House Democratic leadership held their weekly press briefing on Tuesday.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Secretary of Defense Hegseth must resign for his role in sharing classified war plans.
00:25This is a scandal that feels a little more like the onion than the Atlantic, but he should
00:31be fired.
00:32But the White House is careless and not isolated to our national security.
00:39It's also having a negative impact on our economy.
00:43This carelessness and recklessness of Donald Trump is moving next to imposing tariffs,
00:52which have suggested now that there are 40% chance that the economy crashes into a recession
00:59next year, according to Moody's.
01:01They've not taken a single step toward bringing down the high cost of living.
01:06In fact, the President of the United States said he couldn't care less if prices go up.
01:12Now the stock market is crashing and inflation is rising.
01:17Hard-working Americans just want a little breathing room and some stability in their
01:22busy lives, but what they've received from Donald Trump is chaos, confusion, and corruption.
01:29Later today, House Democrats will hold a hearing on how Trump and Elon Musk are dismantling
01:35Social Security.
01:36Services are being cut, and for the first time in our nation's history, there is a very
01:42real concern that Americans won't receive the benefits on time that they have paid into.
01:50And despite what the Commerce Secretary says, seniors aren't fraudsters.
01:55If they get mad, they've earned those benefits.
01:59They're doing all of this to help pay for tax giveaways for billionaires and Elon Musk.
02:05This isn't about rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse.
02:10This is about ending the status quo, and these are unserious people looking out for themselves,
02:17their allies, and their political donors.
02:21If the President doesn't fix this incompetence, the consequences for our national security,
02:26our economic security, will be devastating.
02:28And I yield to the Ranking Member on Intelligence, oh, I'm sorry, the Ranking Member on Intelligence,
02:35Jim Hines.
02:36Thanks, Petey.
02:37Good morning.
02:38The White House press secretary's efforts, notwithstanding to sweep this scandal under
02:43the carpet, there is a lot of work yet to be done.
02:46Since we learned about the disclosures from Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, the story
02:50has, of course, gotten larger.
02:52We hear press reports that an allied country provided targeting information and that they
02:57were pretty upset about the disclosure of that information.
02:59That is something that we need to follow up on.
03:02And we still, at this point, as the entity charged with oversight of these things, have
03:07no accounting of the breach other than what we've gotten from Jeffrey Goldberg at The
03:11Atlantic.
03:12Now, I know that Mr. Goldberg was being very, very careful in what information he put out
03:18there.
03:19So at this moment, we don't even know what information was in the signal chat.
03:23So again, the White House press secretary's efforts, notwithstanding, the law requires
03:28the Director of National Intelligence to undertake an investigation and to report that investigation,
03:33the results of that investigation, to the Senate and the House Intelligence Committees.
03:37Needless to say, we have seen nothing.
03:42The Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee issued a letter yesterday asking those questions
03:48and asking for an investigation, a real investigation, not something that the White House press secretary
03:53cooks up out of thin air, with those results reported to the intelligence committees as
03:59the law would dictate.
04:00And I'll just point out before handing this over to the ranking member of the House Armed
04:04Services Committee, it's not just the law.
04:07It's what anyone else associated with the Department of Defense or with the intelligence
04:11community would see done if they, in fact, were putting extremely sensitive information
04:16that should have been classified, if it was not, on an unclassified signal chat here.
04:24There would have been a stand-down.
04:26There would have been a full investigation.
04:29The results and the damage of that act would have been reported, and there would have been
04:34accountability.
04:35This administration has dodged every single one of those steps, starting with an attack
04:40on Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who didn't even ask to be put on the signal chat.
04:43So the message being sent by this, both inside the Pentagon, from four-star officers down
04:49to privates, or inside the intelligence community, from the senior intelligence service right
04:53on down to the recruit, is that you have to play by one set of rules, but our senior-most
04:58people play by an entirely different set of rules, and that is not something that we
05:02can tolerate in either the DOD or in the intelligence community.
