Darrell Issa: “Listening to the initial debate here, you would believe that there was a legitimate difference of opinion here on the…”

“Listening to the initial debate here, you would believe that there was a legitimate difference of opinion here on the floor about protecting the Justices. Clearly, there was no such difference in the U.S. Senate. What there is, though, is a story that I think needs to be told. {time} 1230 When I authored this legislation a month ago, I knew that we had support in the Senate, and I knew that we would have support in the House. The first thing I did was I called up the most senior member of the Judiciary Committee on the other side of the aisle and said to him that I believe we should do this. He agreed. Not checking with staff, he agreed to this simple bill of protecting those who would be intimidated and those who would be threatened and those whose lives could not be replaced in a timely fashion without changing the outcome of the Court. And that was it; I had my cosponsor. A day later, mysteriously, another bill, very different, was dropped in the hopper by the Speaker's staff. It was done so without a Republican cosponsor, without a call to the ranking member who stands here today. That was done because they wanted to play message with it. They wanted to delay, and the Speaker has delayed for a month. Madam Speaker, 18 U.S.C. 1507 is not a suggestion that you prevent intimidation of the Court. It is a law. It is a law that the President of the United States has sworn to uphold and, through his Attorney General, has not, has negated the responsibility.…”