We are here today in painful recognition that our government does not have the capacity to heal the divisions in this nation or the willingness to use sincere diplomacy to avoid violent conflict and is, in fact, unwilling to end conflict peacefully.
Its greatest talent is to craft misinformation and disinformation to subvert the media and misuse it as an instrument to incite fear and hatred among our people, exciting partisan divisions at home through crass politics, and stirring ancient hatreds abroad through lies, deceit.
In blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, this government has deliberately circumvented Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, the authority of Congress to make war.
It has violated international criminal law by conspiring to commit acts of sabotage and violence on the high seas. It has used illegal and unconstitutional means to destroy the energy resources needed to protect millions of people in Europe during the winter and then to profit from its illegal actions by selling energy to Europe at a four to six times markup.
It has done so blatantly, cynically, simultaneously, taking credit for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline and then denying any role in it.
I speak directly to those responsible, thanks to a courageous journalist, Seymour Hersh. We know what each of you did at the Nord Stream pipeline, Mr. President, Mr. Secretary of State, Mr. National Security Advisor, and Madam Undersecretary of State.
And we will not rest until you are held accountable by Congress, by the International Criminal Court, and by the American people at the next election for your reprehensible conduct, which has debased our Constitution, undermined the rule of law, in our name, committed an act of war which threatened the peace of the world and the stability of our own nation.
No amount of balloon militarism will distract us from your profoundly lawless, reckless conduct and have lost trust in your ability to defend America, to affirm that we are a nation of laws, not of men or women, to hold those in high office to the highest of standards of national and international law.
If we fail to do this, we have only ourselves to blame, while our government descends into depravity and tries to frogmarch us directly into nuclear war.
Under the pretense of the pursuit of national security, our government's aggressive nature has alienated nations of the world and caused them to withdraw from commerce.
It has ceded our national sovereignty in matters of peace to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which prefers military escalation to peace and is content, together with this administration, to use the good, courageous people of Ukraine as pawns in a vicious and deadly geopolitical chess game, which began well before the illegal Russian invasion.
And it is now planning to do for the people of Taiwan what it has done for the people of Ukraine, portraying China the aggressor while surrounding China with about 200 military bases.
At home, our government has supported devastating gain of function research, which loosed the pandemic across our land.
It has perverted social media to suppress legitimate debate over COVID policy to the detriment of the health, welfare, and the will of Americans.
And it has enabled the federal government law enforcement to be weaponized against political opponents and has injected itself into social media organizations to impose political and ideological censorship in attacking the patriotism of those Americans who dare ask questions.
Such a government is neither deserving of the trust of the American people nor worthy of our tacit consent to make decisions in our own interests.
We must change this government before it destroys our nation.
We must change the way we are governed, insisting upon a government dedicated to peace.
As a congressman, I warned America about going to war after 9-11.
I led the effort against the Iraq war, together with Ron Paul, and saw the lies that took the lives of our people.