05:05So we will be following up here to make sure that this story is reported to Congress, that
05:10the full damage or potential damage associated with this signal chat is out there, and that
05:16accountability is ultimately visited.
05:19With that, let me hand over to Ranking Member Smith of the House Armed Services Committee.
05:24Thank you very much.
05:25I completely agree with everything Jim just said.
05:27I'll just add three quick points.
05:29One big concern we have on the Armed Services Committee, what is the policy going forward?
05:33Because obviously the action on the signal chat is bad in a thousand different ways that
05:38Jim outlined fairly well, but worse is the fact that the Secretary of Defense and everybody
05:44else associated is saying, there's nothing to see here, there's nothing wrong, which
05:47clearly implies that they're just going to keep doing it this way.
05:51So what we really want to know is, what happened, how did you screw up, and how are you going
05:55to fix it?
05:57If you make one mistake about it, this is a very, very dangerous thing to do.
06:00To be giving out attack plans, the time, the weapons you're going to use, and the targets
06:07you're going to hit in advance of that attack, I don't know why we're having a conversation
06:12about why that is bad.
06:14What are they going to do to fix it?
06:15Right now the answer is nothing.
06:17So I still think that the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee
06:21should have a hearing.
06:22Ideally, Secretary Hanks should come over and talk to us, but somebody from DOD should
06:27come over and explain what they're going to do to make sure that OPSEC actually is something
06:33that they care about and that they're going to fix going forward.
06:35Second, this speaks to a larger problem of the overall competence and experience of the
06:40national security team.
06:42Just about anyone who's ever been involved in an operation like this would have said,
06:47why are we having this conversation on a signal chat?
06:49But the people on that signal chat, none of them have really had that experience, with
06:53the possible exception of Mike Waltz.
06:56Also worth noting, no senior uniform was on that call.
07:00That's what happens when you fire the chairman of the Attorney Chief's staff and you don't
07:03have one.
07:04So we're really concerned about the overall competence of the national security team.
07:08The third point that has been lost in all of this, one of the justifications offered
07:13by Secretary Hanks and by Mr. Waltz was, hey, but the mission was a spectacular success.
07:19So what are we looking at?
07:20Was the mission a spectacular success?
07:23We don't even really know at this point, and this is an ongoing campaign.
07:27We are now 17, 18 days into the bombing campaign, and please understand, the mission wasn't
07:34to blow some things up and kill a bunch of Houthis.
07:37The mission is to reopen the Red Sea to shipping.
07:42The Red Sea is no more open today than it was 18 days ago when this campaign started.
07:49So again, getting to the competence of the national security team, if they think the
07:53mission has been accomplished, then it appears they don't even know what the mission is.
07:58So we should start asking some questions about what they're trying to accomplish in Yemen
08:03going forward.
08:04With that, I'm pleased to be able to remember the Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence
08:07Committee.
08:08Ms. Houhan.
08:09Thank you, Chairman.
08:10Thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to you about this very important issue.
08:16I want to pause for a moment and imagine a world where the director of the FBI yells
08:22at a member of Congress that his organization is the one that calls balls and strikes, defying
08:27Congress's constitutional obligation for oversight, and in the process, also refusing to investigate.
08:34Imagine a world where the director of the Central Intelligence Agency berates members
08:37of Congress, specifically Democrats, that they don't care about national security because
08:43they dare to ask him questions about a significant leak of information, a significant breach
08:48of classified data.
08:51Imagine a world where the Secretary of Defense shares information on an unclassified channel
08:56that was arguably top-secret information and had to do, as the Chairman said, with targeting
09:01information, with timing, and with weaponry.
09:04This is a channel that his own agency said should not be used because it was compromised
09:08or possibly compromised.
09:10So the problem is with this, we don't have to imagine, because this is reality.
09:14This is an unimaginable world that we are in, but it is the reality that we have found
09:18ourselves in today.
