The Senate Judiciary Committee holds a business meeting.
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00:00We still do not have a quorum but I got the okay from the ranking member to move
00:08ahead with our opening statements. So I say good morning to all my colleagues
00:14and all the people that are in the audience and our hard-working staff. We
00:19have on the agenda six nominations. Five are listed for the first time and will
00:27be held over. Our only vote today will be on David Waterman to be US Attorney for
00:34the Southern District of Iowa. Senator Ernst and I have recommended Mr.
00:39Waterman for this position. Senator Ernst and I have recommended Mr. Waterman for this
00:51position for two Congresses in a row and he was previously voted out of this
00:56committee with an overwhelming bipartisan vote. I'm pleased that we're voting on
01:02him today and urge all of my colleagues to support him. We also have S 1829 goes by
01:11the name of Stop CSAM Act listed on the agenda for the first time. That bill
01:21increases protections for kids online and will be held over until the next week. I
01:28want to take a moment to address recently raised concerns about the Justice
01:35Department grant terminations. I've started looking into some of these redirected
01:41funds and I'm releasing a short report today compiling publicly available
01:49information on just two of the grant recipients and there's many many more
01:55and we're going to continue to focus on more but I just want to use one example
02:01for today's hearing called the Vera Institute of Justice. Vera is a George Soros
02:10backed organization. It's received at least ten million dollars in donations from George Soros.
02:20Everyone here knows that Soros' plan to elect progressive prosecutors to
02:28district attorney positions. Folks may be less familiar with Vera's role in that
02:34plant although they've made no secret about how they try to help Soros' goals. Many of
02:44them gave Vera space in their office and nearly unfettered access to their case
02:51files. They allowed Vera to redesign their prosecutor's office around Soros'
03:00progressive vision. Guided by Vera, these prosecutors failed their communities. The
03:08stead stories of their failures played out in the courtroom where rape victims and
03:17families who lost loved ones to violence never saw an ounce of justice. Vera policies
03:25aren't criminal justice reform. A revolving door of no consequences doesn't make
03:33anyone safer or rehabilitated. We need to continue looking at these grants. The Justice Department
03:44should reinstate worthy grants and several have been reinstated. But awards to grantees like
03:55Vera for broken progressive policies should give us all great pause. The American
04:03people voted these policies out of office. I also want to take a moment to discuss some
04:11of my other recent oversight work. People on this committee know that I try to listen to legitimate
04:21whistleblowers. And most of them are very legitimate. So, thanks to whistleblowers, I made public last
04:30week an FBI document that showed Nellie Orr, whose firm was paid for by the Democratic National
04:41Committee, that Ms. Orr lied to Congress. She lied about her role in creating the steel dossier.
04:51And pushing the Russian hoax. She got away scot-free while Trump and his associates were politically
05:02targeted for years. That document also exposed the FBI's use of access restrictions on some of Mueller's
05:16crossfire hurricane material. Incredibly, those access restrictions prevented the FBI agents from assessing
05:27FBI records. And if that happened, it means congressional oversight requests and court cases were subject to the same
05:39obstruction of obstructive conduct. New FBI leadership ought to immediately perform a comprehensive review of these
05:49access restrictions. My oversight has just begun on this matter. Now you'll remember the famous FBI Richmond memo. That memo used the
06:06shoddy research of the radical Southern Poverty Law Center to accuse traditional Catholics of being violent extremists. Now that in and of itself is an outrage.
06:21Well, the FBI recently produced Biden era documents, which I released Tuesday this week, showing the problem was much worse than
06:35when Director Wray led us to believe. There wasn't just one FBI document, the famous one that supposedly only Richmond, Virginia had. So there wasn't just one FBI document that used biased anti-Catholic sources, but over a dozen.
06:56It was distributed far more broadly than the FBI.
07:03The FBI, through director, told the Congress, and more FBI field offices were involved than we had been led to believe. Based on those FBI records, it appears that Director Wray lied to the Congress when he testified before the
07:26this committee. My oversight on these matters will continue. Now to Senator Durbin, a ranking
07:36member. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, under the Trump administration, the Department
07:43of Justice is systematically removing the structure charged with fighting corruption
07:48in our government. As the Trump administration openly descends into the throes of corruption,
07:59the watchdog is off the leash and out of sight. In one of her first official acts, Attorney General
08:05Bondi disbanded the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force and restricted enforcement of the Foreign
08:12Agent Registration Act, despite the growing threat of foreign influence campaigns by hostile
08:18nations. Unfortunately, this was no surprise, since the Attorney General herself was formerly
08:26a paid foreign agent of the government of Qatar. As a former head of FBI counterintelligence put it,
08:34this has created a free-for-all for foreign intelligence services seeking influence on our
08:41government. In another shocking move, President Trump ordered a halt to the enforcement of the
08:47Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This landmark law had prohibited companies from bribing foreign
08:54officials. The Trump administration has also gutted the Department of Justice's Public Integrity
09:00Section, known as PEN, which oversees political corruption cases and election crimes. The office
09:07had approximately 30 career prosecutors. It now has fewer than five. Attorney General Bondi has reportedly
09:15considered removing the longstanding requirement that investigations of public officials be reviewed
09:21by PEN. This oversight by career prosecutors was essential to assure that these investigations are
09:29not politically motivated. Last month, MAGA wireless and interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey,
09:36Alina Haba, brought criminal charges against the sitting Congresswoman. These dubious charges reportedly
09:44were not reviewed by the Public Integrity Section. Ms. Haba has made her political goals as a
09:50prosecutor as clear as can be. She said the day she was appointed, now we can turn New Jersey red.
