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Today Congressman David Scott (GA-13) provided the following remarks during a full House Financial Services Committee markup of five bills, including the Democrats’ Resolution of Inquiry. The resolution directs the Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin to provide Congress with documents from Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) regarding the financial and business dealings of President Trump, his family members, and his associates.

Click here to watch video of Congressman Scott’s remarks.

Rep. Scott: Mr. Chairman, first I want to thank the Ranking Member for putting forth this resolution, this privileged resolution.

And I truly believe that it’s something that, whether we like it or not, it’s something that every Republican and Democrat Member of this Congress is going to have to eventually deal with, especially us here in the Financial Services Committee, because this resolution is simply asking us to give us an opportunity to do our job.

This is why we have this resolution with the Treasury. First of all, our Financial Services Committee has the oversight responsibility of the Treasury Department and FinCEN.

Secondly, the Treasury Department is already collecting this information as Treasury told our Financial Services Committee just three months ago.

And third, Treasury has a database of more than 200 million bank secrecy act filings.

Now all of that is why we technically have a responsibility, But, Mr. Chairman, our history as a great country has been overcoming critical threats to the welfare of our nation.

Now I don’t know what the president has or doesn’t have, that is not my issue. My issue is this: no man, no man, is greater or bigger than the people of the United States.

I love this country, Mr. Chairman, as I’m sure does everyone on this committee, but this ball is in our court. We’re in play.  We can't remain silent because as long as this Russia investigation is going on with our president, it is the American people who are suffering.

We have 21 veterans committing suicide every day, but no mention of that.

We have an opioid crisis of resounding consequences for the future of our young generation.  Nobody is talking about that.

We're talking about Russia having this undue influence. And no matter how we look at it, they are over in Russia, Putin is over in Russia, grinning from ear to ear. Why? I can just imagine him being able to talk to his cronies and say look at the United States: “Man, we've got them tied all up in knots. We've got them tied up in a massive ball of confusion and infighting.”

It has to stop.  It’s gone on too long. We in this committee, all we're asking is for Treasury to present us with this information and let us as Members of Congress stand up for the American people.

They deserve for us to be talking about jobs, job training, and the crises that are moving throughout this nation. And so I hope we can do this in a bipartisan way and make this nation proud.

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