[0:00]I'm here today. >> The chair go ahead. >> The chair has been made aware of the valid basis for the gentleman's point of personal privilege. The gentleman from Kentucky is recognized for one hour. >> Roughly three weeks ago, the speaker of
[0:14]the house said, "Let me tell you how stupid Thomas Massiey's comment is." An article said that Johnson says Republicans are here to work and will remain in Washington throughout
[0:26]September according to the House calendar. He goes on to say that is a nonsensical statement by someone who is not participating as a full member of
[0:37]the Congress and it's really sad that he doesn't." Well, I'm here today to let you know
[0:48]that I'm a full participating member of the House of Representatives. In fact, when other people want to go home, I'm here to work. I'm here to get justice
[0:58]for the Epstein victims, the survivors. I am here to get the price of food and
[1:06]fuel down for our constituents. We've got solutions. We just refuse to pass them. So, what happened a couple weeks
[1:16]ago is I introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act 2 discharge petition and I predicted
[1:25]that the House would take days off the calendar in order to avoid a vote on this. Again, if you remember a year ago,
[1:34]we had the Epstein recess, I call it. My colleague Roana and I have been very successful in collecting names. We were
[1:43]just two signatures short of 218 on a discharge petition. And the leadership of this body recessed this body for
[1:51]weeks to avoid swearing in one member that would have been the 218th vote. I was here. I was ready to work to be a
[2:02]fully participating member of Congress. Well, the speaker saw otherwise. The leadership here saw otherwise. and they
[2:11]kept Congress shut down for weeks. We came back. I got that 218th signature and the bill that Roana and I co-authored
[2:22]became law. Every member except for one member of this house voted for our legislation that they had criticized for months. If it was so bad, why did they
[2:33]all vote for it? That bill went to the Senate. It passed by unanimous consent. If you ask the senators, can you pass one of our House bills? What will they say? Well, we'll see if we can get it on
[2:44]the docket, that's going to take at least three days. We got to get a 60 vote threshold. We um to get overcome the filibuster and so uh it's going to be a while. How long did it take them to
[2:56]pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act? They passed it before it got there. It left this house and on the walk between the house and the senate they made a
[3:07]unanimous consent to pass that bill as soon as it got there and nobody objected. The president himself signed that bill. He had earlier said it would
[3:17]be a hostile act to even support that bill and what came of it three million files released. Now, we've yet to see justice here in the United
[3:28]States, but we watched a British ambassador to the United States lose his job. He was sacked. We saw the prince,
[3:38]the prince of England lose his title. We saw the former prime minister of Norway arrested. Convicted.
[3:49]Maybe not convicted yet, but arrested. We saw the Minister of Culture in France receive the same fate. CEOs,
[3:58]presidents of universities resigned over a hoax. Somebody should have told them it was a hoax because that's what
[4:07]we were told that it was a hoax. Folks, it wasn't a hoax. And there's still three million of those files that are being withheld at the Department of Justice. and the ones that have been
[4:18]released have been overly redacted in contravention of that law. So, am I a fully what would a fully participating member of Congress do if he got a law
[4:29]enacted against the will of the president, against the will of the speaker, against the will against all odds and then the chief law enforcement officer of the country will not follow the law. What would a fully
[4:40]participating member of Congress do? Well, I think he'd do what I did. I wrote with along with Roana and Terresa Ledger Fernandez. By the way, when did
[4:49]it become a dirty word to work across the aisle? When did that become forbidden? I thought that was supposed to be a good
[4:58]thing to form coalitions. Oh, Massie, he, you know, he can't get anything done. He can't get people to agree with
[5:07]him. It was 427 to1 was the vote on the Epstein files. Come on. Uh, I think that's a pretty big coalition,
[5:18]but it was more than just getting the files released. My colleague Roana and I held the biggest press conference that's ever occurred in Washington DC in at least a decade for as long as I've been
[5:29]here. Is that something a not fully participating member of Congress would do? I don't think so. Why did we do it?
[5:38]To give a voice to the survivors. We gave them a venue to speak to you, the people in power, the people who were hiding the files at
[5:49]the DOJ, at the FBI, at the US attorneys. For the first time ever, we gave them a voice. We gave them a platform. And they were brave. They
[5:59]stepped up. They told their very tragic and sad stories. and they compelled the rest of this body
[6:08]to do the right thing after resisting for so long. So that gets us to where we are now on the Epstein files. Roana Terresa Ledger Fernandez and I
[6:19]wrote another bill and what it does is simple. It says, "Mr. Attorney General, if you refuse to prosecute prosecute the co-conspirators
[6:31]of Jeffrey Epstein, the rapists and the pedophiles, the ones who financed it, the ones who covered it up, if you refuse to do it at Epstein Island or in
[6:41]New York or Florida or in New Mexico, this bill is going to give the files to the state attorneys general in the various states so that they can
[6:52]prosecute these crimes. And it's I've talked to the attorney general of New Mexico. Guess what? There are crimes that occurred at Zoro Ranch for which there is no statute of limitations. We
[7:04]can still bring these pedophiles to justice. He's ready to do it. But the attorney general of this country will not cooperate with the attorney general
[7:14]of that state. So the Epstein Files Transparency Act bill number two would make that happen. Would allow for that to happen. It does something else that's
[7:24]important. The survivors need closure. This attorney general will not share those files with the survivors. The the files that were generated on their behalf,
[7:36]the braves on. There are many, we call them survivors because some are no longer alive. I'm talking about the victims who are
[7:44]still alive, who survived the trauma and the shame and were subjected to horrible things by
[7:52]these men, the brave women. We're giving them standing in court to get their own damn files that they can't
[8:04]get now. They, some of them, it was so traumatic, can't even remember what they told the FBI at the time. That's important.
