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Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, it is nice to see you in the Chair.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am here to add some thoughts regarding the vote we are going to have on Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense.

Of course, as a Rhode Island junior Senator, I am very cognizant of the important role that my senior Senator Jack Reed has had on the committee of jurisdiction, the Senate Armed Services Committee. I want to give him credit for the way he has conducted himself.

What I can bring to this conversation is a little bit about background investigations. I sit on the Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee does more background investigation work than any other because we have so many people coming through--the judges, the U.S. attorneys, every marshal--all of it. So we are very busy on BIs.

I took a deep dive into the Brett Kavanaugh background investigation and put out a report on the flaws and gaps and misdirections that transpired around that background investigation--specifically, that supplemental background investigation, a point I will clarify in a moment.

Let's start with what we do know about the FBI background investigation into Mr. Hegseth. We know that only one Democrat has even seen it, and that is the ranking member on the committee, Senator Reed. And we do know that he has publicly said that that background investigation was--to use his word--``inadequate.'' So Republicans are going forward on the basis of an FBI investigation that a very respected Member of this body has publicly said was inadequate.

What else do we know about it? Well, it has been reported in the press that the chairman has said that it took three briefings by the FBI to get through the background investigation. I don't know why that happened, but we do know that new material emerged in the press about various kinds of misconduct by this individual after the initial background investigation took place.

So the likeliest scenario to explain why there were three background investigations in the light of the recurring release of further information about his repeated misconduct is that there were supplemental background investigations after the original full field FBI background investigation was completed.

Let's presume that to be true. Again, we can't know this because this is all tied up in so much unnecessary secrecy, in my view. Let's presume that that is the case.

What does that mean? Well, what we discovered during the Kavanaugh background investigation is that the regular FBI full field background investigation takes place under a set of longstanding rules and protocols and procedures. They have forms that they follow. It has been routinized to a fairly significant degree. It is different than a proper FBI investigation. A proper FBI investigation in the criminal law enforcement front has a whole different set of controls and protocols and supervisory roles over that. When you get into the full field background investigation, you are operating under a different set of rules, but you are still operating under rules.

And you can ask the question to the FBI: Was this background investigation conducted fully within the rules and the protocols for background investigations--until you get to a supplemental background investigation.

Now, one of the objections that I had to the way we were treated as we tried to get to the bottom of the Kavanaugh background investigation was that the then-head of the FBI kept repeatedly saying publicly--we were repeatedly told that the supplemental background investigation was done consistent with all of the FBI standard protocols and procedures. What was misleading about that, as we later discovered, is that for a supplemental background investigation, there are no operating procedures and protocols. Wray said that they comported with all of their procedures. Didn't disclose that, in fact, there are no procedures to comport with.

What is the FBI doing in a supplemental background investigation? They are doing only and exactly what the White House has instructed them to do--period, no more, no less, no procedure, no protocol--which raises a huge question about the adequacy of this background investigation to the extent that, in its later stages, it was a supplemental background investigation.

We know that, when the Kavanaugh investigation was going on, Republican Senators were told that there was no corroboration-- corroboration being kind of an important legal term here--no corroboration of the charges that had been brought by Dr. Blasey Ford of his attack on her those many years ago--no corroboration.

What we found out, later on, is that the instructions from the White House to the FBI for that supplemental background investigation related to her charges were: Don't look for, don't find, and don't report to us any corroborating information.

We also found out that they never interviewed either Dr. Blasey Ford about her allegations or Brett Kavanaugh about his conduct.

So there is every reason to believe about this background investigation, as to the supplemental background investigation part of it, that it was woefully incomplete; that it was restricted by the White House to very, very narrow bounds; that we do not know what those narrow bounds are; and that, very likely, neither Hegseth nor the individuals making the charges were even interviewed by the FBI. And we can suspect that because that is precisely what happened in the Kavanaugh background investigation.

So there is a major, major weakness in what is publicly described as an inadequate background investigation, to the extent that those latter two segments of it that caused the three briefings to have to take place were supplemental background investigations precisely and exactly controlled by the Trump White House.

Another point that relates to all of this is that, when these witnesses came forward, the standard counterattack against them was that they were anonymous. Over and over again, Hegseth said in the committee: ``Anonymous smears''--``anonymous smears.''

