John Hope Bryant: “I would just like to restate what the chairman said. We would be glad to accept the first part of the amendment offered…”

“I would just like to restate what the chairman said. We would be glad to accept the first part of the amendment offered by the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde], because it is simply a restatement of what is in the bill with regard to specificity. It is the second part that is the problem. I am not sure he realizes the catastrophic impact it has on the bill. The question is, What threshold do you have to meet for the Attorney General to go into the 90-day period? The history of this act is that only 13 independent counsels have been appointed in 15 years. It is not as though this has been rushed into and independent counsels are appointed willy-nilly, right and left all the time. It is very rare. In fact, of those 13 independent counsels, almost half of them have decided there was no reason to prosecute. So changing fundamentally the threshold would be a terrible mistake. What the amendment offered by the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] does is provide that the Attorney General would have only 15 days in which to determine, not if there is a specific allegation from a credible source, but 15 days in which to determine whether or not there is sufficient evidence to go forward.”