March 25, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
57:45
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| It's Tuesday, 25 March, in the year of our Lord, 2025. | ||
| You're seeing a live shot at the Hart Building, the Senate Hart Building, where we're about to commence the Select Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. | ||
| It's been scheduled for a while. | ||
| This is about international threats in intelligence. | ||
| It's an unclassified public hearing. | ||
| They will do another one behind closed doors. | ||
| This is the public, and the reason this is so important today, obviously, with this situation, with the Signal Chat, today you're going to have Cash Patel, Director of the FBI, Tulsi Gabbard, Defense, or the DNI, and you're going to have also CIA, John Ratcliffe. | ||
| So, Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, you see they're gathering right now in the Hart Building. | ||
| The senators are gathering. | ||
| This will be gaveled in. | ||
| We're going to dip in and out of this because I believe Jack Reed, the ranking member of the Democratic side, has said he's going to make this basically a hearing. | ||
| You see the media right there. | ||
| It's an over-the-shoulder shot. | ||
| And this is why if you listen to us on the podcast, what you need to do is go and get our command briefing and go to the site. | ||
| Get everything dealing with our footage because the footage is amazing. | ||
| Right here we've got the shot over the shoulder. | ||
| You see the cameraman? | ||
| There's a much bigger turnout today. | ||
| The hall is packed because of the situation with the thread, the signal thread, where the Democrats are going to try to make a lot of hay over this. | ||
| The President of the United States already told Garrett Haake of NBC News before we started today that Mike Waltz is a good man and Mike Waltz is not going to be fired for this. | ||
| Now, we do understand the White House counsel is involved and I think there's some sort of investigation, particularly Given that Jeffrey Goldberg is a demon. | ||
| Let's go ahead, before they start, let's go ahead and play it. | ||
| We'll bring the show in, and then we're going to get Jack Posobiec, and we're going to dip in and out of this coverage. | ||
| Let's go ahead and bring the show in. | ||
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
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Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people. | |
| I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people. | ||
| The people have had a belly full of it. | ||
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big lie? | ||
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Mega Media. | |
| I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. | ||
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unidentified
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Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? | |
| If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. | ||
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War Room. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Band. | ||
| Band. you you you Wow, pretty creative right there. | ||
| We did the opening theme song over this hearing. | ||
| Hearing, very important today. | ||
| Well, it would be important on any day. | ||
| This is the first time I believe that President Trump's starting team Of intelligence and counterintelligence experts, because you're going to have DIA there, Defense Intelligence and others, but the big three are Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, the Director of the CIA, and Kash Patel, Director of the FBI. | ||
| We're all going to be there. | ||
| The reason it's heightened today, and we're going to cover this even more extensively than we were planning, is obviously with the situation, with the signal thread. | ||
| Just to get everybody up to speed, if you haven't heard, there was during the attack, the initial big attack on the Houthis, I think it was back on 15 March, so it was 10 days ago. | ||
| I think that was a Saturday, too. | ||
| I think we were covering it on the show. | ||
| They had a thread, a Signal thread. | ||
| Now, Signal is a scrambled service you can use, an app you can download. | ||
| But it's not a classified platform. | ||
| So you had a number of President Trump's senior advisors, including the vice president, were in this having a discussion with each other. | ||
| And, you know, certain information put up there. | ||
| Inadvertently, somehow, they put in Jeffrey Goldberg, who is demonic. | ||
| I mean, Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic, as we've been telling you, the Atlantic magazine owned by Steve Jobs' widow, is getting to be a centerpiece of the resistance, an intellectual... | ||
| centerpiece they've hired extensively from the media around town in fact they essentially eviscerated or they were part of the group that eviscerated the Washington Post taking away some of their best rights Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor. | ||
| He's an absolute hardcore Trump hater. | ||
| He's been a back of so many of the phony narratives in the past from Russiagate and... | ||
| You know, the situation in Charlottesville, you know, every time you see one of these big turning and hate Trump from the media, Goldberg has been kind of in back of it because the Atlantic is a very important and very powerful tool of the left. | ||
| And Steve Jobs' widow is doubling down and putting a tremendous amount of money in. | ||
| So he's becoming more powerful. | ||
| Somehow he was inadvertently, either through a staffer or... | ||
| Through Mike Waltz, or Mike Waltz's staff, because I think President Trump said this morning when we talked to Garrett Haake, it was a staffer that somehow inadvertently, I know it sounds incredible, but put Jeffrey Goldberg into the thread. | ||
| Now, there's issues of how President Trump is being advised, what the advice was, because I think J.D. Vance in there essentially said, A lot of things at the war room we said. | ||
| As soon as we go live to this, as soon as we have the opening statements from Tom Cotton and Jack Reed, I want to go. | ||
| Is Tom Cotton speaking yet? | ||
| Can we go live? | ||
| Okay, we're testing audio right now. | ||
| It should be up live, gentlemen. | ||
| We're taking this feed, by the way, from the Senate side. | ||
| So as soon as audio is not ready. | ||
| Okay, we're going to go here momentarily. | ||
| The room fills. | ||
| Okay, let's go. | ||
| We're going to go right live to the Senate room. | ||
| I'll jump in and out as we go. | ||
| ... | ||
| the National Security Agency and Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, General Tim Hawk, and the Defense Intelligence Agency Director, Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse. | ||
| Thank you all for your appearance. | ||
| Thank you for your leadership. | ||
