Ranking Member Nadler Opening Statement for the House Judiciary Committee Markup of H.R. 8205, the “Keeping Violent Offenders Off Our Streets Act”

Today, Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler delivered the following opening statement, as prepared, for the House Judiciary Committee Markup of H.R. 8205, the "Keeping Violent Offenders Off Our Streets Act":

"Mr. Chairman, H.R. 8205 is yet another vehicle for Republican campaign messaging that does nothing to help the American people. This bill, which would amend the federal insurance fraud statute to define "the business of insurance" to include the posting of any kind of monetary bail, does nothing to address violent crime.

It is simply another attempt by Republicans to claim that Democrats are soft on crime, and to distract the American people from the indisputable fact that crime is down across this country, and it has been for several years.

Instead of leaving state interests to the states, this bill appears to target nonprofit bail funds that try to address the clear inequities that result when people without financial means are held pending trial, simply because they cannot afford to pay the bail amounts set by the court.

Nonprofit bail funds-the Minnesota Freedom Fund, in particular-have become a target of Republicans recently, as they desperately try to prop up their failing presidential candidate by attacking Vice President Harris and Governor Walz. Former President Trump has repeatedly, and falsely, claimed that Vice President Harris donated to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, and that her donation secured the release of a man who went on to commit murder.

This is nothing more than another made-up story the Republican ticket has created, and it is just as false as the former President's claim that immigrants are "eating the dogs."

The Minnesota Freedom fund has confirmed that Vice President Harris has never donated to them, and that her only relationship to the fund was a 2020 tweet encouraging people to "chip in" if they were able-two years before the release of the individual who committed a murder that Republicans baselessly blame on Vice President Harris.

And while the bill's sponsor claims that weak bail policies led to a tragic incident in Waukesha (Waw-KEE-sha), Wisconsin, we know that the person's release in that case was not due to bail reform or any specific policy. Instead, it was the result of a mistake made by an inexperienced and overburdened Assistant District Attorney who erroneously asked for a bail amount far below what her office's policies required at the time.

Of course this does not make the Waukesha murders any less tragic. But it demonstrates that Republicans are willing to politicize even the most heinous crimes to serve their desperate needs.

We know from experience, and from actual data, that when you put the political rhetoric aside, Democratic policies work to reduce crime. Homicides are down across the country. Violent crimes are down. Property crimes are down. We learned just yesterday that even drug overdoses are down this year-substantially. And while my Republican colleagues love to criticize policies aimed at eliminating or reducing our justice system's reliance on cash bail, study after study-including a recent, comprehensive study by the Brennan Center of 36 jurisdictions-shows that bail reform has not led to an increase in crime.

The underlying premise of this bill-that bail polices have increased violent crime-is fatally flawed. But that is not the only problem with this legislation. Another problem is that the insurance fraud statute that this bill seeks to amend applies only to "the business of insurance" that affects interstate commerce-which the posting of bail by a state or local bail fund does not do.

The bill also applies to entities that post any bond, including non-criminal immigration bonds-which has nothing to do with violent crime. In fact, the provision of this bill that actually attempted to address violent crime by allowing state and local jurisdictions to use Byrne JAG grant funds to develop public safety reports relating to each defendant charged with a violent offense has been stripped from the bill by the ANS.

All that remains is the provision relating to insurance fraud. I challenge my Republican colleagues to explain how, exactly, subjecting state and local bail organizations to federal insurance regulations and federal criminal penalties will reduce violent crime, when the vast majority of the bonds they post are for non-violent crimes, and when these organizations are already regulated by their own states.

I expect my Republican colleagues instead to spend their time this morning citing individual examples of people who committed violent offenses after being bailed out by nonprofit bail funds. Each is tragic, and our hearts go out to the victims and their families.

But they won't tell you about the thousands more who received help from these funds, finished their cases, and moved on with their lives without incident. They won't tell you about people who commit crimes after being released with the help of commercial bail agents. And they will not tell you that it is a judge-not a bail fund-who decides whether to set cash bail in a given case, and if so, in what amount. Bail funds simply allow indigent defendants to obtain a release that a court has already deemed to be appropriate.

We must remember that we cannot ask for or expect perfection from our bail system. What we can do is to make sure that the solutions we propose for violent crime are actually targeted to address the problem, rather than to provide sound bites for social media.

There is no question that we must address the root causes of violent crime; invest in proven solutions, such as community violence intervention and drug treatment; and we must also support law enforcement with funding and other resources, rather than attacking the FBI, ATF, and our other federal partners relentlessly.

Furthermore, if we are going to subject state and local bail organizations to federal regulation, we must do so only after a hearing to explore whether increased federal regulation of bail as insurance will advance our shared goal of keeping Americans safe.

If and when the Majority decides to get serious about combatting violence in America, I will gladly join them in exploring serious solutions. But this legislation is no solution at all. Therefore, I urge my colleagues to join me in voting no on H.R. 8205.

Thank you, and I yield back."

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