09:58And of course, DOG official Amo Bove infamously ordered the dismissal of corruption charges against the
10:06mayor of New York, Eric Adams, in exchange for his promise to cooperate with the president.
10:12Mr. Bove has now been rewarded with the nomination for a lifetime seat on the federal bench. After endless,
10:20baseless accusations that the Biden administration weaponized DOJ, it is the Trump administration that is
10:26making it easier to target its enemies, stifle dissent, and seek retribution. The Trump administration also removed
10:34the senior career ethics officials at DOJ, who advised on conflicts of interest and other ethical issues,
10:40put the duties in the hands of two inexperienced political appointees who are personally beholden to
10:47the Attorney General. And the career director and chief counsel of DOJ's Office of Professional
10:53Responsibility was forced to retire. This office is charged with conducting internal investigations into
11:01misconduct by DOJ attorneys. But the lights are literally off in their office. In the absence of
11:08these internal guardrails, it's not surprising that we're witnessing some outrageous conduct.
11:14Attorney General Bondi refused to recuse herself from President Trump's solicitation of a free jet
11:21from the royal family of Qatar, despite the fact that Attorney General Bondi was formerly a registered foreign
11:28agent for that government. Even though this unprecedented gift clearly violates the Constitution
11:35and the laws we passed in Congress, the Attorney General produced a legal memorandum concluding it was
11:40quote, legally permissible for President Trump to accept it. We are still, after weeks of asking for it,
11:47looking for a copy of that infamous memo. Attorney General Bondi also appears to be reaping financial
11:53rewards for her loyalty to the President. She's been deeply financially entangled with President Trump
12:00for years. Most notably, the Attorney General of the United States has earned at least three million
12:07dollars on the merger that formed Trump Media and has held millions of dollars in Trump Media stock.
12:14She sold that stock under suspicious circumstances on a historic day, April 2nd, 2025.
12:21That was the same day President Trump announced his harebrained tariff scheme that crashed the stock
12:27market and destroyed 10 trillion dollars in wealth in three days. Attorney General Bondi got out of the
12:33market just in time. The share price of Trump Media plummeted 15 percent, yet Bondi appears to have avoided
12:40any substantial financial loss. What a coincidence. Conveniently, the DOJ and FBI offices that would advise the
12:48attorney general or even investigator have been systematically dismantled under her administration,
12:54leaving her unaccountable. This committee has the authority and the responsibility to investigate.
13:03The Justice Department is also involved in other activities that bear notice today. During his
13:10controversial and disgraceful tenure as interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin fired
13:17numerous career prosecutors simply because they were assigned to work on January 6th cases.
13:23Mr. Martin was rewarded with a plum position at the Justice Department as the very first political
13:29appointee to serve as pardon attorney. During his short time in this role, Martin has overseen pardons
13:36of numerous Trump donors and supporters. Let me give you one example. Last month, President Trump
13:43pardoned nursing home executive Paul Walczak for tax fraud three weeks after Walczak's mother paid one
13:52million dollars to attend a Trump fundraiser. Coincidence? In the aftermath of these scandalous pardons,
13:59Martin tweeted, quote, no MAGA left behind, close quote. As Paul Rosenzweig, a former official in George
14:07Bush administration said, the law is only for Trump's enemies now. In light of these concerns,
14:14we have a responsibility to call Attorney General Bondi under oath soon. So I ask again, I hope we
14:22have that oversight hearing soon in the future. Do you want me to address Mr. Waterman at this point?
14:26Yeah, please. All right. I'm going to support Mr. Waterman's nomination to be the U.S. Attorney for
14:32the Southern District of Iowa. Before we vote, I want to note that he should be ready to be U.S.
14:39Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa. He was nominated by President Biden last February.
14:45This committee reported his nomination last April. At that point, Mr. Waterman became a victim
14:51of Senator Vance's effort to, quote, grind the Justice Department to a halt. I went to the floor
14:58eight times seeking unanimous consent to confirm him as U.S. Attorney, and I was blocked by Senator
15:05Vance seven of those times and by Republican colleagues the eighth time. That included Senator
15:11Vance's own U.S. Attorney nominee to the Northern District of Ohio, who I was prepared to support,
15:17but he was stopped by this Vance strategy. Senator Vance argued it was no problem to vote on these
15:23nominees, stating, quote, sticking our thumbs in the air or down on the ground is not much to ask for
15:30people who asked for this job. Expecting us to vote on cloture and vote these nominees on the record
15:35is not too much to ask. I've said time and time again that Vance standard stopped dozens of qualified
15:43U.S. attorneys under the Biden administration. Now we're asked to look the other way and to ignore
15:48what happened. We cannot have one set of rules for Republicans and another for Democrats in this
15:53committee. So I hope, Mr. Chairman, you and I in good faith can work forward to resolve this.
15:58And of course, I hope we can too, and we've committed to you and I sitting down and trying to do that.
16:05We'll now turn to the nomination of David Waterman to be United States Attorney for the Southern
16:12District of Iowa. We've agreed, unless I hear objection, to report this nomination by voice vote.
16:21So accordingly, I ask on favorably reporting those for all in favor to say aye. Aye. Those opposed say no.
16:34The ayes have it and the nomination will be favorably reported and will stand adjourned.