| I also want to recognize the hard work and dedication of the thousands of men and women in our intelligence community whom you're here to represent today. | ||
| Their successes are seldom celebrated. | ||
| Their accomplishments are often unseen. | ||
| But our nation is grateful to each one for the vital work they do to keep our nation safe, prosperous, and free. | ||
| Our annual Worldwide Threats Hearing allows for the American people to receive an unvarnished and unbiased account of the real and present dangers that our nation faces. | ||
| As we will hear from our witnesses, many of the threats we face are truly existential. | ||
| Communist China is actively working to replace the United States as the world's dominant superpower. | ||
| China uses coercive military, economic, and influence operations short of war to shape a world favorable to its interests and hostile to ours. | ||
| These methods include the biggest peacetime military buildup in history, rapidly expanding its nuclear forces, providing critical assistance to help Russia withstand U.S. sanctions, Obscuring its role in accelerating the spread of COVID-19 beyond Wuhan, turning a blind eye to Chinese companies that enable the production of fentanyl flooding into the United States and putting space weapons on orbit, among other tactics. | ||
| Iran, despite setbacks inflicted on its so-called axis of resistance by Israel over the last year, still aims to destroy what it calls the little Satan. | ||
| The State of Israel and what it calls the Great State, the United States. | ||
| It continues to arm Yemeni rebels to attack global shipping, though these outlaws have suffered terrible losses over the last two weeks thanks to decisive action by President Trump and our brave troops. | ||
| I commend the President, Mike Waltz, Pete Hexeth, and his entire national security team. | ||
| Iran also continues its decades-long effort to develop surrogate networks inside the United States to threaten U.S. citizens. | ||
| Furthermore, Iran's nuclear program continues apace. | ||
| It's actively developing multiple space launch vehicles, which are little more than flimsy cover for an intercontinental ballistic missile program that could hit the United States in a matter of years. | ||
| But all this will soon come to an end. | ||
| The Supreme Leader of Iran now faces a stark choice, thanks to President Trump. | ||
| The Supreme Leader can fully dismantle his nuclear program, or he can have it dismantled for him. | ||
| Finally, today's report also acknowledges that illicit drug production endangers the health and safety of millions of Americans. | ||
| For the first time, the annual threat assessment lists foreign illicit drug actors as the very first threat to our country. | ||
| As the report highlights, Mexican-based cartels using precursors produced in China continue to smuggle fentanyl and synthetic opioids into the United States. | ||
| Last year alone, these deadly drugs tragically killed more than 52,000 Americans. | ||
| Given these threats, we have to ask, are our intelligence agencies well postured against these threats? | ||
| I'm afraid the answer is no, at least not yet. | ||
| As the world became more dangerous in recent years, our intelligence agencies got more politicized, more bureaucratic, and more focused on promulgating opinions rather than gathering facts. | ||
| As a result of these misplaced priorities, we've been caught off guard and left in the dark too often. | ||
| I know that all of you agree that the core mission of the intelligence community is to steal our adversaries' secrets and convey them to policymakers to protect the United States. | ||
| At the same time, it's not the role of intelligence agencies to make policy to justify presidential action or to operate like other federal agencies. | ||
| After years of drift, the intelligence community must recommit to its core mission of collecting clandestine intelligence from adversaries whose main objective is to destroy our nation and our way of life. | ||
| The reason is not that our intelligence community lacks dedicated patriots who show up to work every day to protect the American people. | ||
| On the contrary, it has an abundance of them. | ||
| The reasons are a misuse of resources, bureaucratic bloat, a default to play it safe, And a past administration that prioritized social engineering over espionage. | ||
| Coupled with recent failures, the finding in today's Worldwide Threat Report should be a wake-up call to all of us to get our house in order. | ||
| The status quo is proving inadequate to provide the President and Congress with the intelligence needed to protect the American people. | ||
| As more storms gather, America's intelligence capabilities require urgent reform and revitalization. | ||
| As the chairman of this committee, I look forward to working with each of you to strengthen America's intelligence edge and refocus our intelligence community on its core mission, stealing secrets. | ||
| The American people deserve nothing less. | ||
| We've assembled an impressive team to get this done, and I look forward to hearing your comments. | ||
| Now I recognize the vice chairman for opening remarks. | ||
| Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, everybody. | ||
| I want to thank all the witnesses for being here. | ||
| I've got to say, I've been on the committee now for 14 years, and this year's assessment is clearly one of the most complicated and challenging in my tenure on the committee. | ||
| And I want to get into that in a moment, but I want to first of all address the recent story that is broken in the news. | ||
| Yesterday, We stunningly learned that senior members of this administration, and according to reports, two of our witnesses here today were members of a group chat that discussed highly sensitive and likely classified information that supposedly even included weapons packages, targets, and timing, and included the name of an active CIA agent. | ||
| Putting aside for a moment that classified information should never be discussed over an unclassified system. | ||
| It's also just mind-boggling to me that all these senior folks were on this line and nobody bothered to even check Security Hygiene 101. | ||
| Who are all the names? | ||
| Who are they? | ||
| Well, it apparently included a journalist. | ||
| And no matter how much the Secretary of Defense or others want to disparage him, This journalist had at least the ethics to not report, I think, everything he heard. | ||
| The question I raise is like, you know, everybody on this committee gets briefed on security protocols. | ||
| They're told you don't make calls outside of SCISS of this kind of classified nature. | ||
| We don't know what I'm going to ask. | ||
| Obviously, Director Gabbard is the executive in charge of all, keeping our secrets safe. | ||
| Were these government devices? | ||
| Were these personal devices? | ||
| Had devices been collected to make sure there's no malware? | ||
