Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, before we vote on the Barron nomination, I want my colleagues to know the White House continues to keep the Senate in the dark. Yesterday I called upon the White House to state once and for all whether it has provided to the Senate any and all materials written by this nominee on the drone program. The White House refuses to answer that simple question.

One hour after I spoke, the White House Press Secretary refused for a third time to confirm that the Senate has been provided all of this nominee's writings on the drone program. Why is that? Why will this White House not give us a simple, straightforward answer? We still don't know how much more is out there on this subject that this nominee has been involved with.

After this vote, my colleagues still will not be able to tell their constituents that the White House has provided all of this nominee's materials on the drone program because we simply don't know that is true.

Finally, I wish to emphasize one more point about that court order requiring the administration to make a redacted copy of one memo public. Senators should know the court also ordered the trial court to take a second look at the other additional secret documents to see whether any of those additional documents should be made public in redacted form.

If some of those documents were written by this nominee, and if the court orders them to be made public, Senators' constituents are going to ask why they didn't stand today to get that information. Their constituents are going to ask why they didn't stand up to this White House and demand to see any and all memos this nominee wrote on this subject before this vote.

I yield the floor.

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