Gohmert turns up heat at hearing
WASHINGTON — For Texas U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, the Justice Department investigation of possible Russian collusion with President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign has become personal.
Gohmert, a former state judge from Tyler who said he’s being “watched” by unspecified people in the Justice Department, was among the sharpest GOP skeptics in Thursday’s House grilling of embattled FBI agent Peter Strzok, whom he accused of lying under oath.
Gohmert brought the down the house in a nationally-televised clash by going somewhere few other lawmakers dared: He asked Strzok, who is under fire for sending anti-Trump texts during the presidential election, about lying to his wife over an affair he had with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
“I can’t help but wonder
when I see you looking there with a little smirk — how many times did you look so innocently into your wife’s eye and lie to her about Lisa Page,” Gohmert asked Strzok during a joint hearing before the House Judiciary and House Oversight and Government Reform committees.
The remark caused an immediate uproar among Democrats, who erupted in shouts of “outrageous!” and “shame!” One called it “intolerable harassment of the witness.”
“You need to take your medication!” Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, a New Jersey Democrat, yelled at Gohmert.
When Strzok tried to respond, Gohmert cut him off, saying “there was no question.”
Finally given a chance to speak, the agent took the opportunity to question Gohmert’s character.
“Sir, first, I assure you under oath, as I also spoke during my interview a week or two ago, I have always told the truth,” he said. “The fact that you would accuse me otherwise, the fact that you would question whether or not that is the sort of look I would engage with a family member who I have acknowledged hurting, goes more to a discussion about your character and what you stand for and what is going on inside you than it does mine.”
The exchange, one of the more colorful in a daylong hearing of partisan theatrics, was only the latest flash point in Gohmert’s outspoken assault on the Russia probe by Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which some Republicans have sought to shut down.
Gohmert, elected to the House in 2004, is one of a handful of congressional Republicans who have called for Mueller’s resignation.
Last week he told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that he believes that people connected to the probe could be spying on him.
“I’ve been told by a number of different people in a position to know that you’re being watched, you’re being listened to,” Gohmert said.
“What does that mean, by spying?” Carlson pressed. “Would that mean by monitoring your email, phone calls, office? What did they say?”
“All of the above,” Gohmert replied. “And I’m told by one of our folks that they know everybody that walks through your office door before they get to the door.”
“They being whom?” Carlson asked.
“That would be the U.S., well, FBI, intelligence. I didn’t ask for a ‘they,’ but I’ve had people in those departments tell me, you know, they’re watching, they’re listening, for whatever you may be ...”
Gohmert, once appointed a Texas appeals court chief justice by former Gov. Rick Perry — now Trump’s energy czar — did not name any names. For some of his Democratic critics, the anonymous accusation harkens back to the days of anti-communist crusader Joe McCarthy. But to Carlson, the Texans’ story presented a potential “constitutional crisis.”
Carlson introduced Gohmert, a vocal member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, as a congressman who thinks he may be facing “retaliation for not properly kowtowing to the Deep State.”
The episode continued Gohmert’s long association with conspiracy controversies.
He has been a target of derision on the left ever since he brought the term “terror babies” into the national lexicon. That started with a 2010 floor speech asserting that the FBI was looking at terrorist cells that might be sending women to the U.S. to have babies so they could then be raised as terrorists abroad — armed with U.S. citizenship, thus enabling them to return to commit future acts of terror on the homeland.
Gohmert, 64, attributed the report to a retired FBI agent whose identity he could not reveal.