At a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) spoke about moves by President Donald Trump at the FBI.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you, Chairman. I'm going to now recognize the ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Raskin.
00:05Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, and thanks to Ms. Crockett for calling us together.
00:11We are already 10 weeks into the Trump administration, and still the Republicans are recycling the
00:18most tiresome, vacuous, and debunked stories, conspiracy theories, about the Biden administration
00:26while demurely declining to conduct any oversight at all of the current administration.
00:33And I agree with the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Jordan. It is day and night,
00:37but I think he's seeing day and night backwards. Donald Trump is turning our country into a
00:43gangster state where agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the FBI, and the Department
00:49of Justice act as presidential enforcers conducting political deals with elected officials like
00:55New York City Mayor Adams, corporate shakedowns against ABC, CBS, and other media entities,
01:03and law firms like Paul Weiss, Rifkin, WilmerHale, and Jenner & Block, demanding pledges of loyalty
01:10from citizens, and in some cases, demanding cold, hard cash in lawsuits brought directly
01:17by the president against private businesses. Meanwhile, they're offering mass pardons,
01:23immunity, and protection to violent insurrectionists, convicted drug beaters, cop beaters, drug
01:33traffickers, corrupt politicians, as long as they're willing to kiss the ring and do
01:39the president's bidding. Let's look at how this administration is treating the honest
01:44men and women of the FBI. In his first days in office, Trump targeted thousands of FBI
01:49agents simply for doing their jobs after the mob violence of January 6, 2021, and holding
01:56the cop beaters and insurrectionist rioters accountable. FBI agents had to sue to stop
02:02this purge and block them from publicly releasing their names to the violent militias like Oath
02:09Keepers and Proud Boys, whom President Trump had already given pardons to. And those pardons,
02:15by the way, this Department of Justice are extending to other crimes these people have
02:20committed, including cocaine trafficking and gun charges. This administration isn't opposing
02:28corruption. It's opening the door wide open to corruption every single day for his friends.
02:34Donald Trump ordered the FBI to stop conducting background investigations of top White House
02:40officials. Why? He disbanded the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, charged with identifying
02:47and combating malign foreign influence operations targeting the United States. Why? He suspended
02:54enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and reduced enforcement of the Foreign
03:00Agents Registration Act just two days after it was reported that Director Kash Patel had
03:07engaged in lucrative consulting work for Qatar and for a Vladimir Putin connected foreign
03:14arms conglomerate. The current FBI leadership is diverting the FBI's resources away from
03:22public safety and national security and towards mega conspiracy fixations and obsessions.
03:29According to press reports, hundreds of agents ordinarily assigned to defending the national
03:34security of the United States have been pulled into a mind-boggling effort where they were
03:41pulling all-nighters and working around the clock to review the Epstein files after Attorney
03:46General Bondi botched the first attempt at what she said was going to be a complete release
03:53of the Epstein files. So it's important to consider what the FBI is not investigating
03:59in the frenzy of all these back-to-the-future wild goose chases. They're not investigating
04:05Signalgate, the extraordinary decision by a group of America's highest national security officials,
04:11including one who was in Moscow at the Kremlin at the time, to compromise the safety of our
04:18service members and intelligence officers by using Signal, a non-secure commercial application
04:26to reveal specific, confidential, and classified details about an impending military airstrike
04:33complete with timestamps for when F-18 aircraft would launch and arrive at their targets and
04:39when Tomahawk missiles would be fired at buildings controlled by Houthi members.
04:45What are DOJ and FBI doing to investigate this stunning, dangerous episode of incompetence
04:53or recklessness, at the very least, that undoubtedly violates all kinds of federal, criminal, and
04:59civil laws? Nothing. In fact, when asked about the Signal chat, Attorney General Bondi changed
05:04the subject to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Sound familiar? That's what we're doing today.
05:09Just a week after the story broke about this tremendous security breach, she said,
05:14Case closed. No further investigation. No lessons learned. No hearings. That's the end.
05:20Can you imagine what they would be doing if that had happened under President Biden?
05:24If his top national security team had been talking about a military strike on Signal,
05:29there would be eight special committees and subcommittees, investigation, and they'd all be demanding
05:34impeachment, the way they're demanding impeachment of judges who blow the whistle on the illegalities
05:40of this administration. Well, what else is the FBI not investigating?
05:44Elon Musk is startling ties to the Communist Party of China, the CCP.
05:50Musk is bulldozing our federal government while accessing the people's most sensitive databases.
05:57And he's traveled to China multiple times in the last several years and met with the highest level
06:03Communist Party officials. He's continued to open factories in China where he does half of his business,
06:09even as he works as a, quote, special government employee to dismantle and destroy our federal government.
06:15Can you imagine if President Biden had done that? What our colleagues would be saying?
06:19Well, look, in this new state that we're in, the FBI is not here to enforce the law.
06:25It exists to allow the president to shake down businesses and individuals, offering them protection
06:31and immunity if they comply and persecution if they don't.
06:35The administration installed as the head of the FBI Kash Patel, known for being the man who will do anything for Trump.
06:41They also installed as deputy director Dan Bongino, a far right podcaster and conspiracy theorist
06:47who boasted in 2018 that his entire life right now is about owning the libs.
06:53His appointment was a particular betrayal of Patel's promise that he would appoint a deputy director
06:59who would be an onboard active special agent, as has been the case for 117 years.
07:05Already stories of intimidation and pressure in this DOJ and this FBI are trickling out.
07:11Seven veteran prosecutors were forced to resign rather than take part in a corrupt bargain
07:17to dismiss charges that were brought by a grand jury in New York against the mayor of New York, Eric Adams.
07:24The U.S. attorney for the Southern District, Daniel Sassoon, who clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Scalia
07:30and was active in the Federalist Society, resigned, saying nothing had changed in the facts of the case,
07:35nothing had changed in the law of the case, nothing had changed in the evidence.
07:39It was simply this political deal that Donald Trump had cooked up with the mayor of New York,
07:44who traveled down to Mar-a-Lago.
07:46The longtime criminal chief in the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office was forced to resign
07:51rather than open the current bogus investigation into Biden-era clean energy projects.
07:57So what we see at the Trump FBI and DOJ is part of a broad pattern.
08:02They're targeting lawyers who took up causes or clients that Donald Trump doesn't like,
08:07and they've issued illegal executive orders intended as threats against them.
08:11The president and his friends are threatening federal judges that ruled against them
08:15to halt their blatantly illegal executive actions, calling for impeachment of the judges.
08:21And there have been threats against their families made online.
08:24The president and his friends are threatening journalists
08:27and deporting legal immigrants for exercising their First Amendment rights,
08:31sending a clear message to anyone thinking of speaking up against the administration.
08:36The FBI's leadership are threatening to take the FBI down a very dangerous path today,
08:41one that's entirely incompatible with the values of the men and women of the FBI
08:46and the best traditions of the agency.
08:48Once again, with today's hearing,
08:50my colleagues are turning a blind eye to what's going on right now,
08:55choosing instead to regurgitate and recycle debunked and discredited lies
09:00about the Biden administration and somebody having an investigation
09:05into parents and school boards that's been debunked a million times.
09:09That was an investigation into people making violent death threats against school board members.
09:14Nobody was ever arrested. Nobody was ever charged with anything.
09:18And yet they've been dining out on that, I think it's for five years now,
09:22talking about something that led nowhere and there was nothing wrong with it in the first place.
09:27So the men and women of the FBI deserve to know that Congress is watching
09:32and we've got your back. We're not going to stand idly by
09:35while this administration tries to turn the FBI into an arm of a pay-to-play gangster state.
09:41Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.