Looking ahead, a bill to end the tax-exempt status for groups supporting terrorism is expected on the floor tomorrow.
And federal funding is still on the agenda during this lame-duck session of Congress.
A government shutdown will happen if spending is not extended by December 20th, one month from today.
Watch live coverage of the House here on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN is your unfiltered view of government.
We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast.
Oh, you think this is just a community censor?
No, it's way more than that.
Comcast is partnering with a thousand community centers to create Wi-Fi-enabled lifts so students from low-income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything.
Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
Welcome back.
We're joined now by Representative Harriet Higaman, a Republican of Wyoming.
She's on the Judiciary Committee and the Natural Resources Committee.
Congresswoman, welcome.
Thank you for having me.
You are a lawyer and you serve on the House Judiciary Committee.
What do you think about your colleagues in the House Ethics Committee?
Do you think they should release the report on former Congressman Matt Gates?
I think we should follow the standard that has typically been followed and follow the rules.
So if his resignation means that the report isn't typically released, I don't think it should be released.
I think that the same standard should apply to everyone.
So there is precedent actually for the House Ethics Committee releasing reports on members who have resigned.
Do you think that senators should be able to see that?
A lot of House Republican, sorry, Senate Republicans are saying we should at least get access to that report.
Again, I'm going to say that they should follow what the precedent is and follow what the rules are.
And I'm not involved in that process.
And so I think that we need to let the process play out.
And how do you think those allegations should be handled?
What do you think should happen next?
So one of the things that I'm very troubled by is we seem to get where there's an investigation done, the matter is resolved, and then we move on.
And then something like this comes up where he's nominated for a position and people kind of want to drag him through the mud.
I've worked with Matt Gaetz for the last two years on the Judiciary Committee and the Weaponization Committee.
He's an incredible, brilliant legal mind, and he is someone who I think would go in and stir up the DOJ, which is what we need.
We have uncovered a substantial amount of information of how the Department of Justice and the FBI have been weaponized against the American public.
And Matt Gates has been instrumental in exposing that and trying to hold people accountable for the decisions that have been made.
And I think that's really why they're attacking him and trying to derail this nomination, because they recognize that he's someone who's going to go into the Department of Justice and actually do what needs to be done, which is clean out a lot of the dead wood, if you will, and also root out the corruption that we know has been going on.
What we saw with the Hunter Biden laptop, what we saw in terms of how they treated Hunter Biden, the amount of money that they gifted to him by refusing to prosecute him for the tax evasion that he engaged in with the money that he was receiving from foreign countries.
Matt Gaetz is somebody who's going to expose this, and I think that that's why they're attacking him.
Do you have any qualms about his character for the position of Attorney General?
I don't.
There are Senate Republicans that are rejecting a proposal floated by some advisors to President-elect Trump to take the job of conducting background checks away from the FBI and give it to a private investigation.
What do you think of that?
You know, again, I think that this is a reflection of the fact that we have lost faith in these hallmark institutions.
Again, because of my work on the Judiciary Committee as well as the Weaponization Committee, when we brought in Christopher Wray, when we saw what happened in 2020 with the effort to cover up the Hunter Biden laptop, even though the FBI had had it by that time for almost a year, when we look at the Russia-Russia-Russia hoax and the nonsense that the FBI engaged in with all of that, what you're seeing is an effort to try to hold these agencies accountable.
And if we can't do that, find an alternative to their ability to engage in this kind of nefarious acts.
There's an article, Congresswoman, on the Hill that says Trump's vows for revenge take on new seriousness.
It says that Trump routinely calls for adverse actions against his perceived enemies and often makes veils threats, a dynamic present during his first term in office that accelerated as he battled for re-election.
I just want to get your reaction to that and if you think that that will actually happen.
So as an attorney who practiced for 34 years, words matter.
And when I hear the kind of terminology that they used in that article, that article is intended to convey a certain meaning, which is that he somehow is doing something wrong by attempting to hold people accountable for engaging in bad acts.
Again, I'm going to go back to Mary Garland, Christopher Wray, Mayorkas.
These people have failed the American public.
It's why the American public threw Biden and Harris out the window in terms of this last election.
They don't trust these institutions.
They don't trust these agencies.
So Donald Trump has been given a mandate to come into Washington, D.C. and clean out a lot of the corruption in these agencies.
So the Hill is going to refer to that as revenge.
I'm going to refer to that as accountability.
No one is above the law.
No one is above being held accountable for the decisions that they make.
So whether it is Mayorkas and his failure on the southern border, his failure in terms of the fentanyl flooding our country, the illegal aliens flooding our country, or it is Merritt Garland and his efforts to persecute certain individuals based upon their political beliefs, or it's Christopher Wray, or I could go on and on and on.
Depending on how you want to interpret that, or how you want to describe what President Trump is doing, the left side is going to see that's revenge.
