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[Congressional Bills 116th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 97 Introduced in House (IH)]

<DOC>

116th CONGRESS
  1st Session
H. RES. 97

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the crime of 
            lying to Congress must be prosecuted equitably.

_______________________________________________________________________

                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                            February 4, 2019

     Mr. Gaetz (for himself and Mr. Biggs) submitted the following 
    resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION

 
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the crime of 
            lying to Congress must be prosecuted equitably.

Whereas providing false or misleading testimony to the Congress is a crime under 
        sections 1001, 1621, and 1623 of chapter 18, United States Code;
Whereas testimony given before Congress, or any of the committees and 
        subcommittees thereof, must be truthful;
Whereas honest and forthright testimony is essential to the oversight and 
        investigational authority of Congress;
Whereas the investigative authority of Congress has been an integral part of its 
        operations since its establishment;
Whereas the ``inquisitorial powers'' of the legislature were even discussed in 
        the Federal Convention of 1787, prior to the ratification of the 
        Constitution;
Whereas, in 1792, a committee of the House of Representatives conducted an 
        investigation into military losses to Native American Tribes, and the 
        committee was explicitly empowered to ``to call for such persons, 
        papers, and records, as may be necessary to assist their inquiries'';
Whereas Roger Stone, a longtime political strategist, was recently arrested, 
        with 29 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents and 17 vehicles 
        arriving at his home for a predawn raid;
Whereas the indictment of Stone revealed that the crimes for which he was 
        arrested were one count of obstruction of proceeding, five counts of 
        false statements, and one count of witness tampering;
Whereas Stone is one of a very small number of people who have been arrested for 
        the crime of lying to Congress;
Whereas it has been widely recognized by Members of Congress, legal scholars, 
        and historians that lying to Congress is a crime for which very few 
        people have been prosecuted;
Whereas in a 2007 essay in the Quinnipiac Law Review, Mr. P.J. Meitl wrote that 
        ``almost no one is prosecuted for lying to Congress'', and that ``only 
        six people have been convicted of perjury or related charges in relation 
        to Congress in the last sixty years''; and
Whereas the lack of convictions for lying to Congress is not due to the 
        overwhelming truthfulness of testimony given, as it has been revealed 
        and proven that many people have knowingly provided false statements to 
        Congress without facing punishment, including but not limited to--

    (1) James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, who was 
questioned by Senator Ron Wyden, and was asked whether the NSA 
``collect[ed] any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions 
of Americans'', to which Clapper replied ``No, sir'', and ``not 
wittingly'', a response he later admitted was ``clearly erroneous'';

    (2) James Comey, former FBI Director, who was questioned by Senator 
Charles Grassley, and asked whether he had ever authorized someone to leak 
information to the media, to which he responded ``no'', despite reports 
from the Office of the Inspector General indicating his response was likely 
untrue;

    (3) John Brennan, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency 
(CIA), who was questioned by Representative Trey Gowdy, and asked whether 
the FBI or CIA had used the so-called ``Steele dossier'' as the basis for 
any legal proceedings of any kind, to which Brennan replied ``no'', and 
stated further that the dossier ``was not, in any way, used as the basis 
for the intelligence community assessment'' of possible election 
interference, a statement contradicted by news reports, investigative 
journalists, and the sworn testimony of many other members of the 
intelligence community;

    (4) Andrew McCabe, former Deputy FBI Director, who was revealed by the 
Office of the Inspector General to have ``lacked candor'' when questioned 
about his unauthorized disclosure of information to the media, including 
three instances while McCabe was under oath;

    (5) Lois Lerner, former Director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of 
the Internal Revenue Service, who repeatedly made false statements to 
congressional investigators, and who denied that she had requested overly 
extensive and deeply intrusive information from conservative nonprofit 
organizations in an attempt in order to chill their constitutional rights 
to free political speech, statements later revealed by the Department of 
the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Information to be untrue;

    (6) Eric Holder, former Attorney General, who--

    G    (A) provided false information to the House Committee on Oversight 
and Government Reform on May 3, 2011, regarding the origins of the program 
named ``Fast and Furious'', subsequently changing his statement during 
testimony before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on November 18, 
2011;

    G    (B) provided false information to the House Committee on the 
Judiciary on May 15, 2013, when he claimed that he had recused himself from 
the Associated Press leak investigation, without any records indicating a 
formal recusal letter, required under such circumstances, had ever been 
drafted; and

    G    (C) provided false information to the House Committee on the 
Judiciary on May 15, 2013, saying that ``prosecution of the press'' was 
something he had never ``been involved in [or] heard of,'' though he had 
personally signed off on a search warrant for the personal email account of 
Fox News correspondent Mr. James Rosen; and

    (7) Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State, who was questioned 
about mishandling classified data by Representative Jim Jordan during a 
hearing of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, and responded ``there 
was nothing marked classified on my e-mails, either sent or received'', a 
statement proven untrue by reports from the FBI and the Office of the 
Inspector General: Now, therefore, be it

    Resolved,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Justice for All Resolution''.

SEC. 2. SENSE OF CONGRESS.

    That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the crime 
of lying to Congress, as defined in sections 1001, 1621, and 1623 of 
chapter 18, United States Code, must be prosecuted equitably, without 
regard to politics or elections.
                                 <all>
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