Political Quotes

“There is so much to cover here from my friends on the other side of the aisle. First, I address something that my colleague from Wisconsin said when he said that the Constitution lays out very clearly in Article I the powers of Congress. I would ask him or any of my colleagues on the other side if you could point me to where in the Constitution it confers subpoena power on Congress. You won't be able to because it is something established by the Supreme Court that is derivative from Congress' power to legislate. The Supreme Court has set forth exactly what a congressional subpoena is authorized to do. In a recent case, which you may remember, the Trump v. Mazars case, Donald Trump sued his accountant to prevent them from providing documents to Congress pursuant to a subpoena. Congressional authority, that is what we are worried about here. Well, the Supreme Court reiterated that there must be a legitimate legislative purpose in order for a congressional subpoena to be valid. Mr. Speaker, I asked in our Oversight Committee when we debated this: What is the legitimate legislative purpose that any one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle can identify to justify a contempt finding here where they have the substantive information of the recording included in the transcript and everything else requested in that subpoena was provided to them? Nonetheless, they are insisting on getting the audio of that transcript that they have. Mr.…”