| There's plenty of declassified information that shows that our adversaries, China and Russia, are trying to break into encrypted systems like Signal. | ||
| I can just say this. | ||
| If this was the case, Of a military officer or an intelligence officer, and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired. | ||
| I think this is one more example of the kind of slumpy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly towards classified information, that this is not a one-off or a first-time error. | ||
| Let me take a couple minutes and review some of the other reckless choices that this administration has made regarding our national security. | ||
| We all recall it seems like it wasn't that long ago, but less than two months ago. | ||
| In the first two weeks, the administration canceled all U.S. foreign assistance. | ||
| Now, some may say, how bad can that be? | ||
| It's foreign assistance. | ||
| Well, U.S. foreign assistance paid for the units in Ukraine. | ||
| They provide air defense to civilian cities being attacked by Russia. | ||
| Foreign assistance paid for guarding camps in Syria where ISIS fighters are detained. | ||
| Foreign assistance paid for programs abroad that ensure that diseases like Ebola don't come home. | ||
| And until recently, it paid for the construction of a railway in Africa that would have helped Given the United States much-needed access to critical minerals in Congo. | ||
| Now that project, China's going to try to finance it. | ||
| As well, in the first two weeks, Director Patel, the administration fired several of our most experienced FBI agents, including the head of the Criminal Investigative Division, the head of the Intelligence Division, the head of the Counterterrorism Division. | ||
| The heads of the New York, Washington, and Miami field office. | ||
| All individuals who were distinctly and directly responsible for helping to keep America safe. | ||
| The irony in a little bit was that the recently dismissed head of the counterterrorism division was involved in disrupting the ISIS attacks planned for Oklahoma City and Philadelphia. | ||
| And help lead the effort to bring to justice the key planner of the Abbey Gate bombing in Afghanistan. | ||
| It killed 13 U.S. servicemen and 150 civilians. | ||
| That very Abbey Gate effort was actually praised by the president in his State of the Union address. | ||
| Yet the response, the administration's response to these agents, I believe, good works and years of service was to force these folks out. | ||
| It's hard to imagine how that makes our country safer. | ||
| Nor can I understand how Americans are made more secure by firing more than 300 staff at the National Nuclear Security Administration, including those responsible for overseeing the security and safety of the nuclear stockpile. | ||
| Or by ousting 130 employees at CISA, the agency directly responsible. | ||
| For trying to take on China's salt typhoon attack. | ||
| Again, after salt typhoon, I would have thought folks on that group chat might have thought twice. | ||
| Or how we made safer by sacking a thousand employees at the CDC and NIH. | ||
| Or actually directly working on trying to keep our country safe from disease. | ||
| Or by pushing out hundreds of intelligence officers. | ||
| The amazing thing is our intelligence officers, they're not interchangeable. | ||
| Like a Twitter coder. | ||
| These intelligence officers, our country makes $20,000 to $40,000 of an investment just in getting a security clearance. | ||
| Literally goes into six figures when you take the training involved. | ||
| Can anyone tell how firing probationary individuals without any consideration for merit or expertise is an efficient use of taxpayer dollars? | ||
| And, just to make clear that yesterday's story in the Atlantic was not this rookie one-off, it's a pattern. | ||
| I want to acknowledge Director Radcliffe was not here in his position when this took place. | ||
| But again, earlier in the administration, when a non-classified network was used, thereby exposing literally hundreds of CIA officers' identities, those folks can't go into the field now. | ||
| How does that make our government more efficient? | ||
| You know, again, this pattern of an amazing cavalier attitude towards classified information is reckless, sloppy, and silly. | ||
| And perhaps what troubles me most is the way the administration has decided that we can take on all our problems by ourself without any needs for friends or allies. | ||
| I agree that we've got to put America's priorities first. | ||
| But America first cannot mean America alone. | ||
| The intelligence we gather to keep Americans safe depends on a lot of allies around the world who have access to sources we don't have. | ||
| That sharing of information saves lives, and it's not hypothetical. | ||
| We all remember because it was declassified last year when Austria worked with our community to make sure to expose a plot against Taylor Swift. | ||
| In Vienna, that could have killed literally hundreds of individuals. | ||
| However, these relationships are not built in stone. | ||
| They're not dictated by law. | ||
| Things like the Five Eyes are based on trust, built on decades. | ||
| But so often that trust is now breaking literally overnight. | ||
| Yet suddenly, for no reason that I can understand, The United States is starting to act like our adversaries or our friends. | ||
| Voting in the UN with Russia, Belarus, and North Korea. | ||
| That's a rogues gallery if you've ever heard of them. | ||
| Treating our allies like adversaries. | ||
| Whether it's threats to take over Greenland or over the Panama Canal. | ||
| Destructive trade war with Canada. | ||
| Or literally threatening to kick Canada out of the five eyes. | ||
| I feel our credibility is being enormously undermined with our allies. | ||
| Who I believe, and I think most of us on this committee, regardless of party, believes makes our country safer and stronger. | ||
| But how can our allies ever trust us as the kind of partner we used to be when we, without consultation or notice, for example, stop sharing information to Ukraine And it's war for survival against Russia. | ||
| Or how can our allies not only not trust our government, but potentially not our businesses with such arbitrary political decisions? | ||
| Let me give you a few examples. | ||
| You know, as a result of a lot of work from this committee and others in Congress, we made sure America's commercial space industry is second to none. | ||
| From space to launch to commercial sensing and communications, the United States has taken a... | ||
| A record lead. | ||
| Yet overnight, this administration called into question the reliability of American commercial tech industry when Maxar and other commercial space companies were directed to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine. | ||
| I've got to tell you, I've been a business guy, I can't say longer than being an elected official, but pretty close. | ||
| That shockwave across... | ||
