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Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor once again, as I have before, to discuss misleading reporting in the New York Times.

The New York Times has a global reputation. They work hard to maintain that. So I don't understand why their journalists can miss so many important facts. This time the misleading article was written by Devlin Barrett and a second one was written by Charlie Savage.

Barrett's article discusses the White House's release of government records about an alleged scheme by China to meddle in the 2020 election. The records at issue showed that FBI personnel suppressed intelligence of that alleged Chinese interference.

Barrett's article said, in part:

Mr. Grassley and others have cited the Albany memo as evidence that F.B.I. leaders covered up evidence that China might be taking aggressive steps to interfere with the U.S. election results in 2020, because admitting it might contradict prior testimony to Congress from then-F.B.I. Director Wray.

That is not what I said when I made those records public. That is what the FBI said 6 years ago.

The Albany memo, as the New York Times called it, is actually an FBI memo. It contained information from an FBI Confidential Human Source and was titled by the FBI. The titles by the FBI:

Chinese Government Production and Export of Fraudulent U.S. Driver's Licenses to Chinese Sympathizers in the United States, in Order to Create Tens of Thousands of Fraudulent Mail-in Votes for US Presidential Candidate Joe Biden, in late August 2020.

End of the FBI title.

Let me emphasize what I said. The memo was an FBI memo based on an FBI Confidential Human Source. It was not a Chuck Grassley-created memo.

The FBI analyst involved said the FBI memo ``was coordinated and disseminated in textbook fashion.''

But based on the records the FBI provided to me, the allegations weren't fully investigated at the time because the FBI decided to recall its own memo.

The FBI also described the FBI's sources as competent and authentic with reporting. So let the FBI do their job and investigate.

An FBI analyst said in an email--and when I quote this email, the words ``me'' and ``I'' refer to the FBI analyst.

Most concerning to me, is stating the reporting would contradict Director Wray's testimony. I found this troubling because it implied to me that one of the reasons we weren't putting this out is for a political reason, which goes directly against our organization's mission to remain apolitical and simply state what we know. . . . My concern is that I think it gets dangerous if we cite potential political implications as reasons for not putting out our information.

This FBI analyst raises legitimate concerns. Is the New York Times digging into those concerns? In other words, is the New York Times journalist doing what journalists should be doing? They ought to be good investigators, get all the facts.

And guess who was involved in recalling the FBI memo: That person was then-Deputy Assistant Director Nikki Floris. She was also the main briefer for the fake briefing Senator Johnson and I received in August of 2020 from the now-disbanded Foreign Influence Task Force. You will remember, that was the briefing that was used to attack the Grassley- Johnson Biden family investigation.

So I ask, Is the New York Times investigating that material connection?

By the way, my and Senator Johnson's investigation was based on authentic bank records, authentic Treasury records, authentic Obama administration records, and transcribed interviews. In other words, it was not Russian disinformation, as the partisan media tried and failed to argue.

Here, with this FBI memo, I released records last year because the facts and evidence ought to breathe. Let the American people see what is happening on their watch.

I also issued the records as support to those FBI agents and analysts who were just trying to do their job under extreme pressure from inside the FBI.

I don't know why people in the FBI care if the truth gets out, but a lot of people at the FBI get pressured not to let the truth out. And I want you to know that I will continue to make records public because that is what the taxpayers need and deserve and expect.

As I said last July about this same FBI memo:

One way or the other, intelligence must be fully investigated to determine whether it's true, or if it's just smoke and mirrors.

End of this Senator's quote from last July. That is a quote, by the way, that the New York Times failed to mention.

Now, turning to the Savage article from the New York Times, Charlie Savage wrote in part:

Since President Trump returned to office last year, the senator--

Referring to Chuck Grassley-- has released a flood of internal law enforcement files that normally would be off limits to disclosure, sometimes attributing them to ``whistle-blowers'' or not saying who gave them to him.

The New York Times seems to be very obsessed with how I have obtained government records, maybe because they haven't been able to or maybe they haven't even tried to get these records. For too many years, the executive branch, under both Republicans and Democrats, has failed to produce certain records to the Congress of the United States. The fact that the Trump administration has produced what the New York Times believes wouldn't be normally produced ought to be good news to the American people and good news to the New York Times. You see, these records are exactly the type that should be produced to Congress just as a matter of course, and the Trump administration understands that, and I thank them for their cooperation.

Now, I am still not fully satisfied. There are many more records that ought to be public. For many years, whistleblowers have been hard at work to expose those and many other records. As difficult as it may be for the partisan media to understand this, I have made public thousands of pages of records to this Congress pursuant to lawful whistleblower disclosures. True whistleblowers stick their neck out just for telling the truth, and they do it no matter the risk to them. And a lot of these whistleblowers ruin themselves professionally by just doing what the law requires. So when I do get records, I owe it to the whistleblowers to make those records public. That is called congressional oversight, and it is my constitutional responsibility to get the job of congressional oversight done as the Constitution requires.

This Senator's work will continue. I encourage the Trump administration to continue making records public for transparency, and hopefully the New York Times will get future stories right.

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