00:00Soon, the Senate will proceed to a final vote on the nomination of Emil Bovee.
00:10That's to be judged on the Third Circuit.
00:15As I said in my statement in the Judiciary Committee multiple times,
00:22I support the nomination of Mr. Bovee.
00:27He has a strong legal background.
00:30And has served his country honorably.
00:34I believe he will be diligent, capable, and a fair jurist.
00:39My Republican colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee agree.
00:47And that's why he was reported out of committee with every Republican supporting his nomination.
00:54Now, it's no surprise to anyone who followed this nomination that I have serious concerns with how my Democratic colleagues have conducted themselves.
01:11The vicious rhetoric, unfair accusations, and abuse directed at Mr. Bovee by some on this committee, it has crossed the line.
01:28I wish I could say that this posture has been limited to just this nomination, but unfortunately, it appears to be a pattern.
01:41Since the very beginning of this Congress, Democrats have engaged in obstruction campaigns for nearly every one of President Trump's nominees.
01:55Their playbook has included maximum procedural obstruction, unfair media attacks, repeated attempts to allege misconduct, and demands for delayed consideration, records, and investigations.
02:17This Congress alone, Democrats have sent at least 26 letters to 17 agencies or parties demanding records, delays, or investigations into President
02:47of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Senate Judiciary Committee.
02:49We get another breathless accusation that one of President Trump's nominees needs to be, you guessed it, investigated.
03:02I'm afraid that what we've seen recently on the Bovee nomination has been more of the same.
03:12My Democratic colleagues have tried to weaponize my respect for whistleblowers and the whole whistleblowing process against me and, in return, against Mr. Bovee.
03:28Now I'm here to set the record straight.
03:32I take whistleblower complaints very seriously.
03:36During both Republican and Democrat administrations, I've spent over four decades defending patriotic whistleblowers.
03:46My conduct in defending whistleblowers and running bipartisan investigations stands in stark contrast to the conduct of my Democrat colleagues.
04:03During the first Trump administration, I defended the Ukraine whistleblowers' use of the whistleblower process, even despite serious concerns about the substance of his complaint.
04:21When I was last chairman, I interviewed Donald Trump Jr. and other Republicans as part of my bipartisan investigation into the alleged Russian collusion, and that was conducted through the Senate Judiciary Committee.
04:41But when it came to the Biden family and the Biden administration, despite serious allegations and overwhelming evidence of misconduct, Democrats made no effort to investigate or conduct similar interviews like I did during a Republican administration.
05:04In fact, they worked hard to thwart any attempt at oversight.
05:11Now these weren't fringe claims.
05:16They involved potential crimes squarely within the Judiciary Committee jurisdiction.
05:23The Trump administration has said that Mr. Rovini isn't a whistleblower.
05:35Now I publicly disagreed with the position of the Trump administration.
05:41Now that happens to be the opposite posture that my Democrat colleagues took with the IRS whistleblowers who blew the whistle on the Biden administration.
05:53My Democratic colleagues tried to destroy those whistleblowers and use the press to falsely claim that they were, in fact, whistleblowers.
06:05No one can say that I don't take whistleblower complaints seriously or that I don't investigate allegations in good faith.
06:17I've always said my door is open to whistleblowers.
06:22And my efforts regarding the Bovee nomination show that this is also true.
06:30Mr. Rovini made allegations against Mr. Bovee, can you believe this, just the morning before the nomination hearing.
06:44The allegations broke in a New York Times story.
06:49And the paper, as you would expect, gleefully ran the unvetted accusations without so much as giving the Justice Department or even the nominee the opportunity to respond.
07:06At our Bovee hearing in the Judiciary Committee, the Deputy Attorney General flatly denied the allegations in public statements.
07:17And the nominee denied them under oath, both in the hearing and in the response to written questions from members of the Judiciary Committee.
07:29Then, my Democratic colleagues received yet additional records from the whistleblower on July 1 and July 7, but hid them from Republicans.
07:47I didn't receive these accusations and records until July 10.
07:54Now, can you believe it?
07:56That's the very same day that Mr. Bovee's nomination was scheduled for its first markup.
08:09The coordinated media strategy.
08:16Let me repeat that.
08:17That's so important, how the media works in line with what the Democrats want to accomplish on this nomination.
08:25The coordinated media strategy involved a New York Times exclusive about the files.
08:34And the Democrat press release containing a misleading summary of the documents.
08:40Why?
08:42All designed to smear Mr. Bovee.
