| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
July 20th, 1969. | |
| One small step for man. | ||
| One diaphragm for man. | ||
| Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first humans to set foot on the moon. | ||
| Watch a pre-launch interview with the two moonwalkers and Michael Collins, who piloted the command module Columbia, followed by a NASA film documenting the Apollo 11 mission from launch to the astronauts' return to Earth. | ||
| Exploring the American story. | ||
| Watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history. | ||
| Attorney General Pam Bondi spoke about a Justice Department seizure of fentanyl shipments over the July 4th holiday weekend during a press conference in Washington, D.C. During the nearly 25-minute event, Attorney General Bondi was also asked about the Trump administration's recent decision to close an investigation into the case of Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| Good afternoon and welcome to DEA. | ||
| My name is Robert Murphy, the Acting Administrator for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. | ||
| On behalf of the men and women of DEA, I'm privileged to stand here today alongside the Attorney General of the United States, whose leadership, support, and unwavering commitment to public safety has been instrumental in DEA carrying out its vital mission. | ||
| It is an honor to introduce the Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi. | ||
| Thank you all for being here today. | ||
| This is so important why we're here today. | ||
| Acting Administrator Murphy, thank you for everything you do. | ||
| We've been to DEA labs together. | ||
| You have been fighting this every day, and I can't thank you enough. | ||
| It's been an incredible few weeks for the DEA nationwide. | ||
| We're here today to announce the historic success through Operation Take Back America. | ||
| We should remember why this work matters. | ||
| We're honored today to be here with Chelsea Curtis. | ||
| She is a brave sister. | ||
| She lost two of her brothers to drug overdoses. | ||
| One to heroin and her second brother, she lost to cocaine that was laced with fentanyl. | ||
| Chelsea works with us here at the Department of Justice. | ||
| And she's in the District of Virginia, and she does amazing work, and she is paying it forward by looking out for other victims and their families and fighting this epidemic throughout our country. | ||
| Thank you, Chelsea, for being here with us. | ||
| Over the 4th of July weekend, DEA agents executed successful operations throughout this country. | ||
| One in Columbia, South Carolina, where they seized 71 kilos of fentanyl and 20 kilos of methamphetamine. | ||
| This is near, very near, the University of South Carolina, where dealers, we all know, often target college kids. | ||
| They put these drugs in pill forms to go after our kids. | ||
| This includes a seizure in Fresno, California, also 4th of July weekend. | ||
| Acting Director Murphy is going to get into details about these, but this is why this is so important. | ||
| And this is something new that I hadn't seen. | ||
| 24 pounds of car fentanyl disguised as real prescription pills. | ||
| Car fentanyl, we all know, is even stronger than fentanyl. | ||
| They often call it the elephant tranquilizer. | ||
| And it was car fentanyl in prescription pills to look like oxycodone. | ||
| That should terrify every parent in this country. | ||
| In many cases, illegal aliens are doing the work of cartels in our communities. | ||
| In one recent example, just two weeks ago, the DEA arrested an illegal alien sitting in the front passenger seat of a trailer truck that contained over 700 pounds of methamphetamine. | ||
| 700 pounds. | ||
| Something else I hadn't seen, they are now putting metha amphetamine in a pill form. | ||
| First time we've seen that. | ||
| A pill form. | ||
| Now, a pill form of metha amphetamine might not kill you instantly, but it can get you so addicted to meth that it can destroy your life instantly. | ||
| DOJ attorneys will continue to prosecute these violent criminals, and they're all violent. | ||
| If you are dealing in these drugs to Americans, to any citizen in this world, you're a violent criminal and we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. | ||
| Since January 20th, DEA has been removing this poison from our streets at a historic rate. | ||
| They've seized over 44 million fentanyl pills, over 4,500 pounds of fentanyl powder, over 64,000 pounds of methamphetamine, 64,000, nearly totaling the same amount that was seized in all of 2024. | ||
| 20101, 541,000 pounds of cocaine. | ||
| And what they're doing, they just take a little fentanyl and lace it in that cocaine, which is how Chelsea lost her brother. | ||
| We will not rest until these FTOs are eliminated, their members are prosecuted or deported, and the public is safe again. | ||
| Thanks to President Trump, we're able to take the handcuffs off our law enforcement officers, our great men and women at DEA who are out there every single day risking their lives to protect us and to protect our families. | ||
| One big beautiful bill enhances our law enforcement capabilities by also including money for technology that will help our agents catch these criminals and they are getting so sophisticated and Acting Director Murphy is going to explain to you, | ||
| I've never seen anything like this either in my entire career as a prosecutor, how sophisticated they are in smuggling these drugs into our country. | ||
| Now I'm going to let him explain that to you with a truckload of cucumbers that came into our country. | ||