| All of commercial space, and frankly not just commercial space, I've heard it from some of our hyperscalers in the tech community, has sent an enormous chill. | ||
| Who's going to hire an American commercial space company, government or foreign business, with the ability to have that taken down so arbitrarily? | ||
| And it's not just in the case of commercial space. | ||
| We've seen that Canada, Germany, Portugal have all been... | ||
| Saying they're rethinking buying F-35s. | ||
| I've heard from Microsoft and Google directly and Amazon that they're having questions about whether they can still sell their services. | ||
| We've also seen foreign adversaries and friends take advantage of this riff in our national security areas and our scientists. | ||
| Germany has already put out ads trying to attract some of our best scientists who've been riffed. | ||
| And the Chinese intelligence agencies are posting on social media sites in the hopes of luring individuals with that national security clearance who've been pushed out, perhaps arbitrarily, to come into their service. | ||
| So no, the signal fiasco is not a one-off. | ||
| It is unfortunately a pattern we're seeing too often repeated. | ||
| I fear that we feel the erosion of trust from our workplace, from our companies, and from our allies and partners can't be put back in the bottle overnight. | ||
| Make no mistake, these actions make America less safe. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Before I turn to the witnesses' hearing, I want to welcome everyone in our large audience today. | ||
| Let's bring in Jack Basovic. | ||
| Jack, put in perspective, you're a naval intelligence officer. | ||
| This was a hearing important enough on its own about exactly where we stand, but given the context of what's happened or what's been revealed over the last 24, 48 hours, how important is this today, particularly for Ratcliffe, Cash, and Tulsi Gabbard, sir? Well, Steve, I think this is incredibly important. | ||
| Heads of our national security team that are up there. | ||
| This is the team that, keep in mind, just go through the wider context of beyond the Red Sea, beyond the Strait of Babel Mendev, beyond the two carrier groups. | ||
| We've got the Carl Vinson, which is steaming there, the Truman, which is all, by the way, taking fire in just the last 24 hours. | ||
| They're having to shoot down these drones and everything time and time again. | ||
| You've got a situation. | ||
| Where we're on the brink or were potentially on the brink of World War III prior to this team getting into office. | ||
| And through their diplomacy, DNI Gabbard, she just came back, Lieutenant Colonel, on an entire worldwide trip talking and conducting this diplomacy. | ||
| Secretary Hegseth has just embarked on his own trip right now. | ||
| You had J.D. Vance going over to Munich as the vice president. | ||
| And then, of course, Steve Whitcoff as the emissary of President Trump himself going to places like Moscow. | ||
| Going directly to Israel and Gaza has even discussed potentially some back channels. | ||
| If you caught his interview over the weekend with Tucker, he's been having back channel communications with the Iranians. | ||
| So this is an incredibly, an incredibly fraught time where we could see conflicts erupt. | ||
| They're working to tamp this all down. | ||
| And what I saw, I'll put it this way. | ||
| It's a non-starter that this guy was added, that this thing leaked. | ||
| It's a non-starter. | ||
| That the signal chat came out. | ||
| That's for sure. | ||
| And look, we can't sit here and honestly say that we went after Hillary so hard for the emails and then act like this isn't a big deal. | ||
| We just can't do that. | ||
| So that's a non-starter. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
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But what I have to say is they need to understand the comment. | |
| Hang on one second. | ||
| Let's just go to Tulsi. | ||
| Here she's saying we're going to come right back to you, but the framing of this. | ||
| From narcotics trafficking to money laundering to smuggling of illegal immigrants and human trafficking, which endanger the health, welfare, and safety of everyday Americans. | ||
| Based on the latest reporting available for a year-long period ending October 2024, cartels were largely responsible for the deaths of more than 54,000 U.S. citizens from synthetic opioids. | ||
| Mexico-based transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs, are the main suppliers of illicit fentanyl to the U.S. market and are adapting to enforcement and regulatory pressures by using multiple sources and methods to procure precursor chemicals and equipment, primarily from China and India, many of which are dual-use chemicals used in legitimate industries. | ||
| Independent fentanyl producers are also increasingly fragmenting the drug trade in Mexico. | ||
| The availability of precursor chemicals and ease of making illicit fentanyl have enabled independent actors to increase illicit fentanyl production and smuggling operations in Mexico. | ||
| Cartels are profiting from human trafficking and have likely facilitated more than 2 million illegal immigrants encountered by law enforcement at the U.S. southwest border in 2024 alone, straining our vital resources and putting the American people at risk. | ||
| Criminal groups drive much of the unrest and lawlessness in the Western Hemisphere. | ||
| They also engage in extortion, weapons and human smuggling, and other illicit and dangerous revenue-seeking operations, including kidnappings for ransom, forced labor, and sex trafficking. | ||
| These and other human traffickers exploit vulnerable individuals and groups by promising well-paying jobs while confiscating their identification documents. | ||
| They operate in the shadows, exploiting lawlessness in various areas and using coercion and intimidation to control their victims. | ||
| While these key drivers of migrants are expected to persist, heightened U.S. border security enforcement and deportations under the Trump administration are proving to serve as a deterrent for migrants seeking to illegally cross U.S. borders. | ||
| U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border in January 2025 dropped 85% from the same period in 2024. | ||
| Transnational Islamist extremists such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda and affiliated jihadi groups continue to pursue, enable, or inspire attacks against the United States and our citizens abroad and within the homeland to advance their ultimate objective of establishing a global Islamist caliphate. | ||
| This includes heightened efforts to spread their ideology to recruit and radicalize individuals in the U.S. and the West. | ||
| While the New Year's Day attacker in New Orleans had no known direct contact with ISIS terrorists, he was influenced and radicalized by ISIS ideological propaganda, as one example. | ||
| Al Qaeda and its affiliates continue to call for attacks against the United States as they conduct attacks overseas. | ||