08:47This timeline raises serious concerns, and it's legitimate to raise them as a major problem.
09:00If my Democrat colleagues wanted to investigate allegations, they should have come to this senator, and we could have vetted the allegations in good faith together.
09:14Rather, they didn't want this.
09:18They wanted to run a one-sided media campaign.
09:24Regardless, I still did my job and investigated.
09:31My staff reviewed the disclosure document by document and analyzed the facts.
09:41The result?
09:43Almost none of the material referenced Mr. Bovee at all.
09:50More concerningly, the Democrat summary grossly mischaracterized the documents that it purported to summarize.
10:00In short, the document didn't say what the Democrats say the documents said.
10:09My staff also interviewed multiple people who were present for the March 14th meeting described in the whistleblower disclosure.
10:19Four separate people, other than Mr. Bovee, who were present at the meeting, told us the following.
10:28First, there was never any directive to ignore a court order.
10:34And secondly, each of them left the meeting with the understanding that the Justice Department would aggressively litigate but would follow court orders.
10:53My staff then spoke to numerous other individuals, including many current and former Justice Department employees, who wanted to share information about the Bovee nomination.
11:10All told, my staff interviewed or spoke with more than a dozen individuals who came forward to discuss the Bovee nomination.
11:23With respect to the initial whistleblower allegations, even if you accept most of the claims as true, there is still no scandal.
11:38Government lawyers aggressively litigating and interpreting court orders isn't misconduct.
11:47Conduct.
11:48That's common sense.
11:49That's not misconduct.
11:51Because that's what lawyers always do.
11:56Concerning the minority repeatedly recasting discussion of litigation strategy as wrongdoing, you know, even discussions that reflected the government official litigation position,
12:16some positions which prevailed on appeal.
12:24Now pay attention to what the whistleblower alleged misconduct.
12:34But ten days after the key event he described, he signed a brief statement without qualification,
12:44quote, that the government has complied with the court orders in this case.
12:50Now this is the very same person that you've been reading about in the media that said that Bovee was telling everybody not to follow court orders.
13:03Ten days after the key event he described, that person said this, the government has complied with the court orders in this case.
13:22If he believed the department defied court orders, why sign a brief as an officer of the court saying that it had complied?
13:37During the hearing, Mr. Bovee firmly denied the allegations.
13:43He testified under oath, quote, I did not advise any Justice Department attorney to violate court orders, end of quote.
13:55Recent public reporting backs this account, his account.
14:01Months before the whistleblower came forward, his former supervisor wrote a letter to Mr. Bovee, quote,
14:11advised our team that we must avoid a court order halting an upcoming operation to eliminate, to implement the act at all costs, end of quote.
14:26This statement confirms Mr. Bovee advised his team to avoid triggering a court order, not defy a court order.
14:41And that's consistent with Bovee's testimony before the committee.
14:47Now, everything I gave you up to now was the initial allegation.
14:55But now, on the very eve of Mr. Bovee's final vote here in the United States Senate,
15:04the Democrats and their media allies have launched yet another salvo against Mr. Bovee on Friday.
15:15In other words, three days ago, maybe four days ago, you counted.
15:20We learned from social media that our two other whistleblowers, that two other whistleblowers allegedly have derogatory information about Mr. Bovee.
15:36One whistleblower said that they filed a complaint with the inspector general.
15:42My staff requested the complaint and to speak with the whistleblower.
15:48Their requests were denied.
15:52Another group, a group called Justice Connection, publicly alleged that a whistleblower has evidence that Bovee wasn't truthful in his hearings
16:11and that the whistleblower, quote, has tried to share information with Republican senators for weeks and they haven't responded, end of quote.
16:25To the extent that anyone is suggesting that this Senator Grassley hasn't been willing to receive and consider relative evidence,
16:38everybody that knows me would be, that's just plain false.
16:43I'm the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and I represent Republicans on this committee.
16:50Regarding this whistleblower, my office was not proactively approached.
16:58Indeed, since we saw these news reports on Friday, my staff proactively and repeatedly reached out to whistleblower lawyers,
17:18asking to see the evidence that they apparently had already shared with multiple Democrats and also with the media.
17:32My staff assured them that we would review the evidence in good faith.
17:39But now here, all weekend, I want to repeat, all weekend, my staff was stonewalled
17:47and given the runaround, any assertion that I or my staff was uninterested in the evidence is entirely false.
17:59It wasn't until Monday morning, so you got Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday morning, that my staff received any information.