[8:14]We also give standing to members of this body. Who would not want to make the legislative branch just a little more capable of getting its laws carried out in the
[8:25]way that they were meant to be carried out. It gives members of Congress standing to go in front of a judge and test the executive branch's flawed legal
[8:36]reasoning for withholding three million files. And why do we want to do that? Because their reasoning is such a joke that in
[8:48]front of any judge for more than a minute, their arguments could not be s sustained. Let me give you an example. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, the first
[8:58]version that this fully participating member of Congress ushered through this body and through the Senate and got the White House to sign it against their will.
[9:09]It's the first bill says that the DOJ has to give us and the public internal memos, documents, and emails concerning
[9:20]decisions of whether to prosecute or not prosecute, whether to investigate or not investigate. That's at the heart of this issue. Why did our government fail us?
[9:29]Who was it at DOJ or FBI that decided to create two tiers of justice? We want to see those internal discussions. So, what does the attorney general argue now? Oh,
[9:40]I'm sorry. We are going to exert or exercise our deliberative process privilege. Well, here's the problem. That's a FOYA term of art, Freedom of Information Act
[9:51]term of art. It does not apply to a law that was passed by both chambers and signed by the president. And even if it did, the law itself pierces through the
[10:02]previous law. And that's what any judge in this country, if they looked at it on the facts, would agree to. New laws override the old laws.
[10:13]I'm not a attorney, but as a fully participating member of Congress. I do serve on the judiciary committee and I know the simple concept that a new
[10:25]law overrides the old law and the judges know that, too. So, that's why this next bill is so important. And that gets me to why we're going to take these. At first it was we're just going to cancel
[10:36]two weeks off of the calendar. And then a and we know why that happened. We know why that happened. It's to keep the Epstein Files Transparency Act from
[10:48]getting the 218 votes on the discharge petition ripening over seven days and passing before the election, thereby
[10:57]making the Senate be accountable in the weeks leading up to the election. Oh my gosh, we can't have that. We can't have senators called to task at the while
[11:08]they're stumping and spreading their campaign promises. Oh, no. We can't put them on the spot like that and ask them if they're going to vote for transparency and justice for the survivors.
[11:19]That's why they cut two weeks off the calendar. Isn't that ironic? I was called not a fully participating member of Congress. I'm the one who most wants to be here those two weeks and they got
[11:31]cancelled. And I said they would probably cancel them. And we were told, "Oh, nope. That's a ludicrous idea." Let me tell you how stupid Thomas Massiey's
[11:41]comment is. Those were the words of the speaker. 48 hours later, what did he do? Exactly what I predicted. He cut two weeks off of this calendar.
[11:52]So, why did he just cut another day off the calendar? He had some more choice words for me because I predicted this as well. On
[12:03]Tuesday, as a fully participating member of Congress, I introduced eight articles of impeachment against
[12:12]Peter Brian Hegsth. Over there, they're leading a little fantasy. They call it the Department of War. You know, you can't rename things without Congress. Hell, you can't even
[12:24]rename a post office without us. We You think you can rename the Department of Defense the Department of War? Give me a break. But enjoy your little fantasy. It's the Department of Defense.
[12:36]Um, here's what's And let me tell you about the eight articles of impeachment. By the way, Speaker Johnson says, "I'm not a fully participating member of
[12:44]Congress." Well, it took a long time to write eight articles of impeachment. It didn't take much time to conceive them. If you're looking over at the administrative branch and trying to give
[12:55]an award for the person who's racked up the most illegal and unconstitutional acts, there's one clear winner. It's Peter Brian Hegsath,
[13:05]Secretary of Defense who has done that. So, it was easy to conceive of these articles of impeachment, but it wasn't easy to write them. They are watertight.
[13:16]They are watertight. In the 24 hours that has transpired since I was right here at this podium for an hour and 20 minutes reading the articles of impeachment, what has happened is, have
[13:27]they attacked the language of these articles? They said there's no legal basis for this. You can't possibly think these are valid articles of impeachment.
[13:37]No, nobody's attacked the substance and nobody has come to the rescue of the Secretary of Defense. I don't even see the online brigade of paid media
[13:49]grifters who typically rally for MAGA and the president while they're collecting their checks. Um I just don't see it happening
[14:01]and that's interesting. And so what what is the form of a privileged when you introduce an articles of impeachment as a privileged
[14:10]resolution? What happens? Well, the speaker has 48 hours to schedule a vote. 48 hours would be tomorrow would be that
[14:19]vote. Well, what happened? We just found out not more than an hour ago that the leadership of this body, which
[14:29]is Republican. H I'm having a hard time figuring this out, too. Why? We are the majority. We may only be the majority for six more weeks. Why would we be
[14:39]cancelling days when the country is burning? The inflation is rampant. There are things we could do here. Why would we cancel
[14:48]our own majority? I can't figure that out. But I did figure out why we cancel tomorrow. And that's what I'm explaining to you as a
[14:59]fully me fully participating member of Congress. Tomorrow would be the vote on impeaching Secretary of Defense Peter Brian
[15:10]Hegsath. And it looks like that vote's not going to happen. It'd be a real easy vote. It' be a probably be a vote to table to insulate the members of this body from
[15:20]any accountability. That would avoid you from having to debate the issue, any of the eight articles of impeachment. Uh, it would let you go home to your town halls and say, "Well, we didn't
[15:32]vote on the substance of the bill. I didn't really agree with Massiey's thing or disagree with it. I just thought we should table it and it should go to a committee first. Maybe we'll refer it to a committee or blue ribbon commission or
[15:42]a panel of experts because we're just mere congressmen. We're not equipped to stand here on the floor and debate without reading our speeches that were
[15:52]written by our staff. Would a fully participating or a not fully participating member of Congress come down here and speak extemporaneously for
[16:02]an hour? I don't I don't think that's would be a I think that's the indicator if somebody does that they are participating. Maybe when you hear their speeches
[16:12]they're sincere. I I will not but I encourage you to claim an hour yourself. Surely you could do the same thing and I would love to hear what the gentleman has to say.