| These jihadist groups have shown their ability to adapt and evolve, including using new technologies and tactics to spread their ideology and recruit new followers. | ||
| A range of non-state cyber criminals are also targeting our economic interests, critical infrastructure, and advanced commercial capability for extortion, other coercive pursuits, and financial gain. | ||
| These actors use a variety of tactics, including phishing, ransomware, and denial-of-service attacks, to disrupt our systems and steal sensitive and lucrative information using available technologies and U.S. cyber vulnerabilities. | ||
| Ransomware actors last year, for example, attacked the largest payment processor for U.S. healthcare institutions. | ||
| And another set of criminal actors conducted cyber attacks against U.S. water utilities. | ||
| Some of these non-state cyber actors also operate as proxies for or emulate similar activities carried out by major state actors. | ||
| While these non-state cyber actors often seek financial and intellectual property gains, they also carry out cyber operations for espionage purposes targeting our critical infrastructure. | ||
| Turning to key state actors, the IC sees China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea engaging in activities that could challenge U.S. capabilities and interests. | ||
| We're going to get back to this. | ||
| There's so much going on that we're going to get back to Tulsi in the moment with some of the opening statements. | ||
| Fireworks are going to start. | ||
| We're principally going to focus, as we do here in the Democrats, because they're, let's be blunt, they're looking for blood. | ||
| I'll bring Jack Posobiec back in. | ||
| Jack, Today, obviously, this unclassified briefing on the threats. | ||
| We know the Chinese Communist Party, and they always get underplayed, I think, as far as the real threat goes, because they're going to throw Russia in there and other people, which are clearly, you know, Russia, the KGB guys that run out are bad guys, very bad guys. | ||
| You always got to be on the lookout for it, but the CCP is so overwhelmingly evil in their focus on the destruction of the United States. | ||
| But the topic today is the Democrats, if they have to land this hearing and they have to draw blood from Tulsi Gabbard and Ratcliffe, what they're going to try to do is elicit from them that it was a mistake, elicit from them as two of the senior intelligence officers that there was classified information, because now you have Caroline Levitt and Pete Hegseth both on the record saying there was no classified information. | ||
| Caroline put out a statement this morning. | ||
| And I think the big target here today is going to be Kash Patel. | ||
| They're going to jump on Kash for an independent investigation. | ||
| Am I correct in those, or directionally correct in those, Jack Posobiec? | ||
| Well, Steve, I think you are directionally correct, and you're already seeing this bubble up on the Democrat side where they're calling for—they want an impeachment. | ||
| They think that they can pick off a cabinet member here, and they think that this scandal gives them the ability to be able to do this. | ||
| So they're first going to start with the independent investigation. | ||
| They're going to demand that Kash Patel, Pam Bondi set up—they would love, by the way, a special prosecutor. | ||
| Remember. This is what the Democrats did through the power of the institutional state in government in 2017. | ||
| It's the exact... | ||
| Same thing. | ||
| They took something now, by the way, in 2017, Russiagate, which wasn't real, which was completely fake, and they got this entire investigation going, James Comey, which turned into Robert Mueller after Comey got fired, etc., etc., Rob Rosenstein, and Jeff Sessions co-signing the whole deal. | ||
| We remember every step of the way, and it paralyzed the administration. | ||
| They are salivating over the ability to do that again and potentially pick off a cabinet member if they keep this ball rolling. | ||
| So I can understand by that. | ||
| Why President Trump is trying to put the brakes on this, because he remembers that when Flynn was let go in the beginning of the administration, when this all started, that didn't stem the bleeding. | ||
| And so he's looking potentially at a comprehensive response to the entire thing. | ||
| Hold it. | ||
| Hold it. | ||
| Not only did not stem the bleeding when General Flynn was let go in the first 30 days. | ||
| It showed them that we could be, I mean, the attacks increased because they realized you wouldn't protect, you wouldn't hunker down and protect your people, right? | ||
| That was a huge controversy inside the administration about General Flynn, about hunkering down or letting Flynn go, which in hindsight was a major mistake at the time. | ||
| So to put it in perspective, folks, on this resistance, last night the White House decreed That the information about the terrorist groups were state secrets. | ||
| I want you to explain that, Jack, because Matt Gaetz put out, tweeted out right away, game over on this judge. | ||
| Mike Davis is going to try to join us later this morning if we can fit it in. | ||
| Davis is of the exact opposite. | ||
| He thinks the judge just doubles or triples down. | ||
| So they're trying to come at President Trump and President Trump's administration from every way and block. | ||
| What he's trying to do. | ||
| The most significant thing he's trying to do overall is change geoeconomically and geostrategically. | ||
| This is where the tariffs come in to the national security aspect. | ||
| Totally change the existing structure of the world order from post-World War II to today that makes it America first and American citizens first. | ||
| This is where they're coming after him as commander-in-chief. | ||
| This hearing today is about shutting down President Trump's chosen team on the intelligence side, on information warfare side. | ||
| And to roll it up and to get a couple of scalps. | ||
| And this is what the Democrats are going to do, Jack Lasovic. | ||
| 100%, Steve. | ||
| And you and the warm audience knows that we call this the nullification project back from 2017 onwards. | ||
| They're trying to attempt to rerun the nullification play. | ||
| They started this, by the way, with Rosie O'Donnell and others saying that Elon Musk stole the election, etc. | ||
| But that really didn't go anywhere. | ||
| They had the Tesla terrorists. | ||
| Now they've jumped onto this one. | ||
| They say, this one's got some legs. | ||
| This one we can point to. | ||
| We can nullify Trump. | ||
| We get the judges to go in and have them shut down the executive orders. | ||
| Then we can go on offense with a special counsel, potentially an independent investigation, etc., etc. | ||
| Kick off cabinet members one by one. | ||
| And what they want, Steve. | ||
| What they want is to create a situation where you've got the cabinet members fighting each other. | ||
