jim. jim was looking at it and he was walking route and subsequent bills that a new piece of machinery because when the tax cuts went in and deregulation, i can now add an employee. you see susie over there? susie has a job because of what you did washington, d.c. it's time we start taking a message we know and applying it in such a way people can understand. when we do that as leaders, that is called leadership, called navigating. what we do matters and the matter to the people were elected by. i love washington, d.c. and the work you dedicate to do. i miss desperately love of my life lisa. i get on a flight to atlanta and fly to d.c. and then get to go back. i vote in georgia. i am from northeast georgia. here's what i believe is one of the best districts in the world. the people there are the ones who vote for me. if you ever disconnect from where you're fun to come appear to end up with a mess we're in right now. the last thing i will say is washington needs to go back and watch a few more schoolhouse rock episodes. now it's just a bill. sitting on capitol hill anymore. we just sit around. we've got to get back to an executive that understands its 's constitution executive, that is to administer the law, not make them up. we need a caucus this is instead of worrying about a bill and how it may be interpreted, make a law that makes sense that takes into account the needs of her country and those around the world and make it clear to the executive can carry it out and buy the weight we need a judicial system that says it's time to stop giving chevron and other differences back to the administration. we have to get way to the way understand that. then we have the functioning democracy we have. it's why our businesses, our election property, is why the folks in the world want to come. i'm going to leave you with a little bit of this. we, as republican lawyers, on my committeem you're going to see me do two things. and i told the chairman this on many occasions. mr. chairman, when you are ready to legislate, you'll find no harder worker than doug collins. but if you want to continue to go down this road that you are on, then you going to find me and you're going to hear some country analogies and i'm going to fight back, because i refuse to let this country get dragged down the path of divisiveness and hatred and other things when we can do so much better. that's leadership. that's where we need to be. god bless you. thank you so much. [applause] [indistinct conversations] >> more now of veterans aairs secretary nominee doug collins, from the c-span archives, as part of ouweek long marathon of trumpominee is in their own words. the top republican on the house judiciary committee, mr. collins that centered on the first impeachment inquiry into than president donald trump. rep. collins: i thank the chairman, and it is interesting that, again, parliamentary inquiries, some of the things are some of the things we will discuss today, in a different arena. for everyone who has not been here before, this is a new room, new rules, it's a new month. we've even got a cute little stickers for our staff so we can come in, because we want to make this important, because this is impeachment, and we have done such a terrible job of it on this committee before, but what is not new is what has been reiterated by the chairman. what is not new is the facts. what is 90 with the same, sad story. what is interesting, before i get into this in part of my opening segment is what was just said by the chairman. we went back to a rebel of mr. moeller. he also quoted him saying the attention of the american people should be on foreign interference. i agree with him completely. i guess the american people did not include the judiciary committee, because we did not take it out. we did not have hearings, we did not have anything to deal deeply into this issue. we passed election bills but did not get into the in-depth part of what mr. moeller talked about, taking his own report and having hearings about that. we did not do it. so i guess it does not include the house judiciary committee. we also just heard an interesting discussion, we are going to have a lot of interesting discussions about the constitution and other things. but we also talk about the founders. what is interesting is the chairman talked a lot about the founders, and, again, this is why we have a him about the founders being concerned by foreign influence, but what he did not quote is the founders being really really concerned about political impeachment because you just did not like the guy. you did not like and since november 2016. the chairman has talked about impeachment since last year when he was elected chairman, two years ago on november 17th, before he was even sworn in as chairman. so don't tell me this is about new evidence and new things and new stuff. we may have a new hearing room. we may have new mikes, and we may have chairs that aren't comfortable, but this is nothing new, folks. this is sad. so what do we have here today? you know what i'm thinking? i looked at this, and what is interesting is there's two things that have become very clear. this impeachment is not really about facts. if it was, i believe the other committees would have sent over recommendations for impeachment. no, they're putting it on this committee