[16:23]Um, you know, it used to be considered, I think it was against the rules at one time to read your speeches in this body. Why is that? Because it was considered
[16:35]insincere. If you didn't have the conviction of heart to come down here or the presence of mind, we got a few senators that may not have the presence of mind or we got some that don't have the conviction of
[16:47]heart. But if you just always came down here and read your speeches, some of them are written by AI now. The staff better watch out. It was a good gig while you had it, writing the speech for
[16:58]your robot boss to come down here. And here is my speech. Well, now they got a robot to replace you to feed your robot a speech.
[17:09]This is not a robot speech, folks. I am not a robot congressman. Never have been. I a contrary to what the speaker said a fully participating member of Congress.
[17:20]Let me talk about some of the things that I've done since I've been in Congress in 2014 working with Jared Polus again here. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. That's a
[17:31]dirty word. Across the aisle. You shouldn't be working across the aisle, Congressman Massie. Don't do that. We got to have a bunch of fake bills that go down party lines that we can use
[17:41]against the other party in this next election. and we don't want anything. Don't and whatever you do, don't co-sponsor some Democrats bill. You're just giving credence to to the other
[17:50]side, to the other viewpoint. Well, I ignored that and I worked with Earl Blumanau and Jared Polus and we uh got
[17:59]the hemp bill in the farm bill. And I'm not afraid to tell you, I did a little R&D to come up with that hemp bill. I ripped off and duplicated it. That's
[18:09]what R&D stands for. I ripped off and duplicated that bill from Ron Paul and it became a law and it created an entire industry. It was just a little thing in the farm bill, just a little pilot
[18:20]program that grew into an industry that helped my state, Kentucky. Created an industry that's at least a billion dollars in Kentucky. Well, now they're trying to destroy it, but that's another
[18:31]that's for another day. What am I doing now, too? Right now, that was in 2014. Have you heard about this beef product, ground beef product that's going to come
[18:42]from a foreign country at 75% of market price? How do you get something at 75% of market price? Well, I can tell you what, it ain't great a prime if it's 75% of market price. Somebody else didn't
[18:53]want to buy it. And that's what they're talking about. Bring it 300,000 metric tons. They tell you in tons so you don't realize that's 600 million
[19:02]pounds. That's a billion. That's two billion quarter pounders, folks. That's how much they're going to bring here to this country. Is that going to
[19:12]help farmers? No. It's not going to help farmers. It was never intended to help farmers. It's not even going to help consumers because what it's going to do is going to run more farmers out of business in this country. And when we
[19:24]run out of the 300 metric boatloads or whatever it is of ground beef product, they won't have our own farmers here. that won't survive through these
[19:33]manipulations of the market. Well, the solution has been here all along since 2015. As a fully participating member of Congress, I introduced the Prime Act. By
[19:44]the way, this is back in 2015. What else happened? This body got rid of country of origin labeling for beef and pork. How did that help American farmers? You
[19:55]can't even go to the grocery store and know if it's American or where in the world it came from where they have different laws that govern food safety.
[20:04]Oh, but it says USDA. Well, that must be USA. No, that is not USA beef. So, what was my solution? It's called
[20:14]the Prime Act. I say it's my solution, but I got to give credit to Shelley Pingry. Across the aisle. Oh, man. There's that dirty word again. across the aisle working with Democrats on a
[20:26]bill that could help farmers and consumers. What does the Prime Act do? It says, "You know what? If you're a small farmer and a small processor and you're not crossing state lines and
[20:36]you're raising your healthy beef right there in your own county, and you want to sell it to a neighbor in your own county, your own state, you can use a local processor. And as long as the
[20:46]state or a county health inspector is watching that process, you don't need the federal government there. You don't need a million dollars of regulation at
[20:55]a company that has 10 employees. They cut up more meat at the at the steakhouse down the street in a day than most of these processors cut up in a
[21:06]week. They don't have a USDA inspector. You don't need a USDA inspector. You just need local inspection like for restaurants. So that's the bill that Shelley Pingry and I came up with as
[21:16]fully participating members of Congress in 2015 in response to the repeal of the country of origin labeling, which I voted against the repeal. By the way, your cell phone's labeled, your suits
[21:28]labeled, your shoes are labeled, your car's labeled. Everything's labeled with country of origin except for beef and pork. Why is that? Because there's
[21:37]some greedy corporations that convinced the World Trade Organization and this body to get rid of those labels so they could sell you foreign food and make you
[21:49]think it was USDA because it has USDA label on it. Where is the Prime Act right now? Well, Massie, that was a great idea, but you didn't do anything with it. Oh, no. You all voted for it.
[22:00]It's in the It's in the Farm Bill. It's in the House farm bill. I worked hard across the aisle and with the chairman of that committee and he did town halls across the country and found out that
[22:12]this is what people want and this would solve two problems. It would three problems. It would lower the price of food in the supermarket. It would make our farmers more successful and the
[22:23]quality of what you eat would go up. That's what I've done as a fully participating member of Congress. You know what else I remember doing as a fully participating member of Congress?
