Various Congressional Hearings

Various Congressional Hearings

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The proposed vote by mail rule published on June 2nd at the direction of the President, as I mentioned in my opening comments, I believe should concern every American. This rule marks certainly an alarming departure from the Postal Service’s longstanding tradition of neutrally delivering all types of mail. You get a piece of mail with an address on it, you make sure it gets delivered to that address in a timely fashion.

You don’t ask any other questions. What this basically rule will do is going to turn the Postal Service, however, into a ballot verification agency that would control basically a master database of every American absentee voter. It would also give the Postal Service new power to determine whose ballots get delivered.

I think the Constitution is clear, elections are to be administered by the states, not the federal government. We have a tradition of our local communities and states administering these elections. Once again, not the federal government.

My question for you is under what legal authority can the Postal Service regulate who and how people can vote by mail? As you know, our regulations are proposed regulations, not final regulations. As to the authority, I used to be a lawyer, but I was a business lawyer, not a constitutional lawyer. I would have to defer that to the courts to understand the authority.

I think it’s clear that there’s nowhere in the Constitution, there’s no federal law that the Postal Service is authorized to create these types of voter databases, ballot verification systems or mandatory standards. It just simply doesn’t exist. It’s hard to interpret a law when it doesn’t even exist there, which is what we have.

Just because President Trump wants to do this does not make it law, doesn’t make it right, doesn’t make it constitutional. There’s certainly a massive difference between general mail requirements and regulating elections. Routine changes to the postal network can have a small impact on election mail, but this effort is a power grab to swap constitutionally mandated state control for what the president wants.

I think it’s very clear. So last year, Mr. Steiner, you issued a rule that explicitly said that the Postal Service has quote, no role in administering elections. What has changed? I don’t think anything has changed.

You know, Senator, I’m not a political person and the Postal Service is not a political organization. As you said, I think you quite aptly said, we deliver mail. That’s what we do.

We deliver mail. And that’s what ballots are. Ballots are mail.

Now, they are a special kind of mail, obviously. They need special care. And so years ago, we recommended what we call Kit 600.

And Kit 600, the fundamental premises of Kit 600 is a unique barcode and a unique envelope that allows us to move those ballots more efficiently, more securely. That is what our proposed rules suggest, is that we have unique barcode, unique envelope. And that is not something that is new.

That’s something that’s been being used by states throughout the country on both sides of the political spectrum. So California has followed it, Oregon has followed it, Arizona has followed it, Florida has followed it, among many other states. And so, you know, to me, it’s not a political question.

It’s a question of how do we most efficiently and securely move ballots. We’ve been recommending this for many years. All this does is make it a requirement.

Well, certainly best practices are different than having a mandatory requirement. You can follow best practices to deliver it more efficiently without having control of vast voter rolls and having the ability to have that data. This is basically a backdoor way for the federal government to get voting information that states control under the U.S. Constitution.

So yes or no, if a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list over to the federal government, will the Postal Service still mail their ballots under this proposal rule? Under our proposed regulation, no. We would tell the state that we need the manifest in order to, you know, look, what we’re asking for. So, I mean, that’s the answer.

You’d tell no. So, the proposed rule basically coerces states to conform to these new requirements and hand over their absentee voter rolls or face the consequences of not being able to vote by mail. Some states, that’s all they do.

Oregon is completely vote by mail. If they say, no, we control the list, the states control the list, we’re not going to give it. Oregon has followed Kit 600 since the day they started voting by mail.

This is a different issue. This will be a lot different issue. You’re telling these states either give the federal government this information, trust the federal government, trust the Trump administration, we’ll take good care of these.

And if you don’t do it, you can’t mail absentee ballots. You’re going to make a decision that people cannot vote by mail. That’s unacceptable.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, all that does, Senator, is make sure that we match the ballots that a state believes they’re sending out to what actually gets sent out, right? So all the state gives us is a list of here are the voters that are supposed to get ballots and here are the ballots. We then compare the two, make sure that the ballots that are supposed to be sent get sent.

If Maryland had followed that, they probably wouldn’t be in the problem they’re in today. So it is a much more efficient, a much more effective way to make sure that states, I would think that states would want the information to ensure that the ballots that they think are sending out are the ballots that are actually being sent out. Well, they do know what they’re dropping mail.

I think they can understand that. They think if they put an address with their voter rolls on a piece of mail for a ballot and give it to you, they do expect you’re actually going to deliver it. You don’t have to say we want all of your information.

We want that information in our control. You mentioned Maryland. I think there was a printing error.

This regulation wouldn’t have done nothing to fix what happened in Maryland. The states control their own elections. That’s pretty clear in the Constitution.

And an effort by this administration to nationalize elections and have the federal government having this information is incredibly dangerous precedent. You can imagine sharing this information with the Department of Homeland Security and using this list for a variety of nefarious purposes. We need to protect the integrity of the voting rolls.

We need to protect the separation of elections from federal government, ensure that our state and local governments are the ones administering their own elections. That’s what this is about. If we come to November 1st and these contingency funds haven’t been released, if nothing has been accomplished in restoring SNAP benefits, will you call on your Democratic colleagues to reopen the government and deal with these shutdown crises immediately, deal with health care conversations once the government is reopened? So let me ask you a question.