because, if it goes badly, i guess they want to blame -- adam schiff's committee and the hpsci and others want to blame this committee for it going bad, but they're already drafting articles. don't be fooled. they are already getting ready for this. we've already went after this with the ukraine after numerous failings of mueller, cohen, annulments. -- emoluments. the list goes on. but the american people are obviously failing to see us legislate. if you want to know what's really driving this, there's two things. it's called the clock and the calendar, the clock and the calendar. most people in life, if you want to know what they truly value, you look at their checkbook and their calendar. you know what they value. that's what this committee values: time. they want to do it before the end of the year. why? because the chairman said it just a second ago. because we're scared of the elections next year. we're scared of the elections, that we'll lose again. so we've got to do this now. the clock and the calendar are what's driving impeachment, not the facts. when we understand this, that's what the witnesses here will say today. what do we have here today? what is really interesting over today and for the next few weeks is americans will see why most people don't go to law school. no offense to our professors. but, please, really? we're bringing you in here today to testify on stuff that most of you have already written about, all four, for the opinions that we already know, out of the classrooms that maybe you're getting ready for finals in, to discuss things that you probably haven't even had a chance to, unless you're really good on tv of watching the hearings for the last couple of weeks, you couldn't have possibly actually digested the adam schiff report from yesterday or the republican response in any real way. now, we can be theoretical all we want, but the american people is really going to look at this and say, "huh? what are we doing?" because there's no fact witnesses planned for this committee. that's an interesting thing. frankly, there's no plan at all except next week an ambiguous hearing on the presentation from the hpsci, the other committee that sent us the report, and the judiciary committee, which i'm not still sure what they want us to present on, and nothing else, no plan. i asked the chairman before we left for thanksgiving to stay in touch, let's talk about what we have, because history will shine a bright line on us starting this morning. crickets until i asked for a witness the other day, and let's just say that didn't go well. there's no whistleblower. and, by the way, it was proved today that he's not or she's not afforded the protection of identity. it's not in the statute. it's just something that was discussed by adam schiff. we also don't have adam schiff, who wrote the report. he said yesterday in a press conference, "i'm not going to. i'll send staff to do that." he's not going to. but, you know, to me, if he was wanting to, he'd come begging to us. but, you know, here's the problem. it sums it up very simply like this. just 19 minutes after noon on inauguration day, 2017, "the washington post" ran the headline, "the campaign to impeach the president has begun." mark zaid, who would later become the attorney for the infamous whistleblower, tweeted in january 2017, "the coup has started." the impeachment will follow ultimately. and in may of this year, al green says, "if we don't impeach the president, he'll get reelected." you want to know what's happening? here we go. why did everything that i say up to this point about no fact witnesses, nothing for the judiciary committee, we spent 2 and a half weeks before this hearing was even held under clinton -- two and a half weeks. we didn't even find your names out until less than 48 hours ago. i don't know what we're playing hide the ball on. it's pretty easy what you're going say, but we can't even get that straight. so what are we doing for the next two weeks? i have no idea. the chairman just said an ambiguous hearing on the report but nothing else. if we're going to simply not have fact witnesses, then we are the rubber stamp hiding out back, the very rubber stamp the chairman talked about 20 years ago. what a disgrace to this committee to have the committee of impeachment simply take from other entities and rubber-stamp it. you see, why do the things that i say matter about fact witnesses and actually hearing and actually having us a due process? because, by the way, just a couple of months ago, the democrats got all sort of dressed up, if you would, and says, we're going to have due process protection for the president and good fairness throughout this. this is the only committee in which the president would even have a possibility. but no offense to you, the law professors. the president has nothing to ask you. you're not going to provide anything he can't read, and his attorneys have nothing to ask. put witnesses in here that can be fact witnesses who can be actually cross-examined. that's fairness, and every attorney on this panel knows that. this is a sham. but you know what i also see here is quotes like this, "there must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment supported by one of our major political parties or imposed by another. such an impeachment will produce