[22:34]I stood at this microphone on the night the big budget busting bill passed. Some people called it beautiful. I said if it happens after midnight, it ain't
[22:46]beautiful. I said from this podium, we are not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic for this country. We are putting coal in
[22:57]the boiler and setting a course for the iceberg. I said, 'If you Look, I like to cut taxes. Two of my bills were in the big
[23:05]bill. No tax on tips and reducing tax for senior citizens on social security. Why not, Massie? Why wouldn't you vote for that? Because I refuse to lie to my
[23:17]constituents. I refuse to lie to them. I'm not going to tell them that you can cut taxes and increase spending and the debt will go
[23:28]down. That's a lie. You could, no grade schooler who's who's done the least bit of math would believe it. But we, some of my colleagues stood here and told
[23:38]that lie. And I wasn't willing to tell it, and I wasn't willing to vote for it. I said it would cause massive inflation. On that night over a year ago, when I gave my speech, I said the bond market
[23:50]is also going to react poorly to this. Interest rates will go up because they see we are not serious about dealing with the debt. they see that one day we are going to default.
[24:02]And I called a spade a spade and I voted against the big beautiful bill and I'm proud that I did because it's a terrible bill and it's what's caused this inflation. Part of what's caused this
[24:13]inflation. Let me tell you something else I've done here over the years. I worked with my colleague from California, Zo Lofrren, on privacy. You know, you're being spied
[24:24]on by our own country without a warrant. in contravention of the US Constitution. So Lorren and I got an amendment passed
[24:34]many years ago into the appropriations bill to ban that. Well, the Senate threw it in the trash, but we can't control what the Senate does. And that's one
[24:43]thing that I got done. I've been here as a fully participating member of Congress, the sole voice for inventors
[24:53]on the judiciary committee. I've introduced pro- patent legislation, pro- small business legislation. There's this misunderstanding.
[25:04]People think, oh, Apple, Google, Microsoft, they just use those inventions to keep the little guys from from getting into their markets. No, Apple, Google, Microsoft, they're slowm
[25:15]moving. They got employees there. I mean, they got some good ones, but a lot of them are just punching the clock. They've accumulated some weight. the fast nimble uh companies, the people in
[25:26]their garages, little girls at science fairs invent things that even Google Google or Apple couldn't think of. And then when they patent them, Google and Apple do
[25:37]everything they can to steal the idea, to invalidate the patent. And I have worked for the small inventors to make it a level playing field so that the little guys can
[25:47]compete so that their patents won't get stolen by the big guys. I've been doing that for as long as I've been in Congress. I got a bipartisan bill passed here
[25:58]recently, just this spring, to improve the reporting of the NYX database. This is the background check that they do on whether you could before
[26:08]you can buy the gun or not. Well, guess what? The error rate there is astounding. There's a 100,000 false denials of the Second Amendment rights of people every year the DOJ has
[26:20]admitted and they only prosecute about 12 of them every year. Why is that? Because most of them are false denials. But here's one thing I discovered. If your name is similar to somebody else's name, they're going to deny you and then
[26:31]you got to appeal. If you don't win that first appeal, you got to go hire a lawyer. And justice, if it's delayed, it ain't justice. And
[26:41]so what I did, I went I dug deeper. My friend John Lot who's a researcher and an analyst and he he actually worked at the DOJ and got a look at this data. It
[26:51]turns out if you're a minority, if you are black, you're three times as likely to share a name with somebody else who has a name who's been in prison for a
[27:01]year or more because we share names within our groups, within our ethnicities. If you're Hispanic, you're twice as likely to get falsely denied
[27:11]the purchase of a firearm because you share names with other people who are Hispanic, who have been to jail. And I don't think whether you're
[27:21]Hispanic, black, white, or Asian, anybody should be falsely denied. If a bank banks do background checks, we should let the banks do these. If the banks had an error rate like this that
[27:33]was racially prejudiced, they'd be sued out of existence. But the government gets away with it. So, I got a bill passed here unanimously
[27:42]to report by race and ethnicity. I don't want to collect more data on Americans, but that stuff's already collected. It's on the form. Just give us the data. And I think what'll happen is when we see
[27:53]what's really happening, when the data becomes public, there'll be an outcry to improve that database so that it's not racially biased and so that it doesn't deprive anybody of the right to carry a
[28:05]firearm or to keep a firearm. Um, you know, one thing I've done here as a fully participating member of Congress is draw attention to the foreign aid. Where's your money going?
[28:17]Before there was Doge, by the way, let's talk about Doge a little bit. I sat here in this chamber when we were addressed at a State of the
[28:27]Union about all of this waste and everybody stood up and clapped. Oh, the waste, the waste. Let's get rid of the waste. These were the chairman of the
[28:37]committees that created the waste. There's so much cognitive dissonance at the State of the Union. And I said to myself, they're clapping because they have to clap, but there's no way they're
[28:47]going to cut that waste. And when uh candidates campaign against foreign aid because we want to put America first, I know they're not going to cut foreign
[28:57]aid up here. You got foreign lobbyists up here for heaven's sakes. But I've drawn attention to that. I've drawn attention to a war in the Middle
[29:09]East where 75,000 people have been killed, 50,000 civilians, girls, boys that just want to just want to live their life.
[29:20]Um, I think it's a genocide. I call it a genocide, but I've also called attention to it. And I've worked across the aisle on war powers resolutions to stop these
[29:31]unconstitutional wars that have never been declared, never even been authorized. I've worked across the aisle with Roana on those bills. And we've got some of them passed. In fact,
[29:42]um I want to spend a little bit of time, a little bit more time on the thing that caused tomorrow to be cancelled, which
[29:53]is the impeachment of Peter Brian Hegathth. There are eight articles in there. Article one, by the way, this is pretty
[30:03]the easiest way to understand this is the first three articles are impeaching Peter Hegsth for carrying out illegal orders.
[30:14]These and by the way, you if you are in the military and you're given an illegal order, you do not have to carry it out. But Peter Hgsth carried out illegal
[30:24]orders and encouraged others, tried to get them to do the same thing. But all the first three articles have to do with the war powers resolution of 1973.
