WASHINGTON – Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) told PJM that President Trump should not have offered to testify under oath as part of the Russia probe and argued that the memos former FBI Director James Comey wrote about his conversations with Trump are not his property.
Gohmert called for the firing of the people who had discussed the memos with Comey because they were “conspiring” to harm the president.
Gohmert also said Trump could become one the greatest foreign policy presidents in history, adding that it’s “absolutely fantastic” if Trump is perceived as “crazy” and unpredictable on the world stage.
“I can honestly say, thank God he’s [Barack Obama] gone. It will give us a chance to start protecting America because like Nigerians told me a few years back when I was over there, they said, ‘we were all so excited when you elected your first black president but since he’s been in office we’ve seen America getting weaker and weaker.’ Actually, it was Togo, right by Nigeria, but some of them were Nigerians, but they said when you go back please tell everybody in Washington to stop getting so weak, you know,” Gohmert, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said during an interview after the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road To Majority” conference last weekend.
“So that’s what they’ve seen around the world and, I think, as I told Donald Trump last September, and reminded him again a couple of months ago, you’ve got a chance to be one of our greatest presidents on foreign policy because people think you’re, like they thought [Ronald] Reagan was crazy, they thought Teddy Roosevelt was crazy, and it really gives you an advantage and an ability to get better deals. He said, ‘Well, they think I’m crazy.’ I said, ‘I know, I know, that’s why you’re going to be so effective,’” he added.
Gohmert was asked if he views Trump’s unpredictable personality as an asset in terms of foreign affairs.
“I think it’s absolutely fantastic and I reminded Trump, you remember Saturday Night Live, when Reagan was in office, would depict Reagan in some sketch where he’s walking around, ‘where’s the red button?’ You know, like he’s going to launch a nuclear attack – that’s actually a great thing for a president to be perceived as being crazy enough to do that, you know, King Jong-il and Kim Jong-un, it actually adheres to their benefit that people say ‘he’s a little bit crazy, we don’t know what he’ll do.’ Of course, in his case, it may end up causing us to have to destroy his ability to hurt others before he intends that to happen,” Gohmert said.
“When they know you’re a president like President Obama, that you are going to cave, you’ll do anything to try to placate evil, you are going to get pushed around and you’re not going to get good deals,” he added.
In his congressional testimony last week, Comey said Trump was not, at the time he was still at the FBI, personally under investigation in the Russia counterintelligence probe. The next day, Trump told reporters he would be willing to testify under oath as part of special counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation. Gohmert was asked if Trump should have offered to testify.
“No, and he does not need to do that, but that’s the kind of guy he is. He just wants to take problems head on and deal with them. But when you are president, and I admire his kind of stand-up position, but when you are president of the United States, you don’t need to be running up to Capitol Hill and getting under oath and testifying all the time, and let me tell you the biggest reason, this whole Russia thing, so much of this stuff, it’s been nothing but a distraction,” Gohmert said.
“So, if they cause President Trump to have to come to Capitol Hill and testify it means the biggest distraction – that is nothing but a distraction, possibly in our history, one of the biggest distractions in American history has occurred and they have been able to totally derail the Trump agenda by forcing him to come respond to every little goofy allegation they come up with. My encouragement to him when I talk to him next is, ‘Don’t let them distract you. You stay the course. Don’t feel like you have to come run up here and deny things under we oath. We know Jim Comey is a liar. You were right,’” he added.
Gohmert said one of the reasons Comey “cannot be trusted” is he did not put a memo together after former Attorney General Loretta Lynch told him to refer to the Hillary Clinton email probe as a “matter” instead of an investigation. Comey said that request “confused me and concerned me” and was one of the reasons he went public with the results of the email review.
“He knew ‘matter’ was not ‘investigation’ – it was a lie – that didn’t bother him to the point that he needed to do a memo,” Gohmert charged.
According to Gohmert, who said he has seen FBI employment agreements in the past, the memo that Comey wrote after his Oval Office meeting, in which the former FBI director said Trump urged him to “let go” of the Mike Flynn investigation, and gave to a friend who leaked it to the press was not his property.
“Anything you prepare in the course of your employment with the FBI, not at home with your family or something like that, but you meet with the president in the course and scope of your duty as FBI director and you prepare a memo like that, that FBI employment is very clear, those things are part of your employment and you must leave them with the FBI when your employment is over,” Gohmert said.
“Not only did he not do that, he prepared it with the intent to use it to hurt the president and help him in his little mission and then he leaked it. Well, he said, ‘oh it’s mine.’ Well, he needs to go back and read his agreement. It’s not his,” he added.
Gohmert argued that Congress should be given the names of everyone in the government that Comey had talked to about the memo. Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he shared the memos with senior FBI leadership.
“What really disturbs me also is, as I understand it, he went back, he did the memo, showed it to some other people and they discussed it,” he said. “We need to know every one of those people and fire them as quickly as possible. They were conspiring to try to harm the president of the United States. They were conspiring to get around their FBI employment contract. We have to find out who they are and get them the heck out of the government.”
Gohmert said there is no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, calling the allegations “crazy.” Both the FBI and congressional committees are conducting ongoing investigations into the matter.
“They [the allegations] are a distraction, not so much undermining, just a total distraction. Don’t look at what is good for America and what is going to heal America and help America and give us another 200 years of being the most free and productive land in the world, look over here at these crazy allegations and the fact is everybody who has investigated it in any way has said there is no evidence of collusion, that the Trump administration helped Russia affect the election at all and yet so many say they have no question at all that Russia was trying to affect an election, so why was that?” he said.
“It’s because you had the president who has been the weakest on protecting America of any president in American history. He had a cabinet and advisors around him that did things that want to suck up to Russia after the Bush administration got mad at Russia attacking Georgia. They put sanctions in place and Obama and Hillary Clinton, their position is ‘we want to rush over and beg Putin to forgive us for Bush getting mad at you when you attacked Georgia. Here’s our reset button because we don’t mind what you’ve done.’ I mean, it was an open invitation to attack Ukraine and take Crimea away from the Obama administration,” he added.
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