Glenn Grothman: “I would like to comment a little bit on some of the issues that have been out there this week, issues that are important…”

“I would like to comment a little bit on some of the issues that have been out there this week, issues that are important issues but about which, for whatever reason, I don't think the public has been adequately informed as to what is going on. The first issue I would like to talk about concerns the bill yesterday regarding trade relations with Russia and an earlier bill with regard to oil exports from Russia, and that is an incredibly important provision in that bill that has not been discussed in the mainstream media, which is an amendment of something called the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. Today, before that bill is signed, the U.S. President can sanction foreign leaders or, I guess, pretty much any foreign person, certainly any foreign elected official, if they violated any human rights, and the definition of human rights is fairly narrowly defined. When we think of horrible foreign leaders, we think of murder. We think of kidnapping. We think of holding people without trial for excessive periods of time. And we think if somebody is going to be sanctioned, they should be responsible for those human rights abuses. In this bill, we change the definition of human rights to be open- ended, whatever the President thinks human rights are. Furthermore, we allow sanctioning of people who are indirectly responsible for violating human rights.…”