| Cabinet members, intelligence, the highest intel agencies here, the intel officers, they want that infighting to produce, like we saw in 2017, a culture where Everything grinds to a complete halt, and the agenda can't keep moving forward. | ||
| That's what President Trump, and he's looking downfield, he understands that he was saved on the day in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13th, when he was supposed to be, in his mind, he said this all over and over, that that bullet was intended for him, that God saved him to continue this agenda, to do this work and perform this mission. | ||
| And so that's where he's got his eyes on. | ||
| And I think that that's exactly correct and that he needs to put past all of this stuff in order to keep delivering on that agenda. | ||
| And by the way, that's the agenda. | ||
| Go look at CNN. | ||
| They got the report up this morning that more Americans now believe that America is on the right track than at any other time in recent history. | ||
| That's the agenda, the MAGA, MAHA agenda that this administration has put together. | ||
| That's the tariffs, the restructuring of the world order, making it so that we're not going to be this global government anymore. | ||
| Look, if there's pirates attacking the ships, Of course you go after the pirates. | ||
| That goes back to Jefferson, okay? | ||
| That's simple. | ||
| But that doesn't mean we're going to get into this World War III situation. | ||
| By the way, that's the actual content of the conversation that I read yesterday. | ||
| The importance of this, they have a judicial insurrection. | ||
| And President Trump, by calling what happened state secrets, They're ratcheting up to put down this revolt of the judiciary and try to nip it in the bud right now. | ||
| What you're seeing is what this is giving an opening to is exactly the way they thwarted President Trump's first term, and that's to bring the deep state in. | ||
| Now you're in the intelligence community, right? | ||
| Now they can bring all the resources they have, all the embeds. | ||
| And DNI, CIA, DIA, working in conjunction with this committee, right, and House Intelligence, which has all these demons on it. | ||
| This is what the threat is doing, is bringing up, and this is why it's got to be fought. | ||
| And I think President Trump to Garrett Haake, I mean, give me your thoughts on that. | ||
| He told Garrett Haake this morning of NBC News, Waltz is a good man. | ||
| He didn't really do anything wrong. | ||
| He apologizes for it. | ||
| He's my guy and he's going to stick around. | ||
| Thoughts on that, Jack Posobiec? | ||
| On the deep state particularly, this is the opening of the deep state. | ||
| You've got a judicial insurrection with the courts. | ||
| We know these radical marks on that. | ||
| Now you've got the deep state. | ||
| It's going to be a pincer move on President Trump and the administration. | ||
| Well, Steve, I think it's exactly that. | ||
| I think he's remembering the 2017 experience when, in a very similar way, you had people come from places like the Atlantic who were completely and intrinsically involved, intimately involved. | ||
| When you talk about Ann Applebaum with the deep state, she's very intimately involved. | ||
| And with Sikorsky and Mr. Raddick over there, that he remembers what happened when he fired Flynn. | ||
| Mike Pence, by the way, playing a huge role in the firing of Flynn. | ||
| Mike Pence lying to Trump about what Flynn had said to him regarding the Russian ambassador. | ||
| So it was Mike Pence playing the role, the Judas role, even all the way back in the early days of the administration. | ||
| So I believe that Trump understands that, and he's looking at this as... | ||
| The fastball that's coming at him, he's reading the stitches on the fastball and saying, wait a minute. | ||
| They want me to swing at this. | ||
| They want me to react. | ||
| I'm not going to react in their time. | ||
| I'm going to react in my own time. | ||
| That being said, look, you've got to be more careful with your comp sec. | ||
| You've got to understand the situation. | ||
| You can't have this stuff going on where reporters are coming in on that. | ||
| We all understand that. | ||
| What's potentially the bigger threat? | ||
| The bigger threat is that the MAGA agenda goes off the rails the way that it did in 2017. | ||
| That if you give, the sharks are already up in the water, right? | ||
| The sharks are in the water. | ||
| So if you're chumming the waters, if you throw them a Mike Waltz or you throw them a General Flynn, now guess what? | ||
| They're going to want more. | ||
| They're going to want more and more and more, and it never stops. | ||
| So that's what allows this to keep going on. | ||
| Keep the agenda moving. | ||
| Keep the momentum. | ||
| Keep flooding the system. | ||
| Enact the regime change that's really going on. | ||
| That's the true mission right now. | ||
| And by the way, if President Trump wants to make a decision on his national security team, that's his prerogative because they all serve the pleasure of the commander-in-chief. | ||
| My staff is going to let us know if Cotton's asking any question about the thread. | ||
| We'll jump right into it. | ||
| He was asking a general question. | ||
| We'll go to the Democrats' questions because we know they're going to be snarky. | ||
| For Jack, let's go ahead and go to Tom Cotton's question right now. | ||
| Immigrants have posed not just to Arkansas but our nation, perhaps including some of the details of the horrific offenses they've committed against the American people. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
|
unidentified
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The greatest threat to global security is Israel in the whole world. | |
| Stop funding Israel! | ||
| Stop funding Israel! | ||
| So that protester was a code pink lunatic saying the greatest threat to world peace is funding Israel. | ||
| I will observe, for the benefit of the audience here on television, that Code Pink is funded by Communist China as well, which simply illustrates... | ||
| Speak up now if you want to be removed as well, whoever's saying that. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Come on. | ||
| If anyone else would like to join them, speak now, please, so we don't have any more disruptions. | ||
| As I was saying, the fact that Communist China funds Code Pink, which interrupts a hearing like this about Israel, simply illustrate Director Gabbard's point that China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other American adversaries are working in concert to a greater degree than they ever have before. | ||
| Director Patel, back to my question. | ||
| Could you give us some color about the threat that illegal migrants have posed, not only to my state, which has resulted in nearly 300 arrests in 2025, but also to the nation at large? | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman, and members of the committee. | ||