decisiveness, bitterness, and politics for years to come and will call into question the very legitimacy of our political institutions." the american people are watching. they will not forget. you have the votes. you may have the muscle, but you do not have legitimacy of a national consensus or of a constitutional imperative. the partisan coup d'etat will go down in infamy in the history of the nation. how about this one? i think the key point is that the republicans are still running a railroad job with no attempt at fair procedure. and today, when the democrats offered amendments, offered motions in committee to say we should first discuss and adopt standards so that we know what we're dealing with, standards for impeachment that was voted down or ruled out of order; when . when we say the important thing is to start looking at the question before we simply have a vote with no inquiry first, that was voted down and ruled out of order. so, frankly, the whole question of what materials should be released and what is secondary, but that's all we discussed. the essential question -- and here it is -- which is to set up a fair process as to whether the country put this country through an impeachment proceeding. that was ruled out of order. the republicans refused to let us discuss it. those were all chairman nadler before he was chairman. i guess 20 years makes a difference. it's an interesting time. we're having a factless impeachment. you just heard a one-sided presentation of facts about this president. today, we will present the other side, which gets so conveniently left out. remember fairness does dictate that, but maybe not here because we're not scheduling anything else. i have a democratic majority who has poll tested what they think they ought to call what the president they think he did. wow. that's not following the facts. we have just a deep-seated hatred of a man who came to the white house and did what he said he was going do. the most amazing question i got in first three months of this gentleman's presidency from reporters was this -- can you believe he's putting forward those ideas? i said, yes, he ran on them! he told the truth, and he did what he said. the problem here today is this will also be one of the first impeachments -- the chairman mentioned there was two of them, one that before he resigned before and then the one in clinton -- in which the facts, even by democrats and republicans, were not really disputed. in this one, they're not only disputed, they're counterdictive of each other. there are no set facts here. in fact, they're not anything that presents an impeachment here, except a president carrying out his job in the way the constitution saw that he sees fit to do it. this is where we're at today. so the interesting thing that i come to with most everybody here is this may be a new time, a new place, and we may be all scrubbed up and looking pretty for impeachment, but this is not an impeachment. this is just a simple railroad job, and today's is a waste of time because this is where we're at. so i close today with this. it didn't start with mueller. it didn't start with a phone call. you know where this started? it started with tears in brooklyn in november 2016, when an election was lost. so we are here, no plan, no fact witnesses, simply being a rubber stamp for what we have, but, hey, we got law professors here. what a start of a party. >> that was veterans affairs secretarnominee doug collins as a member of congress in 2019 during theirst impeachment inquiry into than president donald trump. he would go on to write about the impeachment inqui a few years later with his book "the clock in the calendar," and spoke about the topic as a guest on c-span's "after words" program. >> doug, it is so good to be with you, and i have the honor of talking to you about your new book, "the clock and the calendar. rep. collins: i'm excited about it. i'm glad you are here. >> i am too . it is an honor. we worked with each other for a few years. i want to start talking to you about that lens because i think it is so interesting. you are a humble person and has always been a humble person, and a lot of folks, you sort of tease us in the book with a little bit of your background here and there, but you grew up, and you were the sun of a georgia state trooper. you grew up in the south, and you talk about in your book, and i'm going to get to that one quote in the book, but you went into the military. you were in the air force. you were a chaplain in the air force. and all of that i think it gives you a great perspective on really the events that we are going to be talking about, that you talk about in the book, but i want to get to that one quote here. growing up in the south them and especially in north georgia, there are few things more sacred than church on sundays, politics, nascar, and college football. why don't you tell our viewers about who doug collins is. rep. collins: ken, i appreciate it. thanks. if the book is about everything we came through. you were there, i was here for that whole time. i love the way you put lens, and in my lens, it was being raised in georgia, at the foothills of the appalachian mountains come about 15, 20 minutes from the start of the appalachian trail, an area that overtime has grown, the lake, but as i was growing up, especially