I'm going to say he's actually coming into Washington, D.C. and holding people accountable for violating the law, for undermining the security of the American public, for using the FBI to go after political enemies, which is what we saw in the Russia-Russia-Russia hoax.
Do you realize that in August of 2016, the FBI was well aware that the steel dossier was a hoax?
They knew before they ever went and applied for the first FISA warrant that that was political dirty tricks from the Hillary Clinton campaign.
They knew that in August of 2016, and they continued to pursue the Russia-Russia-Russia hoax for another three years after that, despite knowing that it was a hoax.
So when Donald Trump comes into Washington, D.C. and holds people in the FBI accountable for that, I don't see that as revenge.
I see that as being held accountable for their bad decisions.
Do you think former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who you replaced in Wyoming, should be prosecuted?
No, but I think she should be investigated.
For what?
What she did on the January 6th Committee.
There are several things that we know that she did.
Number one, they have deleted files.
They deleted the actual videotaped depositions of people.
Well, again, as an attorney, the evidence is the videotaped opposition.
They deleted those.
The other thing that she did is, as an attorney, she met with a witness that she knew was represented by an attorney, and she went behind his back and she was meeting with Cassidy Hutchinson and not informing the attorney of that serious ethical violation.
She had absolutely no right to do that and talk about a conflict of interest.
In addition to which, they were covering up information about what President Trump had done prior to January 6th in order to harden the security in Washington, D.C.
So he do you believe she actually broke the law or is these ethical violations that you're alleging?
I think that they're both.
I think they're potentially both.
That's why I said we need to have the investigation.
I'm not going to prejudge what she did, other than I know that if you're meeting with a witness that is represented by an attorney and you know that, and you're going behind his back in order to meet with that person, and you look at what happened during that June hearing when she came before the January 6th Committee, the June 2022 hearing, and Cassidy Hutchinson came out and number one, it was hearsay upon hearsay upon hearsay upon hearsay,
which no attorney worth their salt ever would have presented that evidence to anybody, let alone something that was that significant and that serious.
So do I think that she merits being investigated?
I do, but that's not about revenge.
That's not about revenge at all.
That's about holding her accountable.
And if you'd like to join our conversation with Representative Harriet Hageman, a Republican of Wyoming, you can do so.
Our numbers are 202748-8000 if you're a Democrat, 202748-8001 if you're a Republican, and 202748-8002 if you're an Independent.
I want to ask you about this quote from D.C. lawyer Michael Bromowicz, and he says this, and then I'll get your reaction to it.
He says, I have heard from a number of organizational clients and some individual clients who are very scared that they may be targeted, even though their conduct has been entirely lawful.
They fear being targeted for their views, their statements, and for the causes and people they support.
They're very scared, and I think for good reason.
They're concerned that they could be audited by the IRS.
They could be the subject of a bogus congressional investigation.
There may be even a way to conduct or at least initiate a bogus criminal investigation, and all with the goal of, ironically, for the first time, actually weaponizing the Department of Justice.
How would you respond to that?
I would respond to that: that this person doesn't know what he's talking about in terms of the history of the weaponization of the Department of Justice.
I would encourage him to go and watch the hearings of the Select Committee on Weaponization of the federal government and the investigations we've done over the last two years in terms of how the Department of Justice conducted themselves during the lead up to the 2016 election from 2016 to 2020 while President Trump was the president and then since then.
So he's either naive or he's being very disingenuous to say that the Department of Justice has not already been weaponized against people.
Number one.
Number two, again, I will come back to if you when you engage in bad behavior, it is appropriate for our law enforcement agencies, if you will, to investigate that.
Again, words matter, and what he's attempting to do is act like there's some kind of a stasi out there associated with Donald Trump.
Well, I haven't seen anything before like what I saw under the Biden administration and what I saw with the Department of Justice and the FBI during the four years of the first Donald Trump administration.
We're going to take calls, but before we do, there have been talk that President-elect Donald Trump wants to take the FBI out of the Justice Department and make it a direct report to the White House.
What were your initial reactions to that?
Well, first of all, the FBI, we need to fundamentally change the way that the FBI has been operated.
And prior to 9-11, the field offices had much more authority in terms of what their responsibilities were, what they investigated, and how they conducted those investigations.
After 9-11, under Mueller, they brought most of that power and they stockpiled it all in Washington, D.C.
And that's when you have seen the kinds of nefarious actions that we've seen.
The investigations against conservative Catholics, for example, the investigations against the people at the school board meetings.
But, Congresswoman, not to cut you off, before 9-11, I mean, that was a massive intelligence failure.
Absolutely, it was a massive intelligence failure.
What I'm telling you is that they're not going to be able to do that.
Fundamentally weren't doing what they were supposed to be doing.
Well, Washington, D.C. wasn't doing what it should have been doing.