During a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) denounced a GOP effort to hold Biden's ghostwriter in contempt of Congress as a 'sham'.
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NewsTranscript
00:00The gentlelady from Pennsylvania is recognized.
00:03Thank you.
00:04I move to strike the last word.
00:05Gentlelady is recognized.
00:08Several of my colleagues here have noted this resolution to hold a private citizen in contempt
00:13of Congress is a waste of the American people's time and our taxpayer dollars.
00:18But the truth is, this hearing is, again, a sham.
00:22If our colleagues across the aisle genuinely wanted to develop legislation to improve the
00:27executive branch's handling of classified materials, then there is much more fertile
00:33ground for investigation, which they have thus far ignored.
00:37I'm talking, of course, about the gross mishandling of sensitive documents by the twice impeached
00:42former president, who has actually been indicted for his failure to secure and his willful
00:48failure to return classified documents.
00:51Concerningly, as we saw again just this week in court filings, he kept some of our nation's
00:57most sensitive secrets in unsecured areas of his golf club, mixed among discarded Christmas
01:05decorations, golf shirts, newspaper clippings and soda bottles.
01:09But that's, of course, not what Mr. Trump's allies here are focusing on.
01:13Instead, House Republicans have wasted a year and a half of the American people's time on
01:19a vengeful, politically motivated stunt, a year and a half of investigations, depositions,
01:25written testimony and hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, with none of it turning
01:30up any evidence of impeachable offenses by President Biden or his administration.
01:35In fact, their star witnesses and supposed Bob Michel disclosures have been repeatedly
01:40debunked, discredited and disavowed.
01:44They've conclusively proven what the world knows, that the current president has not
01:49committed impeachable acts.
01:51Now, instead of cutting their losses, they continue to double down with increasingly
01:56desperate measures like this one, shamelessly bowing to the former president's calls for
02:01retribution against his political rivals in a desperate attempt to distract from his felony
02:06convictions and prop up his reelection campaign.
02:09Faced with failure after failure in their investigations, in their legislative agenda
02:15and in their ability to actually deliver for the American people, House Republicans are
02:20now stooping to new lows.
02:23As several of my colleagues have mentioned already, the appropriate remedy here, if they
02:29were serious, would be to engage with the administration.
02:32But instead, they're choosing to wield congressional power to try to intimidate a private citizen.
02:37It's outrageous.
02:38It's not legitimate oversight, and it's not what our government is supposed to be used
02:42for.
02:43I deeply oppose this misleading, partisan and disingenuous effort to weaponize the Judiciary
02:48Committee's oversight authority, and I would yield back.