-Thank you, Chair.
So, let's play a game.
Let's play
a lightning-round game.
I'm gonna be the bad guy,
which I believe half the room
would agree with anyway,
and I want to get away with
as much bad things as possible,
ideally to enrich myself
and advance my interests,
even if that means
putting my interests
ahead of the American people.
So, Mrs.
Hobert Flynn --
Oh, and by the way,
I have enlisted all of you
as my co-conspirators.
So you're gonna help me legally
get away with all of this.
So, Mrs.
Hobert Flynn, I want to run.
If I want to run a campaign
that is entirely funded
by corporate
political action committees,
is there anything that legally
prevents me from doing that?
-No.
-Okay.
So, there's nothing stopping me
from being entirely funded
by corporate PACs, say,
from the fossil-fuel industry,
the healthcare industry,
Big Pharma, entirely,
100% lobbyist PAC-funded.
Okay.
So, let's say I'm a really,
really bad guy.
And let's say I have
some skeletons in my closet
that I need to cover up
so that I can get elected.
Mr.
Smith, is it true
that you wrote this article,
this opinion piece for
"The Washington Post" entitled
"payments
to women were unseemly,
that doesn't mean
they were illegal"?
-Well, I can't see the piece,
but I wrote a piece under
that headline in "The Post,"
so I assume that's right.
-Okay.
Great.
So, green light for hush money.
I can do all sorts
of terrible things.
It's totally legal right now
for me to pay people off,
and that is considered speech.
That money is considered speech.
So, I use my special-interest,
dark-money-funded campaign
to pay off folks that I need
to pay off and get elected.
So, now I'm elected.
Now I'm in.
I've got the power to draft,
lobby, and shape the laws
that govern
the United States of America.
Fabulous.
Now, is there any hard limit
that I have,
perhaps Mrs.
Hobert Flynn --
is there any hard limit
that I have in terms
of what legislation
I'm allowed to touch?
Are there are any limits
on the laws
that I can write or influence,
especially if I'm --
based on the special-interest
funds
that I accepted
to finance my campaign
and get me elected
in the first place?
-There's no limit.
-So, there's none.
So I can be totally funded
by oil and gas.
I can be totally funded
by Big Pharma,
come in,
write Big Pharma laws,
and there's no limits
to that whatsoever.
-That's right.
-Okay.
So, awesome.
Now, Mr.
Mehrbani,
the last thing I want to do
is get rich with
as little work possible.
That's really what I'm trying
to do as the bad guy, right?
So, is there anything preventing
me from holding stocks, say,
in an oil or gas company
and then writing laws
to de-regulate
that industry and cause --
you know, that could potentially
cause the stock value to soar
and accrue a lot of money
in that time?
-You could do that.
-So, I could do that.
I could do that now with the way
our current laws are set up?
Yes?
-Yes.
-Oh, okay.
Great.
Okay, so, my last question is --
or one of my last questions,
I guess I'd say, is,
is it possible
that any elements of this story
apply to our current government
and our current
public servants right now?
-Yes.
-Yes.
So, we have a system
that is fundamentally broken.
We have these influences
existing in this body,
which means
that these influences are here
in this committee,
shaping the questions
that are being asked of you
all right now.
Would you say that
that's correct, Mr.
Mehrbani or Mr.
Shaub?
-Yes.
-All right.
So, one last thing, Mr.
Shaub --
in relation to congressional
oversight that we have,
the limits that are placed on me
as a congresswoman,
compared to the executive branch
and compared to,
say, the President
of the United States,
would you say that Congress
has the same sort of standard
of accountability?
Is there more teeth
in that regulation
in Congress on the president,
or would you say it's about
even or more so on the federal?
-In terms of laws that apply
to the president, yeah,
there's almost no laws at all
that apply to the president.
-So, I'm being held and every
person in this body's being held
to a higher ethical standard
than the President
of the United States.
-That's right 'cause there are
some Ethics Committee
rules that apply to you.
-And it's already super legal,
as we've seen,
for me to be a pretty bad guy.
So it's even easier for the
President of the United States
to be one, I would assume.
-That's right.
-Thank you very much.
