The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“Congressional Oversight (Executive Session)” mentioning Chuck Grassley was published in the Senate section on pages S4959-S4960 on July 20.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
Congressional Oversight
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, today I come to the floor to discuss an issue that I have raised during the course of multiple Republican and Democrat administrations. This is a problem that crosses political boundaries, whether you have a Republican or Democrat President. That issue is responding to legitimate and valid congressional oversight requests.
In my time as a public servant, I have seen my fair share of unresponsive government, sometimes downright obstructive government. I have seen it rear its ugly head from decade to decade. There is nothing more eroding to public faith than an unresponsive executive branch that believes that it only answers to the President and not to the U.S Congress and perhaps, most importantly, we the people.
Based on my interactions with the Biden administration's Justice Department and its component Agencies--specifically, the FBI--the current officials in charge of those Agencies are, at best, unresponsive public servants. That goes all the way to the top, to the President, because the buck stops there.
As I say to many nominees, either you are going to run your Department or the Department runs you. Right now, it looks like the Justice Department is running the Attorney General's office, and that is a great big shame.
I voted to confirm the Attorney General. I had high hopes he would follow through on his public statements of ridding the Department of political infection. Instead, I fear he has taken the Justice Department to new politically charged heights.
To date, I haven't received a full or complete response to a single oversight request from the Justice Department. As one example, on February 3 of this year and March 9 of this year, Senator Johnson and I asked the Department about Nicholas McQuaid. Mr. McQuaid is the Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, of which Mr. Polite will be taking his place upon confirmation.
McQuaid was employed by a law firm until January 20 of this year and worked with Christopher Clark, whom Hunter Biden reportedly hired to work on his Federal criminal case.
This arrangement poses a clear potential conflict.
A core function of congressional oversight is to ensure that governmental Departments and Agencies are free of conflicts of interest. That is especially so with the Justice Department and the FBI. If conflict infects them, those investigations and prosecutions, the very purpose of the Department's existence, could be undermined.
So I have requested a recusal memo for McQuaid. I have also requested to know, as a threshold issue, whether one even exists. Attorney General Garland won't answer.
Now, can you believe that? Here we have a Federal criminal case that implicates the President's son, and the Attorney General won't even answer Congress as to whether or not an employee of his Department who has an apparent conflict is recused from that matter?
It certainly looks like the Garland Justice Department is doing all that it can to protect the President's son.
Let me remind the Attorney General that I was the one who led a transcribed interview with President Trump's son. For all of the grief that Trump and his family got from the Democrats, at least that family showed up and answered the questions of legitimate congressional oversight.
Early on in the Attorney General's tenure, I instructed my oversight staff to work diligently and, of course, in good faith with their counterparts at the Justice Department. My staff have done the phone calls. They have had the meetings. They have sent emails, many of which go unanswered. My staff has done this all in good faith.
At my level, I have made every effort to get the Attorney General on the phone to discuss my oversight requests. It took him 2 months to get on the phone with me for a one-on-one call. I found out just the other week that Attorney General Garland's staff never told him of my request to speak with him. This omission is a dereliction of duty by the Department staff, to keep something like that from the Attorney General. Like I said, either you run the Department, or the Department runs you.
This type of unresponsive conduct has consequences. These consequences might not be immediate, but eventually, as I have seen over the years, ultimately the consequences arrive. The more their government tries to hide from them, the more the American people lose faith in government institutions. With such bad government conduct, I don't blame the people for losing faith. The fault is with the government, not the American people. After all, we work for the American people; they don't work for us. It is sad to say, but many in Washington, DC, don't understand that very fundamental precept of our constitutional Republic.
My fellow Senators, this type of conduct from the Biden administration and the Justice Department is unacceptable. But it isn't just this administration or this Justice Department; it is something I have seen too long under both Republican and Democratic Presidents, and it will have long-term consequences for the integrity of our governmental institutions.
In light of the Department's consistent failure to respond to my oversight requests, I will object to any unanimous consent request that Kenneth Polite be confirmed as Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. I do not do so on the basis of his credentials, which I don't question; I do it as a message to the Attorney General that he needs to improve DOJ's interaction with the Congress.
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