Zoe Lofgren: “I think this is really a sad day for the House of Representatives and the legislative branch of government. Others will…”

“I think this is really a sad day for the House of Representatives and the legislative branch of government. Others will go through the details, but I would like to explain to the Members of the House, who were not a part of the Committee on the Judiciary process, what we went through. I personally participated in lengthy meetings where Republican and Democratic staff of the committee sat down with the Justice Department, the FBI, the intelligence community; and we went through the proposal line by line. We did not do anything that the Justice Department objected to. In fact, there were huge sections of the bill that would have been thrown out because they were unconstitutional; and we fixed them in the process that we had. Ultimately, we had a unanimous vote on a very tough measure, and I think some people are confused that we did something at odds with the professional staff. We did not. This is a tough measure. Now, is it the perfect answer? Perhaps not. We could work further with the administration. We have worked on a bipartisan basis to make this a good, tough law. The problem is, we are going to have a conference anyhow.…”