These accusers were not anonymous. Not only were they not anonymous, they were willing and presented themselves as willing to be able to come over here and personally brief, in their offices, any Republican Senator. It is not anonymous when you are willing to show up in a Senator's office and give a personal briefing.

What they weren't willing to do was to put their names out there publicly. Now, why would they want to steer away from that? Ask Christine Blasey Ford what her life was turned into by far-right and MAGA attacks on her after she came forward with her charges against Brett Kavanaugh.

Ask the poll workers who were Rudy Giuliani's victims what their lives turned into after he called them out--conduct against them that gave rise to the massive, multimillion-dollar verdict that Rudy Giuliani is still struggling to pay. Evidently, some billionaire paid it off for him. We will see.

But it is perfectly logical for a person to be willing to come forward, like many witnesses are, to identify themselves and to speak privately--the way people often do in a grand jury--to a prosecutor without yet putting your name out there. And, actually, some are not anonymous, but we should reject the notion that these witnesses were anonymous. They were not anonymous. They are real people with real faces who are willing to come in and tell their real stories, and Republican Senators simply refuse to hear them. That is a different thing than anonymity. They couldn't get through the doors of the offices.

So either our Republican colleagues already know who these people are--so they are not anonymous--or they are perfectly able to find out by getting their names and inviting them in and hearing them out. It seems like a pretty simple ask.

Now, in some cases, for instance, Mr. Hegseth's sister-in-law--ex- sister-in-law, I guess you would say--has actually put her name on her affidavit, describing his abusive and drunken misconduct. So she is not anonymous by any stretch of the imagination. And because the far-right counterattack team likes to attack people who are willing to come forward, they actually outed one of the other witnesses in a story. I won't mention her name because I do not want to make things even worse for her, but they did out her in a rightwing publication.

So you have at least two names that are out there that are clearly not anonymous and, indeed, are public. What happens with them? What happens with them is that they are accused of having evil motive; that they had a motive to lie about Pete Hegseth, and that is what is driving what they have been saying.

Well, guess who is really good at interviewing witnesses and looking at the surrounding circumstances and evaluating a motive--the FBI. The FBI is. So, if the FBI in this supplemental background investigation was instructed not to evaluate motive--just to let that be a political hand grenade to throw with no foundation--then we have an extra layer of problems with this background investigation.

So there is every reason to believe that the background investigation was inadequate and specifically directed by the White House away from relevant evidence, the way the Kavanaugh investigation was directed away from corroborating evidence. Here, it would have been directed away from evidence of motive, and you have got a real problem on your hands.

I urge my Republican colleagues--this is kind of the last call. If this guy gets in and starts to behave the way reasonable people can expect him to behave, you are going to own that. And when you say, ``Oh, the background investigation should have brought that up,'' not if you didn't ask about the background investigation, not if you didn't get a real one, not if you didn't bring the actual witnesses in to hear from them themselves.

We have had another little event recently, which are the pardons of the violent January 6 rioters.

Before those pardons took place, our Republican colleagues said over and over again that that will never happen; that this is a weird Democrat pipe dream. ``The very notion of pardoning these violent rioters who hurt police officers--who attacked and harmed police officers--is absurd,'' said one colleague. The Vice President said it wasn't going to happen; that it would be wrong.

And after all of that talk and all of that reassurance, what happened? Donald Trump went right out and did it.

So, if you think there are guardrails around this individual, it has already been proven that they are not there. The thing you thought was absurd, the thing you thought would never happen, the thing you said was wrong was done, and if that is not a lesson as we go forward into these other defective nominees, I can't help you; I can't make you vote any other way.

But it ought to be clear that, with future misconduct by this guy, whether he is being drunk on duty or erratic or abusive or inappropriate with female staff and officers or even abusing the power of our military to accomplish political purposes for President Trump, there is really no sign of guardrails to prevent that, and an inadequate FBI report is something that should be cleared up before Republicans are forced to vote on this.

It is in your power to look into these things and get it done. It is not in our power in the minority. We are doing the best we can. So I urge you to consider those dangers as we move forward toward this vote.

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