09:20And the only hope that I have, which I echo the Chairman who has spoken before me, is
09:24that in this world, that the Director of National Intelligence has committed to following the
09:29law, which would allow opening an investigation into this, so that we can imagine a world
09:35where people are contrite, where people are nonpartisan, where people work for the people,
09:41where people are true leaders and have the same rules that the people that they lead
09:45have, and where they hold themselves accountable.
09:48So this is the world that I hope that we can live in, and this is the world that we demand,
09:53because it's the only world in which we will be safe.
09:56So today, as many of my colleagues have already done, I call once again on the Director of
10:01National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, to fulfill that commitment that she made to me last Wednesday,
10:05a commitment to follow the law and to conduct an independent investigation into what is
10:10a significant, unauthorized disclosure of compromised information.
10:16I want them to stop gaslighting us and the American public.
10:19I want them to stop distracting us and the American public, and to stop playing us for
10:23fools and hoping that Americans don't catch on.
10:26Follow the law.
10:27Do your job.
10:28Uphold the oath that we uphold as well, that we took to this nation.
10:32The world and we are watching, and I thank the opportunity to speak, and I turn back
10:36over to the Chairman for any questions that you might have.
10:39Thank you, Representative O'Hanlon, and members of Smith and Himes.
10:44Questions?
10:45Congressman Smith, can I ask you a question?
10:47Sure.
10:48This is my press conference.
10:49I understand.
10:50What are you doing?
10:51What are you doing?
10:52I have plenty of questions for you on other topics.
10:57Congressman Smith, there is an independent investigation that your colleagues in the
11:01Senate have asked for on a bipartisan basis with the DOD Inspector General.
11:06There's an acting Inspector General right now in the Department of Defense.
11:09Obviously, we know the Trump administration's attempts to kind of overhaul the Inspector
11:14General process.
11:15Do you have confidence in that investigation that it will get these answers that you're
11:20looking for?
11:21I do not.
11:22First of all, I mean, President Trump fired all of the Inspector Generals, as we know,
11:26including the one at DOD, and I think he made it very clear what he expected out of them.
11:31Now, will the Inspector General's office uphold their integrity?
11:35I hope so.
11:36But clearly, there's pressure there.
11:37I mean, you can analogize this a little bit to the Eric Adams case, where I forget how
11:41many Department of Justice people quit rather than carry out the order to drop the charges
11:47against Eric Adams until they found someone who was willing to comply.
11:51Is the Inspector General's process going to be legitimate in light of the Trump administration's
11:56clear effort to fire people who don't give them the answers they want?
11:59I think the answer to that question is highly in doubt, number one.
12:03Number two, Inspector General's process, they take time.
12:06Even when it's working properly, it takes time.
12:08This is an ongoing threat.
12:10As I said, if they keep doing operational security in this manner, we are in jeopardy,
12:15which is why the quicker thing to do would be for the House and the Senate Armed Services
12:19Committee to bring DOD in and have that conversation, preferably in public, but if they don't feel
12:26like they want to have the public conversation, do something classified so that we can begin
12:30to get an idea of how they're fixing the problem, which is a long way of saying I think the
12:34IG process is highly in doubt because of what Trump has done to it and because it's in the
12:38best of times.
12:39It takes more time than the urgency of this matter, I think, demands.
12:47The SAVE Act is going to be on the floor later this week.
12:50Obviously, there are a small handful of Democrats who voted for that last Congress.
12:53Is the expectation that a number of those, maybe possibly more, will be supporting the
12:58SAVE Act this time?
12:59And what does it largely tell you still that there are differences of opinion on the matter
13:04of voter ID and broader border security immigration issues?
13:08What it tells me still is that House Democrats will overwhelmingly oppose the SAVE Act because
13:15some of the provisions have not changed within this bill, but we know current law already
13:21says individuals that are not citizens do not have a right to vote.
13:26This bill puts in jeopardy the ability of women to be able to register and vote.
13:33Having to register in person compromises the ability of military members serving abroad
13:39who may not be able to register or pass their ballot, not having a real ID.
