-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.