The basis for your question is, and maybe the better way to state it would be, if the Trump administration continues to violate the law, if the Trump administration unlawfully refuses to release funds so that families in Colorado don’t go hungry, if the Trump administration refuses to follow the law as they have for the better course of the last nine months, violating statute after statute, if in that scenario these actions unfold, then how will Democrats respond? That, my view, would be a more fair characterization of the question that you’ve posed, because it does feel a little bit like we’re in the Twilight Zone here, with an administration that is lawless, violates the law with impunity, is now doing so with respect to the release of funds for families that may go hungry. We’re here in Washington, you’re here in Washington, House Republicans are gone, six weeks and counting, gone, literally gone, won’t show up in Washington, won’t do town halls back in their respective districts, and somehow the question is posed to House Democrats as to how we will respond. The Trump administration needs to follow the law, and insofar, you’ve heard all my colleagues repeatedly suggest we would like to negotiate an agreement, in good faith, with our Republican colleagues.

That is why we’re here, in our nation’s capital. The question should be posed to Republicans, when will they get serious about working with us in good faith, so that we can reach an agreement? The passion you hear is frustration with the fact that Republicans could just simply abandon their post for six weeks, that the Trump administration could just violate the law without consequence. It should offend everyone.

The Trump administration’s focus on restoring law and order. You see that? I do. Okay.

How many convicted felons has Donald Trump pardoned? I don’t think as many as Joe Biden pardoned. Okay, and how many is that? I don’t know. You don’t know? Okay.

You answered the question. Thank you for answering the question, Mr. Biggs. Okay.

Happy to. Let me help provide some context. I’d love that.

Donald Trump pardoned, as you know, on the first day of his second term, over 1,500 defendants who were convicted of crimes connected to the events of January 6th. That included a number of convicted felons who had been convicted, by the way, of crimes including assaulting police officers. That does not sound like restoring law and order to me.

And I’m sure as you are aware, many of those individuals, or certainly some of those individuals who were pardoned for violent offenses by President Trump, as you heard earlier today during the course of this committee proceeding, were then convicted of committing crimes after they were pardoned by President Trump. So you could understand why I would be very skeptical of a resolution that says the Trump administration’s focus on restoring law and order, when the very first action he took as president was to pardon violent felons. Seems like that is not restoring law and order to me.

Chairman Cole, you, I wrote something else down during your opening statement. You said, quote, that constituents are tired of bills passing in the dead of night. Remember saying that? Correct.

Okay. Do you remember where you were on Thursday, July 3rd, in the middle of the night? No, I don’t. I remember.

Because we were both on the floor of the House as Republicans passed in the dead of night tax breaks for the richest Americans. Let me read you a few headlines. I don’t think… Sleep deprived.

I didn’t ask you a question, Chairman Cole. Sleep deprived lawmakers stay up all night to pass the big, beautiful bill. Republicans advance Trump’s big, beautiful bill in unusual late night vote.

Dead of night, Dems accuse GOP of cowardice over late night votes on Trump’s big, beautiful budget bill. Intentionally hiding, GOP tries to sneak through Medicaid cuts in the dead of night. This was not like a decade ago.

This was eight months ago. I remember these votes, as I’m sure my colleagues on the other side of the aisle do. So I, you know, thou doth protest a little too much.

I get it. I understand why you’re opposed on the merits to this proposal, Mr. Chairman. But the speaker’s comments in his press conference, his dead of night votes, outrageous how the Senate could have done so and all the rest is just, it’s a little bit too much for me.

In that same report, there’s a disclosure regarding purchases of two different, well, rather two different transactions. So between 15 to $50,000 in a national coffee house chain and between 50 to $100,000 in a semiconductor company on May 9th and May 12th. Are those transactions that you’re doing personally or are these through a stockbroker or are these transactions that you’re handling yourself? So how they happen is I submit proposals under DOJ guidance to say, hey, we, I would like to trade this or that and they run their review and the FBI runs a review and then they come back and say yes or no.

And then I make the transaction. Is there a reason that you decided to make the purchases into those two companies? Generally speaking, I, before I got this job, I was, you know, trading stocks, but not a lot of people and I just follow certain industries, you know, and I thought that would be a good investment. So my, the reason why I ask, right, because you had divested in other companies and I presume that that wasn’t because there were actual conflicts.

It’s just that you wanted to avoid an appearance of impropriety. It was both. Both.

But not all of the companies were conflicts. Whatever they divested from. I don’t make the call.

They make the call. I guess my point would be, the reason why I ask this, why I said it’s not a gotcha question, I have for years led an effort here in Congress to try to ban members of Congress, senior executive officials, from trading stocks. And it’s bipartisan in nature.

We’re working really hard to get that done, Republicans and Democrats. And you can understand, I think, given your role, given the nature of the position that you hold as the leader of the largest law enforcement agency in our country, that divesting entirely, not, you know, doing day trading now, I think would be something that would be in the interest of the American people.