13:45Many Americans do not have a real ID or a passport.
13:49Those jeopardize the ability of people exercising their franchise to vote, but especially the
13:55fact that women, their identification card may not line up with their birth certificate
14:02creates uncertainty.
14:03That has not been fixed in the bill, and that puts 69 million women at risk who do not have
14:11the name that is on their birth certificate.
14:15That's a concern that the Democratic caucus has, and you'll see our members overwhelmingly
14:19oppose this bill.
14:21Nick?
14:22A question for Congressman Himes and Smith.
14:26As ranking members on the committees of jurisdiction, we've seen a lot of letters from the committees
14:31to the various agencies involved in the Signal Gate issue.
14:35Have you received responses from any of those agencies?
14:38Jim and then Adam.
14:40Yeah, not yet.
14:42The HPSC letter went out at the end of the day yesterday, so we anticipated that we would
14:48get a response by now, but we will be making sure that there is a response to that letter.
14:52Same answer.
14:54Basically, no, we have not received that response, except to add one thing.
14:58I am concerned about the lack of respect that the executive branch has shown for the
15:02legislative branch.
15:04This has been an ongoing problem now for the last couple of months in terms of their responsiveness
15:08to our requests.
15:10It's much slower, much less responsive than at any point in my career, and that's been
15:14the whole Democratic-Republican thing.
15:16They are not honoring our oversight in the way that previous administrations of both
15:20parties have.
15:22Maybe that's because they haven't gotten enough people in position yet.
15:24We'll see.
15:26At 1.30, there's a vote on a rule that would table Anaplia Luna's proxy voting discharge
15:36petition.
15:38Is that something that Democrats would consider implementing if you're in the majority?
15:42And two, what does it mean to be pro-family in Congress?
15:46Well, what it means is Republicans should stop lecturing people on being pro-family
15:54when they're opposing this uniformly.
15:58What it means is Democrats and Republicans are, look, our members are looking for opportunities
16:04to legislate and to work with their colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
16:08And I appreciate Brittany Patterson and Give Faith working with Representative Luna in
16:14order to get this done.
16:16But for the first time in a hundred years that the discharge petition has existed, the
16:24majority would seek to turn it off in a rule.
16:28It's unprecedented.
16:30And it's shameful and terrible.
16:32Our members will oppose these efforts.
16:36Our hope is that Republicans, reasonable Republicans who have worked with us on these issues, will
16:42oppose this effort too.
16:44Speaker Johnson is doing everything he can to undermine the will of the House.
16:50The majority of the members in the House of Representatives would support this piece of
16:56legislation.
16:58And Democrats, under the leadership of what will be Chairman McGovern, will have those
17:02conversations with our members on what's reasonable in the next Congress.
17:06Mike.
17:08Another question for the ranking members.
17:10What are the conversations like with your Chairman counterpart?
17:16Have they expressed any of the same alarm that you have expressed publicly?
17:24Have you seen any of that privately?
17:26What do you think about the fact that what used to be kind of a bipartisan exercise in
17:32national security and intelligence matters seems to be just Democrats in public fighting
17:36for these investigations, fighting to be heard from the Trump administration?
17:42What are you hearing from your counterparts, the Chairman of these two committees that
17:46you both serve on?
17:48We'll go the other way.
17:50Adam and then Jim.
17:52I am concerned about that.
17:54We have a great bipartisan committee.
17:56Mike Rogers is a tremendous partner.
17:58We work very closely together.
18:00I don't think the response, as I have said, has been robust enough to this situation.
18:04He went into the hospital and didn't tell anyone.
18:06It became an issue in a bipartisan way.
18:08He came over, he testified, and we investigated that issue.
18:11I think the same thing should happen here.
18:13There have been concerns expressed.
18:15I think it's been inadequate to say, well, the IG report is fine and Secretary Hegseth
18:20is coming in.
18:21I think it's like five weeks to do his normal posture here.