| In addition to one big beautiful bill, the HALT Fentanyl Act that was passed through Congress is now headed to the White House. | ||
| That will help us because it analogs. | ||
| Previously, these drugs that were coming into our country, they would change the precursors as fast as they can so they wouldn't be illegal coming into our country. | ||
| No longer would the HALT Fentanyl Act. | ||
| Also now, if a criminal is in possession of 100 grams or more of any fentanyl-related substance, any fentanyl-related substance, they will face 10 years in prison minimum. | ||
| President Trump, the Department of Justice, and the great men and women at the DEA will continue to fight to make America safe again. | ||
| We will fight from Tampa to the Twin Cities, from Nassau County to the Golden Coast. | ||
| And I can't wait for you to hear these recent cases that were just made. | ||
| And to the Angel families and our incredible Angel sister, who lost two brothers, two brothers to drugs. | ||
| And everyone affected by fentanyl, know that every day we will be out there fighting for you and your loved ones. | ||
| The most important reminder we can give you here today to high school kids, to college kids, to parents to talk to your kids. | ||
| Do not buy, take, accept any drug, any prescription drug from anyone off the street, even if it's a friend. | ||
| Do not accept it. | ||
| This is why. | ||
| This is a real Adderall pill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a fake Adderall pill. | |
| You can't tell the difference. | ||
| These are laced with drugs that could kill you. | ||
| Over here, the oxycodone, the fake ones and the real ones. | ||
| This is what was seized in Fresno, California. | ||
| Fresno, right? | ||
| A mouse that could kill so many of our high school and college kids. | ||
| They think that buying this, they think that buying this on the street corner won't hurt them, but it will and it can kill you. | ||
| And that's why they're targeting places close to our universities as well. | ||
| I'm going to let Acting Director Murphy now fill you in on all the details of these very, very important arrests that were made just within the last couple weeks. | ||
| Thank you all for your attention to this very important matter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Attorney General Bondi. | |
| Men and women of the DEA lead the fight against the Mexican cartels. | ||
| These cartels are responsible for the manufacturing, the smuggling, and the distribution. | ||
| And then the subsequent collection of the money, because that's what's driving this problem, is profit and getting that, making sure that money makes it back into Mexico. | ||
| How do we measure success? | ||
| DEA works tirelessly every day to disrupt and dismantle these cartels. | ||
| We are second to none at developing intelligence, interpreting it, and actioning it. | ||
| Without the intelligence, these cases I'm going to talk about, we would never be able to make. | ||
| You are not going to randomly stop the amount of vehicles that we haven't come across at port of entry. | ||
| There's no way. | ||
| Some could be million a day. | ||
| There's no way we're going to be able to stop every vehicle, search it, and find this. | ||
| Without the actionable intelligence, the technology that we're hopefully going to be getting based on the new bill will help us get better at doing our job and preventing this stuff from making it to the street in the first place. | ||
| But we recognize that's not enough by itself. | ||
| We have a responsibility to ensure the public is aware of the threats posed by the cartels that endanger both public safety and national security. | ||
| And this is where all of you come in today. | ||
| We are seeing a disturbing trend. | ||
| Cartels are now producing methamphetamine pills. | ||
| We started seeing it in 2024 at a tremendous amount. | ||
| We've already seized more methamphetamine pills this year than we did the entire year of 2024. | ||
| These are made to look like popular drugs that our youngest men and women want, our college-age students. | ||
| This is an effort by the cartels, a deliberate effort. | ||
| Our young men and women are not seeking out methamphetamine pills. | ||
| They are not seeking to get that. | ||
| Unfortunately, they are being deceived into a life of potential addiction. | ||
| We are fighting back, bringing this fight to the front lines. | ||
| Fentanyl remains the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. | ||
| Fentanyl and methamphetamine together are the toxic evidence that cartels have no value of life. | ||
| Over the past few weeks, as the Attorney General mentioned, we've made historic seizures in multiple cities targeting these cartels who are recently designated by the president as foreign terrorist organizations. | ||
| Attorney General spoke about Lexington, South Carolina, right outside Columbia University, University of South Carolina, and Columbia. | ||
| 156 pounds of meth. | ||
| There was also, I'm sorry, 156 pounds of fentanyl along with meth, weapons, cash, and an illegal alien that had previously been deported twice. | ||
| Fresno, California, the 24 pounds of car fentanyl, that's frightening. | ||
| That's a large amount of any drug, let alone carfentanyl. | ||
| That cannot hit the streets. | ||
| Luckily, we were able to stop it from getting the street. | ||
| Gainesville, Georgia, Georgia, suburb right outside of Atlanta, the 706 pounds of methamphetamine the Attorney General made mention of hidden in a shipment of cucumbers across the Mexican border. | ||
