Guilty Until Proven Innocent

I have a question for you, Mr. Speaker. Would you be willing to grant this power to Donald Trump's federal government, to their Department of Justice? As you think about that question, when you think about this bill, if your answer is no, then your answer should be no on granting this power to our Attorney General's Office. You have a political office, an elected official, being granted unfettered power to investigate. Not just a small business owner, your neighbor, but other elected officials, other constitutionally elected officials, any single one of us in this chamber. On the lowest legal standard available, this bill is akin to giving the Attorney General the ability to just kick the door down to your house or your business and demand all your paperwork, demand oral testimony, demand a deposition, hand you interrogatories, just do discovery because the Attorney General needs to do it because he can't operate within the laws we have now, like all the other attorneys have to do, Mr. Speaker. I'm urging a no vote and I hope you join me because hearing on this House floor that the Attorney General needs to circumvent the laws that we have in the state of Washington that every other single lawyer has to follow because it's just too expensive for him to do it, to allow him to just knock on someone's door and demand paperwork, that is unbelievable. The bill seeks to protect constitutional rights of inhabitants of Washington State. The unfortunate reality is that it does that by crushing the constitutional rights of others in this state. This bill is granting unchecked authority to the AG's office for the CIDs and not just to the AG, but to all 800 plus attorneys in that office. That is concerning. You've heard a lot of the arguments of why that's a problem. But when that's coupled with all of the lack of oversight, with really the only oversight being also the Attorney General's office, it's setting the stage for political targeting. What we're doing is essentially giving the Attorney General's office this broad new sweeping power that it never had before so that it can be weaponized against small businesses, non-profits, and individuals that maybe the Attorney General's office doesn't like. And Mr. Speaker, that is especially chilling, giving 40 years of one-party rule in this state. We've heard that the spirit of this proposal, of this overreach, of this expansion of Bureau of Tyranny, is justified because we live in unprecedented times. There's a perceived wrong going on at the federal level, and therefore that justifies a functional wrong here at the state level. The State Attorney General has no right to go into other states or into the federal government and pursue his whimsy. He can focus in Washington, on Washington people and Washington businesses, and in the effort to protect our own, he can harass and intimidate and bankrupt our own at his discretion. It's the weaponization of this investigative tool that is so dangerous, and the reason to vote no on the proposal. When I look backwards at the conduct of the Attorney General's office, I don't see a lack of ability to put people and entities underneath their thumb. I see a plurality of situations in which they've done it. I see an Attorney General's office that has been reprimanded by superior courts. I see an Attorney General's office that 40 percent of the people in this state are frankly afraid of. I see an Attorney General's office that has gone after cities and jurisdictions and businesses on baseless merits. I see an Attorney General's office that has no barriers already to finding this information. Mr. Speaker, hot air, like tyranny, will expand to the container that fills it. The Attorney General's office has an abundance of both. One of the things I tell my daughters is that in this country we get to choose our own leaders, often for good, sometimes for ill. We're also all subject to the protections of the Constitution, and we all have the knowledge that our state government and our federal government work for us, because in this state, in this country, the people are sovereign, Mr. Speaker. I've spoken to my children about the principles of the American Revolution, the idea that we were not going to be governed by a king, but instead would be ruled by ourselves. This bill gives me the opportunity to show my daughters about where sometimes, if it passes, we take a wrong turn. We need a lot more of the spirit of 76, Mr. Speaker, when looking at this bill. We need a lot more passionate dedication to the principles of freedom. We should vote this bill down. Thank you. Mr. Speaker, I'll leave you with a great thing that the writer C.S. Lewis wrote. Maybe you'll recognize it. Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. That's what we've got here, Mr. Speaker. This is oppression. This is tyranny. Vote no.