18:24I don't believe that that is an adequate response.
18:27I do still have a very good bipartisan relationship with Mike Rogers, but I disagree with how
18:32the committee is handling this particular issue.
18:36You saw in the open hearing the level of interest that my Republican colleagues had in this
18:41particular issue.
18:42When we went into closed session, the first thing I did was remind them of the apocalyptic
18:47hellfire that would have been loosed had this chat been undertaken by the senior people
18:52of the Biden administration and the Obama administration.
18:56I think you saw in the open hearing what I would characterize as hear no evil, see no
19:01evil, speak no evil approach that they had taken.
19:04I will say, echoing to some extent Adam Smith, I'm a refugee of the era when HPSE for 18
19:12months became an investigative body and was really badly provoked by the Ukraine investigation
19:18and by the actions of then-Chairman Devin Nunes.
19:22And so I am extremely committed, and I repeat this to – I did with then-Chairman Turner
19:28before he was fired and now with Chairman Crawford, which is that we will do our oversight
19:33here, and we're going to be very strong in that oversight in the way they would have
19:36been had this occurred under the Biden administration.
19:38But we are nonetheless committed to doing all that we can to make sure that the committee
19:42is never compromised from doing the oversight that it absolutely must do of the intelligence
19:47community at any time, particularly at this time when we're seeing people like Elon
19:51Musk and the President trying to bend these apparatuses to their will.
20:00Questions?
20:01Last one.
20:03We're seeing on the other side a bill put forward by Daryl Issa to try to limit federal
20:08judges' authority on issuing injunctions, and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan also working
20:14to try to do something similar in the appropriations process as well.
20:18What's your understanding for whether or not Congress has a legitimate authority to
20:23limit judges in this way?
20:27My understanding, and we'll follow the guidance of Jane Goreskin and the Judiciary Committee
20:33here, but this is just yet another way in which House Republicans are bending over backwards
20:40to exercise the will that Donald Trump wants.
20:44They had no problem with district court rulings that attacked women's reproductive freedom
20:50in Memphis-Bristow with a judge in rural Texas.
20:54They had no problem with that, yet they have a problem with nationwide injunctions now
21:01when it doesn't suit their interests.
21:04That's the issue that the American public will see, that posture of House Republicans
21:11that they want to have it both ways.
21:14Chairman Jordan is going to do what Chairman Jordan does.
21:18He's never bound by goodwill or what the right thing to do is, but we're going to continue
21:25to hold them accountable because we believe in a free and fair judiciary that should be
21:29able to make decisions that exercise justice.
21:34That's exactly what is happening in the court system time and time again.
21:38The Trump administration is losing in the courts, and that's why you're seeing House
21:43Republicans attack an independent judiciary.
21:46Last one.
21:49Yesterday and today, Senate Majority Leader Thune and Speaker Johnson both said that President
21:56Trump is just joking about running for a third term in office.
22:00Do you have any opinion on that?
22:02And even if he is joking, is it something to joke about?
22:07It's incredibly dangerous, but Donald Trump knew what he was dealing with when he pulled
22:13into that show.
22:15It's not a coincidence that he is trying to distract the American public.
22:19He wants all of you to write these articles.
22:22He wants all of us to talk about them because our national security is at risk with the
22:28people he has placed in the national security apparatus, because he is attacking Social
22:33Security, and House Democrats will have a hearing about that this afternoon, and because
22:40his tariffs are going to raise costs, which he says he couldn't care less about, those
22:45are the important issues that affect families in this country, and the fact that Donald
22:51Trump is throwing this out and trying to wish-cast it so House Republicans can talk about it
22:58and can talk about him in a loving and caring way.
23:01He does not love and care for Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security.
23:05He only cares about his own political self-interest, but House Republicans are signing up to that
23:11vanity project when we should be talking about the costs that Americans are facing, and those
23:17will continue to go up because of Donald Trump's carelessness and his policies that they're
23:21implementing this week.
23:22Thank you so much.