| I appreciate the time to address you all, specifically to Arkansas, Senator. | ||
| The priorities at the FBI, which I identified during my confirmation hearing and since, is attacking violent crime along with national security. | ||
| And every single state in this country is a border state. | ||
| Arkansas is no exception. | ||
| Allow me to highlight the work of the men and women in the FBI and state and local law enforcement in the city. | ||
| Since February 5th alone, we've had 220 illegal immigrants arrested on charges varying from violent offenses, weapons offenses, narcotics offenses, and serious violent felonies. | ||
| 253 separate individuals have been charged related to those offenses. | ||
| And here's something I want the American people to hear about narcotics, encountering narcotics. | ||
| Thousands of pounds of narcotics were seized in these three weeks in the state of Arkansas. | ||
| Thousands worth tens of millions of dollars. | ||
| Everything from fentanyl to meth to cocaine to heroin to marijuana and more. | ||
| And also including manufactured drugs. | ||
| The FBI does have the biggest footprint in Arkansas, but we could not achieve this mission without our state and local law enforcement partners, which has been one of the priorities since I took the helm at the FBI. | ||
| They provide the greatest ground-level intelligence to conduct these operations in Arkansas and in every single state across the Union. | ||
| Since February 5th, we've assisted with the arrest of Hundreds of criminals and illegals throughout your state, and that was just a three-week operation. | ||
| Prior to that, Senator, there was a bust of 17 federal indictments relating to a meth lab in the state of Arkansas in the southwest corner of your state. | ||
| All of those individuals are now facing prosecution for hundreds of pounds of illegal opioids, guns, and other illicit material. | ||
| So we will continue to do that work. | ||
| We will work at seven days a week, 365 days a year, not just in your state, Mr. Chairman, but in every state. | ||
| Thank you, Director Patel. | ||
| As Director Gabbard highlighted from the annual threat report, Director Ratcliffe, many if not most of the chemical precursors for deadly fentanyl produced by Mexican drug cartels originates in China. | ||
| China, of course, is a techno-totalitarian police state. | ||
| They have technology to monitor their own people that Soviet Russia could have only imagined. | ||
| Is there any reason, Director Ratcliffe, to believe that China could not monitor and crack down on this flow of chemical precursors to Mexico if it chose to do so? | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you, Senator. | |
| No, there's nothing that prevent China, the People's Republic of China, from cracking down on fentanyl precursors. | ||
| As you well know, Senator, one of the reasons that they don't is that there are more than 600 PRC-related companies that produce those precursor chemicals in an industry that generates $1.5 trillion. | ||
| That is one of the reasons that we see that Chinese efforts to affect the Sentinel precursors are really limited in nature and intermittent in nature and not a dedicated effort to enforce their own laws and regulations to crack down on this. | ||
| Thank you, Director Ratcliffe. | ||
| I have many more questions I could ask. | ||
| But I'm going to try to lead by example and stay within the five-minute limit. | ||
| For the benefit of senators, I remind everyone there is a vote scheduled at noon. | ||
| I hope to finish the open portion of this hearing before that vote closes, after which time we'll move to the closed portion. | ||
| The vice chairman. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I'll be happy to take your extra 13 seconds. | ||
| But I'm going to go back to what I addressed at the outset. | ||
| I mean, this was not only sloppy and not only violated all procedures. | ||
| Information had gotten out. | ||
| American lives could have been lost. | ||
| The Houthis had this information and could reposition their defensive systems. | ||
| So I want to get a little more information about this. | ||
| Director Gabbard, did you participate in the group chat with Secretary of Defense and other Trump senior officials discussing the Yemen war plans? | ||
| Senator, I don't want to get into the specifics. | ||
| Ma'am, were you on? | ||
| You're not going to be willing to address it. | ||
| Are you denying? | ||
| Answer my question, ma'am. | ||
| You are not TG on this group chat. | ||
| I'm not going to get into the specifics. | ||
| Do you refuse to acknowledge whether you are on this group chat? | ||
| Senator, I'm not going to get into the specifics. | ||
| Why are you going to get into the specifics? | ||
| Is it because it's all classified? | ||
| Because this is currently under review by the National Security Council. | ||
| Because it's all classified? | ||
| If it's not classified, share the text now. | ||
| As the White House previously stated. | ||
| Is it classified or non-classified information on this text? | ||
| I can confirm. | ||
| Director Radcliffe, were you on the group chat? | ||
|
unidentified
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Senator, I was on a signal messaging group. | |
| So you were the John Ratcliffe on that chat? | ||
|
unidentified
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I was. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Can I provide some context, Senator, to that? | |
| Yes, but I've got a series of questions. | ||
|
unidentified
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But I think it's important because at the outset you made a couple of comments about signal messaging using encrypted apps so that we're clear. | |
| One of the first things that happened when I was confirmed as CIA director was signal was loaded onto my computer at... | ||
| The CIA, as it is for most CIA officers. | ||
| One of the things that I was briefed on very early, Senator, was by the CIA records management folks about the use of signal as a permissible work use. | ||
| It is. | ||
| That is a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration. | ||
| I've got a series of questions. | ||
| If you're making the statement, the signal is a secure channel. | ||
|
unidentified
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No, can I answer that? | |
| It is permissible to use to communicate and coordinate for work purposes provided. | ||
| Provided, Senator, that any decisions that are made are also recorded through formal channels. | ||
| So those were procedures that were implemented. | ||
| My staff implemented those processes, followed those processes, complied with those processes, and finally, just please, so my communications, to be clear, in a signal message group were entirely permissible. | ||
| Well, we will make that determination because if it's not classified, share the text with the committee. | ||
| You know, let me go on. | ||