18:09Even then, it was bits and pieces of information created by lawyers, not original information.
18:19My staff tried over and over to get all the information, only to be rejected.
18:28My staff was not shown the underlying transcript of the meeting until this morning.
18:40They were shown what was represented to be verbatim transcript of a meeting, but we still didn't have access to the underlying source.
18:56So what did I do?
18:59I followed my usual process.
19:01I asked Mr. Bovey to respond to the allegations that his testimony was inconsistent with the evidence that we saw for the first time Monday.
19:14And he sent me a letter doing just that.
19:20I planned to make that letter public.
19:23I've also asked permission to make this transcript public as well, but I don't know whether the lawyer will give me that permission.
19:36In his letter, Mr. Bovey flatly denies the allegations that he misled the committee.
19:45He explained that he testified truthfully in response to, quote, compound yes or no questions that sought to attribute words to me that I did not use during the February 14th, 2025 video meeting, end of quote.
20:06He also responds to the attacks on his character and rejects the allegations against him.
20:16Viewed in light of the transcript,
20:19that Bovey's responses to compound hostile questions about specific words used in a meeting that happened months before his hearing do not, to me, indicate deliberately false and misleading testimony.
20:39And more importantly, the substance of the meeting itself does not reflect misconduct.
20:50It reflected a sympathetic tone during a turbulent time and appropriately characterizes the role of a Justice Department attorney.
21:04In the meeting, Mr. Bovey specifically acknowledged that being a Justice Department attorney means, quote, following orders from the President or the Attorney General, unless we view them as unlawful or unethical, end of quote.
21:30He apologized to the attorneys present for tension and told them, quote, I don't want to put pressure on you, end of quote.
21:41I'm also curious that my Democrat colleagues' newfound interest in candor to the committee during the Biden administration,
21:54Kristen Clark unequivocally perjured herself before the Judiciary Committee in response to written questions.
22:03When the information came to light after a confirmation, Democrats do what Democrats do.
22:10They close ranks and refuse to join Republicans in their call to hold her accountable.
22:17Democrats likewise expressed no interest in evaluating the misleading and inconsistent testimony from numerous other Biden appointees.
22:32When this committee considered the nomination of Justice Kavanaugh, now on the Supreme Court, I criticized the tactics that Democrats employed.
22:47And I said this, the ranking member, I'm quoting, the ranking member sat on these allegations for nearly seven weeks,
22:58only to reveal them at the 11th hour when it appeared that Judge Kavanaugh was headed towards nomination, end of quote.
23:09Now, getting back to the Bovi nomination with respect to it, as with other nominees, this Congress, Democrats appeared to have dusted off the playbook that they devised against Justice Kavanaugh.
23:28They hid allegedly relevant information until a politically opportune time and then used it as an ambush to hurt the nominee.
23:42As I said about the Democrats' conduct during FBI Director Patel's nomination, quote,
23:53This is becoming a pattern, and I will not facilitate a campaign to undermine the results of the election by delaying consideration of nominees, end of quote.
24:07If anyone, including my colleagues, has information regarding a nominee, any nominee, that they believe is relevant to their fitness for office,
24:20I expect them to share it with me in a timely and candid manner so that the allegations can be fairly vetted.
24:31As opposed to what I've just told you, that we got most of this information from the Democrats that the whistleblowers were,
24:40the Democrats were peddling the whistleblowers' accusations the night before the hearing, the night before we were considering the nomination.
24:53Everybody should know that my door is always open to whistleblowers.
24:57And while I may not always agree with someone else's conclusions, I'll always fairly consider any information brought to my office.
25:09My message to the three whistleblowers in this case is this.
25:16Just because I may disagree with the conclusions in a whistleblower disclosure, it doesn't mean that I don't support whistleblowers' rights to come forward.
25:28Whether I agree or disagree with whistleblowers, I'll defend whistleblowers' rights.
25:35Reasonable minds can differ, and when I direct my staff to allocate resources away from other ongoing whistleblower projects to handle situations like Bovee,
25:48their efforts ought to be respected and given good-faith treatment.
25:54But, contrary to what happened, this 11th hour media smear by my colleagues, based on information that was hidden from the committee,
26:08these are all unacceptable.
26:11And I won't stand for it as a delay or obstruction tactics.
26:15This tactic didn't work against Justice Kavanaugh, and it won't work against Mr. Bovee.
26:23I look forward to supporting Mr. Bovee and urge all my colleagues to do the same.
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