[30:34]The first one they didn't even have the required predicates to act without authorization from Congress. There was no attack on Americans. In fact, now they're using as a predicate attack on
[30:44]shipping vessels that aren't even ours. The War Powers Resolution doesn't allow you to start a war when somebody else's ship with a different flag gets attacked. But the the White House is still sending us letters saying, "Oh,
[30:55]we're starting a new attack." So number article one Pete Hegsath is waging war in Iran without a legal authorization because they didn't have the predicate to start it without Congress. Article
[31:06]two we passed a concurrent resolution in this body. We passed one in the House and we passed one in the Senate and the War Powers Resolution of 1973 says if you do that
[31:17]send it to the White House they got to stop the war. They didn't stop the war. They haven't even paused the war for that. They don't even acknowledge that. They say, "Oh, we don't believe in that law. What have we gotten to? We don't
[31:29]believe in that law. We don't think that law is constitutional, so we don't have to we don't have to follow it." Well, then ask us to repeal it if you don't think it's constitutional. Then override the veto and blah blah blah. Go through
[31:40]the legislative process. If you don't like that law, quit quit just ignoring the law. The next thing they did is the war powers resolution 1973 only allows
[31:51]Peter Brian Hegathth to to do anything. If they had reached the legal threshold, the predicates required to act alone. They got 60 days to stop.
[32:02]60 days came and they declared a ceasefire and then they started again and they said, "Oh, this is a new war. We're not we're not still fighting the same war." So, see, they can't even
[32:12]decide is it a war? Is it not a war? Is this a new war? Is it the same war? And they're continuing under this ridiculous legal authority which doesn't exist.
[32:23]Those are the first three articles. Article four, by the way, some people say, and article 4 and as long as well as article one through three, but article four isn't carrying out an
[32:34]illegal order. Article four is something that Peter Hgsth did himself. He came to Congress and asked us to turn off because it was turned on by law. He asked us to turn off the targeting
[32:44]minimization procedures that keep us from blowing up civilians, minimizing it. There'll be some casualties. Well, Congress said, "No, we like this law. We're not going to repeal it." So, he
[32:55]says just shut down the department over there at the Department of Defense. And the outcome was predictable. They bombed school children on the first day of the war. You would think if it's the first
[33:06]day of the war, I can understand in the heat of war, in the fog of war, in the first day of a war that you've been planning for a year, you bomb a school. I'm not saying they did it on purpose.
[33:17]I'm saying Peter Hexath himself personally is culpable for that because he doesn't care about rules of engagement. He has deprecated the rules
[33:27]of engagement. He has degraded the ability to discriminate between civilian targets and valid military targets. He needs to be impeached for that. He's
[33:38]committed extrajudicial killings. What do I mean by that? He's killed over 200 people in fishing boats. This is a And they're saying to interdict drugs,
[33:50]that's a law enforcement role. That's not a role for the military. There's a reason we separate these two things. law enforcement and military because you're
[34:00]presumed innocent until proven guilty unless you're at war and if you're holding a gun, you're shooting at me, you're guilty in the war, okay? You're going to get shot back. But when you're
[34:11]in a civilian mode and you don't have a gun and you don't have a drone and you don't have a rocket, you're presumed to be innocent. You don't send in soldiers to assassinate people in boats. And you
[34:22]certainly don't circle back and kill the people that are floating in the water because if it were a war, there's accepted norms of warfare from Geneva and elsewhere.
[34:34]What Secretary Hegsth did by ignoring those rules of engagement that have been acceptable for a century, what did he do? He endangered our own soldiers.
[34:46]Because what if one of our own soldiers ends up shipwrecked or sailors? What if one of our own soldiers ends up wounded or captured as a prisoner? He's just encouraged every one of our adversaries
[34:56]to shoot our wounded, to shoot our captured, to shoot our shipwrecked because that's what he's doing. That's why he needs to be impeached for
[35:07]that, for those extrajudicial killings. You know, article six, this should concern everybody in this body. He suppressed free speech. He tried to
[35:17]use the military to go after Senator Mark Kelly for saying something in his senator capacity. You can't do that. There's the First
[35:27]Amendment right. And just because you served in your country at one time and now do not serve, it doesn't mean you've diminished your own First Amendment rights in the process of saying, "I'm
[35:37]willing to die for this country." Okay? And now that you're done, you don't have First Amendment anymore. That's what Peter Hexath believes. He and he says, "We're not we wouldn't even take this to
[35:49]a court. We're going to deal with this in the military." So, he didn't just abregate the powers of Congress. He abregated the powers of the judicial branch
[35:58]by and he brought brought every tool he had to bear as the secretary of defense. He brought it against Mark Kelly to try
[36:07]to change the words that he said. That should bother all of us. Roughly 20% of members of Congress have served in the military.
[36:16]Do those 20% deserve less rights here at this microphone to say something than I do? I don't think so. There's we have
[36:26]several million veterans. Do should they have diminished freedom of speech? No. But if we accept what Peter Hegath did without challenging it, without
[36:37]impeaching him, then he has stolen and to himself aspects of our freedom of speech and put it under the military. Give me a break.
[36:48]He kidnapped the leader of a sovereign country. Now, what was the predicate for this? This is This one's kind of ridiculous. Oh, he was just arresting a
[36:59]guy for some drug charges who happens to be the head of another country. And then what do we find out based on quotes from the White House after
[37:10]immediately as soon as this arrest? It was a kidnapping was effectuated. Our commander-in-chief stood up and said, "Their oil's now ours and our big oil company's going to come in here and
[37:21]make big money on it." That is not right. But at least he's being honest. He's saying why why we took out the leader of another country.