| Director Gabbard, you are the security executive and set access guidelines for classified information. | ||
| Did you contact the defense secretary or others after This specific military planning was put out and say, hey, we should be doing this in a SCIF. | ||
| There was no classified material that was shared in that signal. | ||
| So then if there was no classified material, share it with the committee. | ||
| You can't have it both ways. | ||
| These are important jobs. | ||
| This is our national security. | ||
| Bobbing and weaving and trying to, you know... | ||
| Filibuster your answer. | ||
| So please answer the question. | ||
| If this was a, Director Gabbard, if this was a rank-and-file intelligence officer who did this kind of careless behavior, what would you do with him? | ||
| Senator, I'll reiterate that there was no classified material that was shared in that signal. | ||
| And if there's no classified materials, share. | ||
| And then if there's no classified materials, then you can't even answer the question. | ||
| Whether you're on the chat. | ||
| This is strangely familiar, and I think my colleagues will remember, when you couldn't answer the question, is Edward Snowden a traitor? | ||
| Ma'am, I have serious doubts about your... | ||
| Anyway. Director Gabbard, I'm going to give you this. | ||
| Tweeted just 11 days ago, and I'm quoting you. | ||
| Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such. | ||
| So if this information is classified, what are you going to do? | ||
| Senator, two points here. | ||
| First of all, there's a difference between inadvertent release versus malicious leaks of classified information. | ||
| The second point is... | ||
| There was no classified information that was on the signal news chat. | ||
| And the National Security Council... | ||
| Director Patel, my time's about out, and I'm going to use my 12 seconds that the chairman came. | ||
| Director Patel, has the FBI launched any investigation of this? | ||
| Senator, I was just briefed about it late last night this morning. | ||
| I don't have an update. | ||
| I would like to get an answer by the end of the day. | ||
| At this point in the ordinary course of affairs, I would recognize Senator Collins. | ||
| She asked... | ||
| Me to express to you that she is under the weather this morning. | ||
| She regrets her absence, but anticipates submitting written questions to which I would request your prompt replies for the senator. | ||
| Senator Cornyn. | ||
|
unidentified
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Director Gabbard, I applaud President Trump's efforts to try to bring an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine. | |
| I want to read a statement out of the annual threat assessment and just confirm that you agree with this. | ||
| It says Russia views its ongoing war with Ukraine as a proxy conflict with the West. | ||
| Of course, of course, that's important, but I want to bring Jack Posobiec in. | ||
| We just saw some fireworks right there. | ||
| I do appreciate an audience. | ||
| Tulsi Gabbard initially took a hard line. | ||
| Hey, it's under review. | ||
| We'll get back to you. | ||
| To me, That is exactly what the responses should be. | ||
| I don't, you have to explain to me, I don't understand Ratcliffe, John Ratcliffe, engaging in some conversation, trying to show about Signal being a potential, I guess, classified, classified ability to put classified information on, or you could have a classified conversation. | ||
| Jack, you know the tea leaves here, so walk us through what just happened. | ||
| Right, so there's a couple of things, right? | ||
| So the idea is that you can't share classified information. | ||
| Look, classified information cannot be shared on any... | ||
| Unclassified system, period, full stop. | ||
| These are entirely separate systems used to communicate whether it's an unclassified server. | ||
| So like you and I are speaking on an unclassified server right now over the open internet. | ||
| There are specifically dedicated systems called Cypernet and JWix, which are classified systems. | ||
| Cypernet for secret level information and JWix for top secret and various caveats and things. | ||
| And there's different caveats which can be shared through Cypernet as well and various... | ||
| Other types of compartmented programs. | ||
| But what you're talking about is using signal on an unclassified government controlled system. | ||
| So it would still be a closed system, but then could potentially using, I don't know, a web browser, you know, brave browser, whatever you use to access the open input. | ||
| The open internet to coordinate with other members of the government. | ||
| And certainly they all have government issued cell phones. | ||
| Hillary Clinton, of course, famously had her Blackberry. | ||
| There's typically iPhones, different Samsung devices that government employees use now for coordination. | ||
| And that's exactly what this looked like to me. | ||
| But the idea that... | ||
| The idea that you want to get into that with Warner now is it's only going to fuel the fire because they're going to try to say and you can tell it sounded like what Radcliffe was saying was that well this was a Biden policy that this was put out there and by the way I'm sure. | ||
| That the Biden administration was having these conversations. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| By the way, we know going back to Ben Rhodes. | ||
| Ben Rhodes, when he was the deputy national security advisor for communications in the Obama administration, would brag about he would have a briefing on the Iran plan, and then he would walk over to the next room. | ||
| He would be inside the skip or wherever he was in the White House and would brag. | ||
| Yeah. Okay, hang on, Jack. | ||
| We're going to take a short break here. | ||
| The Democrats are going to come back firing on all cylinders with more questions. | ||
| Bottom line is, Tulsi Gabbard took a very hard line there at the beginning. | ||
| It's open for a question why John Ratcliffe had the CIA didn't, you know, have her back, take the hard line. | ||
| Figure out later. | ||
| Cotton's already said there's going to be a vote at noon. | ||
| This hearing, the public part was going to end at noon. | ||
| They're going to go to closed door after the vote. | ||
| So we're going to try to cover as much of this as possible as they are on the attack on President Trump's intelligence team, Tulsi Gabbard, John Ratcliffe. | ||
| And of course, we told you they're going to ask the first question they're going to ask, Cash, has the FBI opened up an independent investigation? | ||
| And now they've got Cash on the hook to come back by closing business with an answer. | ||
| Very dramatic Senate Intelligence Committee from the Hart Building. | ||
| Short commercial break on Real American Voice in the War Room. | ||
| Jack Posobiec is with Stephen K. Bannon. |
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