its oversight powers, it must take advantage of every offer of information from the other branch. It is disingenuous to decline the free information Democrats so strongly claim to want. It shows the majority does not want information, they want a fight. In addition to the subpoena being overbroad and requiring the attorney general to violate the law to comply, the chairman failed to establish a valid legislative purpose for his demands. There are other avenues for the chairman to get the information he seeks. Congress could pass a law granting itself an exception to grand jury secrecy rules, but the majority has not done so. The most alarming aspect of this action, however, is the unprecedented speed. A mere 44 days passed between the chairman’s first request to the attorney general and the date the committee held him in contempt. In stark contrast, 464 days passed from the date Chairman Issa requested information from Attorney General Holder on Fast & Furious and the date the Oversight Committee held him in contempt. 138 days passed between the date this committee requested information from Harriet Miers and the date the committee held her in contempt. The action the majority is authorizing today against Don McGahn is far more egregious for many reasons. Mr. McGahn is not the custodian of the documents the chairman demands — the White House is. Yet we are smearing a private citizen’s reputation and dragging him into court — at taxpayer expense — in an effort to re-do the Mueller investigation, because the majority and the media did not like the outcome. Democrats have failed to lay a foundation for any action against Mr. McGahn. Chairman Nadler has never formally objected to the president’s protective assertion of executive privilege or other common law privileges asserted by Mr. McGahn. Under Supreme Court precedent, the chairman must take this important procedural step to pursue further action against a witness. The witness should be given “a clear-cut choice between compliance and non-compliance, between answering the question and risking prosecution for contempt.” Here, the witness is being hauled into court without proper notice. Evidence of this glaring error is in the record. On May 31, Chairman Nadler wrote Mr. McGahn’s counsel, stated he did not agree with the White House and Mr. McGahn and offered to continue negotiating, but the chairman also gave Mr. McGahn a deadline of June 7 — this past Friday — to respond. Meanwhile, the Rules Committee noticed a markup for this resolution on June 6 — one day before the deadline. This is a revealing error, but errors occur when you are pushing actions through at light speed and ceding power to the judicial branch. A court will decide whether the House has standing, whether the case is ripe and whether Congress is entitled to this information outside an impeachment inquiry. As Professor Turley said, all these propositions are a gamble. Here, Mr. Speaker, we are gambling with the power of a coequal branch. This approach is untested and could do significant harm to Congress’ Article I authority. Lastly, Mr. Speaker, I want to mention the authorization for the general counsel to seek pro bono legal services circumvents the House Ethics Rules. Those rules provide an exception for members “to bring a civil action challenging the lawfulness of an action of a federal agency, or an action of a federal official taken in an official capacity, provided that the action concerns a matter of public interest, rather than a matter that is personal in nature.” Mr. McGahn, a private citizen, does not fit this exception. This resolution contravenes the Ethics Rules by giving the general counsel the authority, in Mr. McGahn’s case, to solicit a gift — pro bono legal services. I’m not sure this was the Majority’s intent, but inconsistencies result when Democrats ram resolutions through the House outside of regular order.