[37:33]Again, that's an act of war if there ever was. They put boots on the ground. They brought in all the branches of the military. They did regime change. I
[37:44]mean, there's like four things that qualify as an act of war. And they did not have authorization from Congress to do that. Finally, there was an awful unlawful and
[37:55]awful war in Yemen that was never authorized by this body. And it didn't meet the predicates of the
[38:05]1973 war powers resolution, which is an attack on our soil or our soldiers or one of our bases overseas. That hadn't happened. And there wasn't even it didn't even reach the fairy tale predicate. Some
[38:16]some people say, "Well, if there's an imminent threat, if the president thinks that we're going to be immediately attacked, then he can attack before they
[38:26]attack." Well, that's not a valid uh operational war theory, but it's one that's sometimes employed. And so, they were using that threshold in a signal
[38:36]chat that was leaked. You remember this? They added, "I am a little bit worried when the leaders of our country are on signal and they've added a reporter to it. I'm glad they did add that reporter
[38:47]because here's what we learned from the leaked signal chat. There was no imminent threat. Let me tell you who the people on that signal chat were that decided there was no imminent threat.
[38:57]The CIA director, our former colleague here from Texas, the CIA director said there was no imminent threat, that it could be done later, that they needed really more
[39:09]time to figure out what the best targets were. Who else said there was no imminent threat? Joe Kent from national intelligence said there was no imminent threat. The vice president himself said
[39:20]there was no imminent threat. And what did Peter Hexes say in this signal chat among these folks? He said we can pause it whenever we want. Let's go ahead and
[39:31]start and we can pause whenever we want. What does that tell you? He also knew there was no imminent threat. So even this lower threshold that doesn't meet the threshold of the war powers
[39:42]resolution of 1973, they didn't even meet the threshold they've created for themselves, which is imminent threat. And they acknowledged it unanimously in
[39:52]a signal chat. And what did they do? The Secretary of Defense is in the signal chat saying, "Well, it's going to look bad politically. We're going to look
[40:02]weak if we don't do this." and uh so we got to do it now. He was worried not about what was best for America, but
[40:12]what would look bad in the news if it got out and they didn't attack. And so that was my eighth article of impeachment as a fully participating
[40:22]member of Congress. and I haven't heard anybody. I invite them come down here and claim some time
[40:32]and rebut any of the eight articles. I haven't haven't seen it. It's because they are legally correct and we should be having this vote. We shouldn't be
[40:43]cancelling Congress because of the optics. And I would implore my Republican colleagues, we're in the majority. Why are we Why
[40:54]are we whining about the Save Act? I voted for the Save Act two or three times, as many times as you want to put it on the floor. Senate's not going to pass it, but we won the elections. Why are we saying the elections were stolen
[41:04]if we won them all? We have a conservative majority in the Supreme Court. We have a Republican in the White House. We have a Republican majority here, a Republican majority in the Senate. We're complaining that the
[41:16]elections were stolen. And we are calling off Congress. Calling off Congress. and we're in the majority. I would implore my Republican colleagues
[41:26]to take that up with our leadership, but I would implore all of us to take it up with the leadership. Why are we going to be denied a debate on whether this
[41:37]should be an impeachment or not? We There won't even be a debate. There should be a debate. as a fully participating member of Congress, and I've never said that any of you weren't,
[41:48]even though the speaker said that I wasn't. As fully participating members of Congress, we should stay here for every day that's on the calendar
[41:58]and we should debate. It takes in the House, we're not like the Senate. We don't go on forever. It eventually ends maybe a couple hours later. A long a good long debate would be about four
[42:09]hours here. That's the longest debate I've ever seen in the House. Let's debate it because the world is burning. This is a global issue. This isn't just
[42:18]about America. The price of fuel's gone up everywhere. By the way, China is using their own oil reserves. Now, why would they do that? Why would they help us out? Why would
[42:30]they want to keep the price of oil lower than it would otherwise be if they didn't use their own oil reserves? Because they want to buy our gold. They're tired of buying our treasury
[42:40]notes. They say, "No, thank you. We'll take no more of your paper. We want your gold." And they're the payday lender in this war. I'll tell you what we'll do for you. China says, "We'll keep the
[42:51]price of oil low and we'll buy some more gold while it's low and tracking the price of oil." And that's what they're doing. But it's a global issue. The straight isn't just shut down for
[43:03]American farmers who are paying more for fertilize, for American consumers who are paying $7 a gallon for diesel. It's over six now.
[43:14]I I'm afraid before the election it could hit $8 a gallon. Why would we recess when we can do something about that? What is the thing we should do? We
[43:24]should walk away from that mess. We should have never got in it. Will the straight be shut down to us? Yeah, probably for a while. But there's other people who didn't bomb Iran. They'll let
[43:36]them through. They can bring our fertilizer over and then our farmers can make the food and it won't be so damn expensive in the grocery store. And the truckers can carry the food to the
[43:46]supermarket and it won't be so damn expensive in the supermarket. That's what we should do. We should also, while we're at it, bring our
[43:55]troops home. shut down those bases. Iran's missiles cannot hit the United States. They cannot reach here. What can they reach? At least a hundred of our
[44:07]bases or bases that we use from other countries. We we've put targets for them right inside the radius of their
[44:17]missiles. And so when people say, "Congressman Massie, why did you have to do this this week?" I know some of you are checking your watches and you did that when I read the articles of
[44:29]impeachment. Oh my gosh, Congressman Massie wants an hour of time. I've got a fundraiser to go to. H I got to get back and campaign. I got I got things to do. I got a dinner
[44:40]to get to. Um why are you doing this now, Congressman Massie? Because we've exhausted all other opportunities to try to stop this war. Right. We've done the
[44:52]concurrent resolution. We've said that the clock ran out on the war powers resolution 1973. We've done what we can do and we can't
[45:02]do anymore except to take Peter Hegathth out of that job. It's a very polite solution. I'm not even suggesting to
[45:12]call him a name or or do anything to him or put him in jail. I'm saying let him go back into the private sector. Let him do what these secretaries of defense
[45:22]always do. Let him go make his millions of dollars at some military contractor coming here and lobbying us to send more money overseas to countries like Israel.
