John Ratcliffe Rebukes Admin Officials on Operation Choke Point

I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for yielding a few minutes of his time this evening. Mr. Speaker, the most fundamental principle of our criminal justice system is that we are innocent until proven guilty. Operation Choke Point turns that most sacred tenet on its head. When President Obama and his administration uses agencies like the Department of Justice and the FDIC to target legal businesses without due process, without any public debate, and when he bases his attacks not on the rule of law but on his own political beliefs, well that is a tragic breakdown of the system of checks and balances and separation of powers that our founding fathers deliberately designed. Mr. Speaker, Operation Choke Point is just flat wrong. Folks all across the 4th Congressional District of Texas in cities and towns like Bonham and Denison, Sulphur Springs, Texarkana, Sherman, they all just want to run their businesses and enjoy their freedoms without fear of persecution from a president that has overstepped his authority time and time again. Many of the Texans that I represent are deeply troubled and concerned about Operation Choke Point, an initiative which is pressuring banks and others in the financial industry to deny access to financial services to businesses like gun sellers and coal producers. My constituents see this operation for what it really is, a blunt weapon that targets and stigmatizes entire industries that the Obama administration dislikes instead of an honest effort to get rid of actual bad actors and lawbreakers. Sadly, as a direct result of Operation Choke Point, legitimate businesses in Texas and across the country have been forced to close simply because the president and his activist bureaucrats have a political agenda and they don't like what these businesses are selling. Mr. Speaker, when you weaponize your government to go after folks you don't like and target your own citizens as political enemies, well that's the way that third world governments operate, not the way the world has ever seen. Mr. Speaker, this is the United States of America and our government should never go after its own citizens for political reasons. This is especially outrageous when the administration does so by targeting the Bill of Rights and that's exactly what's happening here. When you specifically target gun dealers and ammunition manufacturers, that's an affront to and assault upon our Second Amendment rights and no president or administration is above the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I've met recently with far too many honest, hard-working, law-abiding folks in the gun industry that have been politically targeted by this initiative. We can't allow this administration to continue to target legitimate businesses like gun stores and cigar and pawn shops through Operation Choke Point just because the president doesn't like what they sell. Pressuring and forcing banks to stop engaging with legal industries needs to stop. We can't allow unelected bureaucrats to make such a brazen backdoor assault on legitimate businesses and the hard-working, law-abiding citizens who own and operate them. In July of 2014, one of the judiciary subcommittees on which I now serve held a hearing on Operation Choke Point and because of that hearing and the due process concerns raised by the testimony there, the DOJ and the FDIC announced it would rescind its list of so-called high-risk merchants and that move seemed to be an apparent recognition of the fact that Operation Choke Point is wrongfully inflicting collateral damage on legitimate businesses that are losing access to financial services. But despite this acknowledgement and admission from those at the top, companies across my district tell me that the administration's foot soldiers on the ground simply haven't gotten the message yet. The harassment is continuing and this is simply unacceptable. Mr. Speaker, we should stand up for the rights of every American. I'm saddened to see a president who's so out of touch with what has made this country great, who's so out of touch that he would use an army of unelected bureaucrats to attack businesses that don't toe the ideological line with his administration. Congressional oversight demands that we refuse to step aside, that we refuse to let this unprovoked attack on our constitutional and fundamental rights go unchallenged. Mr. Speaker, I will continue to stand watch against this overreach. My colleagues and I will not allow our constituents' rights to be violated or our Constitution to be trampled. I thank the gentleman from North Carolina and I yield back. Thank you, Congressman.