00:00We just confirmed Todd Blanche for Attorney General with a federal fraud upon the court investigation pending related to his
00:14misconduct.
00:17Most people don't know what fraud on the court is because it's such a rare and evil form of legal
00:29misbehavior that it almost never comes up.
00:32Thank you, Chairman. Let me just first of all welcome Magistrate Reardon. I'm a former U.S. attorney and senior
00:43litigation counsel. It's a pretty cool designation, so congratulations on that.
00:50To the rest of you, I apologize. I'm going to take my time this morning to talk about this committee
00:57because we had what I consider to be a very disturbing hearing with the FBI director.
01:07And I think it's important to mark what I consider to be the continued degradation of this committee.
01:22We, first of all, confirmed this Kash Patel character back when we did, even though he had asserted his Fifth
01:37Amendment rights and demanded immunity from criminal prosecution before he would testify honestly before a grand jury.
01:47And this committee never even tried to get to get to the bottom of that to this day.
01:53We still don't know what his grand jury testimony was.
01:58And he has dodged and ducked and evaded and lied to this committee about that grand jury episode.
02:07And apparently we're fine with that.
02:12He's not the only case.
02:14We put Emil Bovee onto the Third Circuit Court of Appeals while a contempt proceeding was pending in court against
02:27him.
02:28And staged the timing of his confirmation so we could get him through during a stay in the pending contempt
02:37proceeding.
02:40We just confirmed Todd Blanche for attorney general with a federal fraud upon the court investigation pending related to his
02:56misconduct.
02:59Most people don't know what fraud on the court is because it's such a rare and evil form of legal
03:10misbehavior that it almost never comes up.
03:14Never in the history of the Department of Justice has any senior official even been accused of fraud upon the
03:20court.
03:20And we cleared him without clearing up the question of whether or not there was in fact fraud upon the
03:27court.
03:28These are all never before occasions.
03:33An FBI director who pled criminal Fifth Amendment immunity and we don't get to the bottom of it.
03:38A pending contempt proceeding and we slip the guy through before there's an answer to what took place.
03:44Ditto, the fraud upon the court, an unprecedented situation for a nominee.
03:52And then you look at the conduct of the way we allow witnesses to testify.
03:58We let witnesses assert false privileges.
04:01They have no right to claim and haven't done the work to claim.
04:05And the committee doesn't seem to care.
04:08We let witnesses lie and dodge.
04:11And the committee doesn't seem to care.
04:15We let witnesses refuse to answer a single question for the record after a hearing.
04:21For a year.
04:23And the committee doesn't seem to care.
04:29Substantively, we gave away our circuit court blue slips to the executive branch of government.
04:36And then complained about having lost the blue slip.
04:40We let the executive branch put U.S. attorneys in without confirmation by this committee.
04:47And we don't seem to care.
04:50And we see witnesses come in with their scripted insult lists as if that is appropriate behavior for congressional oversight.
05:01And this committee does not seem to care.
05:05Well, I care about this committee.
05:07And I think that it is making a mockery of itself.
05:12And we're going to need to have a very significant reboot to put this committee back to right.
05:18And I hope that comes sooner rather than later.
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