[45:32]Let him go on to those greener pastures that secretaries of defense typically go to. And let's get somebody who's competent. Let's get somebody who can do the job. Let's get somebody who doesn't
[45:44]follow illegal orders. Let's get somebody who doesn't degrade our ability to discriminate between civilian and military targets. Let's get somebody who
[45:54]operates under the rules of engagement that everybody in the world operates under unless they're, you know, some terrorist organization. Let's go back to
[46:04]being a country that when we end up with prisoners, we don't shoot them. Let's go back to being that country. Let's get somebody who will uphold the honor, that
[46:15]will be that will do things that keep our soldiers safe, not things that gamble their lives so that we can steal some oil from Venezuela.
[46:25]They these are the reasons that I implore you at least debate at least debate this war powers resolution, right? Would they would it be so tough
[46:36]to have a debate? I don't think it would be. Now, listen, there's some things I know I'm not going to get a lot of uh agreement on across the aisle, but these are things I work
[46:47]on and I'm passionate about, and that's the right to keep and bear arms. I introduced a bill called the National Constitutional Carry Act. as a fully
[46:58]participating member of Congress, as a member of the judiciary committee which has jurisdiction over the second amendment and the other bill of rights,
[47:08]the other bills in the bill of rights. Uh I introduced something called the national constitutional carry act. 29 states already acknowledge that if you
[47:20]are legally allowed to have that gun in that state, then you should legally allowed to be car be allowed to carry it somewhere legally. 29 states and we've
[47:30]got these plans, these bills to do reciprocity. Well, how do you do reciprocity between a state that requires a permit and a state that doesn't require a permit?
[47:41]I say just let every state recognize that you have a God-given right. Not a congressional given right, not a bill of
[47:50]rights given right, not a Declaration of Independence given right, a God-given right, whoever your God is, a God-given right,
[48:01]a natural right. If you don't have a God, you have a right to defend yourself. And so I've been passionately working on bills like this.
[48:12]So much so there's a line to take over this bill when I leave. By the way, these bills I've written. I'll tell you about another one. A raw
[48:23]milk bill. This one are indeed. I ripped it off and duplicated it from Ron Paul. I'm passionate about this. Not everybody is. I get it.
[48:33]You want your milk cooked. I want it raw. just like a steak. I introduced this raw milk bill in Congress. One of the first bills I introduced, the milk lobby, the lobbyists up here, they're so
[48:45]strong. The milk lobby came at me. They said there would be kids dying in the streets from this raw milk. There weren't enough emergency rooms in the
[48:54]country if raw milk were legalized. My late wife, Rhonda, saw all these Google alerts going off about how I was such a terrible guy for this raw milk
[49:04]bill. She texted me. She said, "OMG, I didn't realize the lactose lobby was so intolerant." Um, all the lobbies are really
[49:14]intolerant. If you threaten their existence of the fat cats that pay the lobbyists the money that are making the money,
[49:24]I think I think Republicans and Democrats are to blame. We've got a uni party here as a fully participating member of Congress. Maybe that's what
[49:35]the speaker meant, that I wasn't a fully participating member of the uni party. Ah, it took me this long to figure it out when he insulted me in that way. And
[49:45]he's right. I've never participated in the uni party up here. The uni party that got rid of country of origin labeling, that was a bipartisan bill.
[49:55]The uni party that wants to take away your right to privacy, that's always a bipartisan vote. Unfortunately, there's more Democrats and Republicans against it than there
[50:06]are for it on most days. I've never been a member of the uni party. I've never been a fully participating member of the uni party. This much is true. I have
[50:17]been a member of the American Party. We don't have an American party here, do we? I got one back home. My American party is the constituents that I've
[50:27]served for 14 years. What do they want? They want us to take care of our own veterans instead of sending money
[50:35]overseas to oligarchs and countries, rich dictators and other countries. They want to put America first. They want us to do something about health care.
[50:47]Whatever happened to that issue? 10 years ago, we used to fight over that all the time. How are we going to get affordable health care? I don't know. Let's nationalize it. No, we need price. We need to know what the price of it is.
[50:58]When's the last time you heard one of those debates here? You want to know why you don't hear that debate anymore? It's because the uni party doesn't want that debate because both parties are taking
[51:08]money from the lobbyists that represent the insurance companies. And the insurance companies are the ones who made out the best on the Affordable Care
[51:18]Act. But I think the Americans, the American party, they want us to work on that. They want to know why it takes half a week's pay to fill up their
[51:28]pickup truck. It shouldn't take that much. Half of it's due to this stupid war that we shouldn't even be involved in. But the reality is the price of fuel
[51:38]still be high anyway because we're not doing the things that are required to bring down the price of everything. What is the thing that's driving the price of everything? Inflation. This is the thing
[51:49]that I have fought the hardest when I've been here in Congress. I wear a debt badge. I invented a debt badge that shows the debt. They won't let me wear it here while I'm giving a speech.