when my dad i got transferred to gainesville, where i was born and raised there, those kind of values just, you know, came up, and myself, my brother, my mom, my mom worked with senior adults. it is sort of interesting to make. a lot of people have these backgrounds where you did not have what you did not have, because we thought we had everything we needed, and that was sort of my background. and my dad, who is still alive, by the way, when he retired, he had almost two years of on years -- unused sick leave, he just want to work every day, and that was embedded in may. as i was growing up, we went to college, politician, going to be the lawyer, and that was back in the time, the old show "l.a. law." everybody wanted to be a lawyer at that point. lisa and i have been married now for 33 years. and it started as a journey. coming from a state trooper's kid, we did not have a lock it when we went on vacation, we went to the state parks. we got a discount, so that is where we went. that's how i saw the word, -- world, never thinking one day i might sit in congress. where you come from as a matter of lens, and for us, it was charged, it was faith, you have the background believe, we argue about football and politics. being part of your community was never in doubt for me, because it is what you did. and as i grew sort of in my life and faith, i struggled in my life. a lot of people did. one day answering that call became, after college, i had been in business for a few years and was doing ok so when i answered that call of faith, i started on my masters, became a pastor for over 11 years, thought that that was probably where i was going to be. i was going to be a pastor, and that was good, i was enjoying it. i spent time in the navy as a chaplain. i have a daughter with spina bifida. she is now almost 30. you met jordan. she is living at home with us. we did not get to stay in the navy as i thought we might have. i got into my church, in 2002, got into the united states air force, even while serving in congress, went to iraq in 2008. that built in the service for my dad, congress, and how we were, but then about 11 years, i went through another time of change, which led me to law school. you go from a pastor to a lawyer, i got a lot of weird things, people saying that is just strange, how can you be a pastor and a lawyer come in the south, even more so. from my perspective, pastors and lawyers are the same thing. we looked at somebody, heard what their situation was, told them the worst possible scenario and gave them the best possible answer. that led to resort in the house, which i served in the georgia house of representatives, and then came up to washington, d.c. so that trooper's kid, and i use that term and lot, as a term of respect to my dad, as a trooper's kid, to sit in the halls of congress, some of the most interesting times that we live through in the last few years. that is just who i am. i'm with the president, fathered three kids, but was sitting in the front row for some of the most incredible times we've seen. rep. buck: i have lived in small towns, and i represent small towns. you've been in my district. you've seen those small towns. there's something about your background i find interesting. i think it helps with the theme of the book. a lot of times in small towns and a lot of times in the military and in faith and in having that rule of law, troopers background, the norms sort of move you toward the middle. you don't think of doing extreme things because you have these influences on you. as a kid in a small town walking down the street and you are smoking, a neighbor is going to call your mom and say hey, guess what, guess what i saw? so you have the interesting parts of your background sort of following you towards normal, and abnormal jumps out of you when you're from that background. do you find that, when we were are looking at events that we will talk about in a second, did you find that to be part of what struck you? rep. collins: it did a little bit. funny you should say that back, i moved back very closely to my dad about 100 yards in two different areas of the peninsula. we had a lady named betty , next-door neighbor. we did not need an alarm system when i was growing up, because ms. betty watched everything that we did my brother and i. ms. betty came to my dad, we were coming home and dad was driving and we got out of the truck and is when we first started driving. ms. betty came out and asked my dad, she said was douglas in a hurry yesterday, when those rocks were spraying out when he left the dirt road. i said betty, really? really? it was at southern way and laid out. the dirt road yesterday. so yes i know that feeling and yes it did. that is a part when you grow up in your background or books and reading in washington, d.c. and legislating. it is really true, the "mr. smith goes to washington," this is a special place. those of us succumb to sent to washington, d.c. have a trust with those who went before. all the way from starting our country until now. we are called in legislatures. and one of the things that we did, criminal justice reform. the interesting on how we deal with computing and law enforcement, the big ideas to get those done. but to see that was not valued by everybody. it was not about legislating it was about being a