[52:00]I guess it'd be too embarrassing if America could see our debt racking up on a congressman's lapel while he's giving a speech. But why do I wear that debt badge? Why have I worn it ever since I
[52:11]invented it? Because I want my colleagues to look at what we're doing. What are we doing to this country? You can't lower taxes and raise spending and have it all turn out well. What do you
[52:22]get? You get what we got. You get high prices for health care, high prices for college, high prices for cars, high prices for food, high prices for
[52:33]housing, double high prices for housing because the price of housing goes up and the interest rate goes up. And if you look at your mortgage payment, if you're a young person deciding you want to
[52:44]start out in your own nest and buy a house, you get double whacked. The prices of houses have gone up because the price of inflation has caused the
[52:54]price of 2x4s and drywall and nails and everything that goes into a house to go up and the fuel to get it there. But it's also gone up because if you look at your mortgage, interest rates have gone
[53:04]up. Who caused that? I hear the president begging the Federal Reserve to lower the interest rates. They can't do it. They even if they wanted to. They've pulled on that lever so much to try to
[53:16]give us artificially low interest rates. It doesn't work anymore. The levers broke. People, speaking of broken levers, people feel like their levers are
[53:28]broken, their voting levers. We hear that the votes that the elections have been stolen. Elections aren't stolen. We're in a republic. I'll tell you where your vote gets
[53:39]stolen. It gets stolen up here on the day we elect our leadership. What am I talking about? Well, you you work hard. You campaign
[53:50]for a candidate or maybe you're working hard at something else and you just go vote for him and your guy or your gal wins and they promised you all these things and they would fight hard. And a lot of people do get up here and fight
[54:01]hard, but they get they get dejected because they get here as fully participating members of Congress very enthusiastic to represent their
[54:11]constituents and they find out the game is rigged and they got a choice really on really early on January 3rd at noon. A lot of
[54:21]new people, dozens. I hear that these elections there's going to be a lot of change. So there going to be a lot of people here on January 3rd cast their first vote. What's the first vote you
[54:31]cast for? Your leadership. I think that's kind of a misnomer, an oxymoron. Our leaders haven't been doing a very good job if we're looking at the rate of
[54:42]inflation and the debt and the price of fuel. But we call them leadership up here. And so you elect somebody in a secure election and they get up here
[54:52]where you can't watch them and they realize the game is rigged. And so what do they do? They say, "Well, the game is rigged. They've offered me some
[55:02]table scraps if I give my voting card to the speaker or the minority leader. What should I do? I think I'll give my voting card to the minority leader or
[55:13]the speaker." Oh, don't get me wrong. We get a few hall passes. You got to make it look good. Oh, we'll let you go on this bill. We understand you got a tough
[55:22]district and you made some promises. We got enough votes. The uni party has enough votes on this bill. We'll let you go vote how you want on this bill because we want you to come back because you're a good soldier. You do what
[55:34]you're told. You're compliant and we like that. And that's what a lot of people up here are faced with. But the day I got here and realized that
[55:44]this game was rigged, I said, "I'm not playing this game. I am going to tell people what is going on up here. I'm going to tell people how they
[55:54]sell committee seats." Yes. It's actually kind of a misnomer. I shouldn't tell you the committee seats are for sale. They're for rent. If they were for sale, maybe I could collect enough equity and get on to Ways and
[56:06]Means, but I don't want to pay the rent on Ways and Means. That's what they tell you when you get here. Don't get on this A committee. By the way, why is the Veterans Committee a C committee? I
[56:18]never Well, I know why they call it a C committee up here. Because the veterans don't have money falling out of their pockets here in Washington DC when they come to visit. They're asking for better health care.
[56:29]They're asking for the people who are in the military to be treated right. So, that's the way it is. People get up here, the game's rigged. I decided not
[56:40]to play the game. And for 14 years, as a fully participating member of Congress, contrary to what the speaker, who just canled two and a half weeks of session,
[56:51]by the way, we've we will have been in Congress, I think, eight full days since July, between July and the election. Isn't
[57:01]that crazy? Where else can you get a job that pays almost $15,000 a month and benefits? And some months you don't even have to come to work. And
[57:13]the months where you do come to work, there's three weeks, but we call a week four days. And four days, well, we wouldn't have to travel on our own time. So four days is actually two days
[57:24]because we need a day to get here and a day to go home. So we have we call a two days is a week up here and three weeks is a month if we feel like working that month. And this was supposed to be one
[57:35]of those three or four week three-week months but it just became a oneweek month because as a fully participating member of Congress I'm trying to get justice for the
[57:47]Epstein survivors. I'm trying to stop a war, a hot war where we're we don't care anymore about so much about which is
[57:57]civilians and which is military targets. A hot war that could go nuclear. Yeah, that's why I did it this week. That's why you had to cancel your TV
[58:07]appearance or your fundraiser or your I don't know, maybe you had a Kodell you were going to go to. Maybe there's a jet over there at the military
[58:17]airport and you were going to go to to Italy or uh South America this week and go on a Kodell because your elections all locked up. You took all the right
[58:28]votes that the uni party wanted. All the right lobbyists gave you the money that you needed to get on that a committee so that you could go home and look good. You did all the right things. you're
[58:39]cruising into your reelection and maybe you're going to go on a junket this week. I don't know. I do know this. There are people going on trips and it ain't to go work for their for their
[58:50]constituents. And there probably will be a few planes missed. Everybody got excited when the speaker cut a day off of this week. I know how that works. They've all booked
[59:02]three plane tickets out of this hell hole. And they don't plan to work a lick until after the election when you're going to get $5,000. Wait, hold on. I forgot to
[59:12]tell you this. You're going to get $5,000. And so, as a fully participating member of Congress, I I don't hide in the tunnel and run back to my office and
[59:22]hope I never see a reporter. I'll walk out there and they come on you like piranhas and they they want you to say something where you can screw up and they can, you
[59:33]know, use it to political advantage. I don't worry about what I say because I believe what I say. Nobody wrote me a speech today. I believe what I say. And so when I go
[59:45]out there and talk to reporters, they ask me questions that nobody else will answer. Sir, where's the five? Why don't you do the $5,000 before the election?
[59:56]By the way, isn't that interesting? We are the Republicans are running against socialism in November. And what are we promising
[1:00:04]if we win? Socialism. Everybody's equal. We're going to take from the people that have more and give
[1:00:14]to the people who have less. Actually, we're going to give everybody money. time is expired >> and I would say that I am a fully participating member in spite of what
[1:00:24]the speaker said and this is just a few of the things that I've done since I've been in time. Thank you and God bless. I yield back.