congressperson . i think that for my background, and i appreciate you it's interesting that you should bring that up. it's always got me during this time especially this very difficult time. we were dealing from a passionate side that was not in my opinion helping anyone. it was designed, will get into it later get out of a president that they didn't like but also looking around. if you are a legislator and never have legislated, are we missing the point? from my perspective, that is the background. i believe you came to do something, not be something. that is where i was at not to be critical of any particular person, but that's the culture of washington today. show less there's an old saying when you get to congress you look around and you think how did i get here. after a year or two, you look around and think how did that get here. a lot of that has to do with your heart for legislating. you want to help people or throw bombs. rep. collins: being in the military, we always have the authorization act and have bills coming up. there was a bill, part of the oco bill funding that was in the procreation side, i remember the funding which was overseas contingency of the amount we were spending on global were terrorism. in my opinion, even being in the military that should've been absorbed into the regular budget. we only have time to talk about the budget anymore. i almost want to vote against this, mick mulvaney and myself, we were gonna vote against increasing the legislation. i had somebody come to me item , a member on the floor come to me and said what you doing and i said i'm voting no, you should to and they stopped and they said it's a bad vote, i've not been in the military like you. rep. buck: i thought to myself, have we missed it so bad that you cannot explain good boats or -- votes or bad vote because of the perception out there that they feel like they cannot control. there is a great thread that you draw in this. i really enjoyed it because i saw through your eyes and is so interesting to me. we really started dealing with all of these issues when there was an investigation. hillary clinton's e-mail and a group of us were asked to interview the different witnesses from the fbi and i worked in federal law enforcement for years and the fbi was a great agency. i cannot fathom that they would go rogue and be engaged in partisan activities. i want you to talk a little bit about that but then i want you to talk about how the group, the top of the fbi became the same group that decided they were going to investigate donald trump and actually use false information in the dossier, submitted documents to the fisa court affidavit that have come under scrutiny. you have this group, what were your thoughts when you heard about hillary clinton e-mails? rep. collins: well, it goes back to what you saw in this discussion. that is being in the military being here's the rules, if you don't like the rules, you can change the rules. as long as they were in place, that's what everybody should live by no to tears of justice in our society. coming as someone that did not grow up on the affluent side of the track, working for. that is very important for most everybody in america matter where you're from. when i heard about this, it is not a matter of even in the law. did you intend, did you have classified or private e-mails, sound about what you did forever paid the department of justice did not let the it tech ever testify before congress or turnover e-mails. again you're starting to see this is sheer they were believing hillary clinton was good to be the next president. all of this was a distraction. they needed to keep it down. it began to be a process where you look at it and say this is not liked. everybody needs to be honest about what was going on. then you have a group as you saidecame part of the group that began investigating the president d falsify fisa warrants and move forward. recently john durham's investigation, i almost wish i could go back and put on the front of the cover, we were right. we were but nobody wanted to believe us. really the whole book in the year that we discussed, the whole year of 2019 and particular starts with the clinton cover-up. they're trying to cover up or falsify this e-mail. who is the center stage player, jim comey. jim comey steps up in july of 2016 and makes a statement as a prosecutor and i'm sure it made you in with john ratcliffe and many others later on sort of say , he said no reasonable prosecutor would make this case implying on the attorney general that it was not strong enough to take it because they were to compromise. this is the meeting on the tarmac, this latimer with peter strzok to begin this process based on a clinton directive with a steele dossier to taint president trump with the russian connection. we now know this, because documents were released later, that this was briefed to president obama. we now know this is a tactic being used. what's bad, political campaigns, we run our near-death and never expect the federal government at the highest level to participate in it. so, yes, i think that's where this whole thing started. it goes back to 2016. the same people peter strzok, andy macomb, all of them tie into it. and what concerns me the most, it's not the regular fe
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