| Obviously, DEA intelligence led to that. | ||
| We had not seen this unique. | ||
| It was not a standard-sized kilo packages. | ||
| They were cut in half, and they were built into the boxes that contained the cucumbers. | ||
| So when you picked up a box, there was no way. | ||
| So the average trooper or anybody stopping that truck, that 18-wheeler that had tons of cucumbers on it, opened up the back and looked. | ||
| Unless you knew you were looking for this, there's no way you would have found it. | ||
| And again, one of the individuals arrested there, an illegal alien deported twice most recently after serving a federal conviction for drug trafficking, cocaine. | ||
| Minneapolis, Minnesota, 889 pounds of methamphetamine. | ||
| Again, one of the persons arrested in that case, previously deported. | ||
| Kern County, California, in Bakersfield, along with our partners, we shut down a meth conversion lab, which is where we see where meth comes across the border in a liquid form, has to be converted back into something that's usable. | ||
| It's useless in a liquid. | ||
| It's converted back into crystallized methamphetamine. | ||
| So very dangerous for the neighborhoods when you live in those areas. | ||
| Toxic chemicals, this is some of the very, very toxic. | ||
| The house easily explodes with the chemicals they're mixing. | ||
| They seized 240 pounds of crystal meth that was finished and another 150 pounds of liquid meth that was in process. | ||
| Galveston, Texas, along with our other federal partners, CBP and others, we were able to seize 1,700 pounds of methamphetamine worth over the $15 million hidden inside a vehicle that was crossing into the United States. | ||
| Two days ago in Austin, Texas, along with law enforcement partners, we seized an additional 785 pounds of methamphetamine hidden amongst a pallet of blueberries. | ||
| Let me say this again. | ||
| This is a national security threat, not just a drug problem. | ||
| We are taking the fight directly to the cartels, not just at home, but internationally, across our borders, and online through online platforms. | ||
| We are not just seizing drugs, we are also dismantling the cartel's logistics and their finance networks. | ||
| Just recently, Miami agents, DE agents, Miami, seized over $10 million in cryptocurrency directly linked to the Sinaloa cartel. | ||
| In Omaha, we seized numerous handguns, including machine gun conversion devices, along with 40,000 pentanol, I'm sorry, 40,000 fentanyl pills in a raid that was run by a locally based poly drug linked to a Mexican cartel. | ||
| Just recently in Chicago, multi-state takedown in Indiana, Kentucky, and Arizona resulted in seizure of 59 illegal firearms possessed by serious violent felons, along with 74 pounds of methamphetamine, 11 pounds of fentanyl, 11 pounds of cocaine, cash, and 23 individuals who were arrested. | ||
| Every seizure demonstrates the reach the cartels have throughout the United States. | ||
| Make no mistake, the cartels are operating in every corner of this country, and so are we. | ||
| At this point, we'll take questions. | ||
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
| Mr. Administrator, I would like to get your perspective on what exactly is driving this, but I also have an off-topic question for the Attorney General in response to questions, comments that President Trump made a short time ago, just a few months ago on the stop on. | ||
| He said that he would support you releasing additional credible evidence from the Epstein investigation. | ||
| He's not something that you are open to doing. | ||
| Let me say this just a few months. | ||
| Let me take that first. | ||
| This today is about fentanyl. | ||
| This is about a wall of people right outside this room who have died from, I appreciate your question, but this today is about fentanyl overdoses throughout our country and people who have lost loved ones to fentanyl. | ||
| That's the message that we're here to send today. | ||
| Nothing about Epstein. | ||
| I'm not going to talk about Epstein. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so to your first question about what's driving this, clearly it's driven by profit. | |
| It's all it is. | ||
| Mexican cartels are driven by profit only. | ||
| These are business decisions. | ||
| Everything we talked about today, whether it's how they're smuggling across the building, the innovation they use to get it across the border. | ||
| Also, the attempt at, quite frankly, during the 4th of July holiday, we think it was a concerted effort that they flood us because they thought there'd be less law enforcement working at that time. | ||
| And they sent as much as they could across the border and in numerous cities. | ||
| Didn't work out well for them. | ||
| Also, the decision to start making methamphetamine pills, business decision. | ||
| Like any other company in America, they look at what is wanted, unfortunately. | ||
| Taking a pill has a lot less stigma than shooting a drug in your arm, snorting it, smoking it. | ||
| But that makes it that much more dangerous because it's less threatening to our young people who, again, from a national security standpoint, that 18 to 45-year-old men and women, that's what makes up our U.S. military. | ||
| And we're losing them at historic rates. | ||
| That is not what we can allow to continue. | ||
| And that's what we're here to fight and continue to fight it. | ||
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
| I have an on-topic and an off-topic question. | ||
| On topic, you spoke a lot about seizure numbers, but of all the different actions that you put forward that we have, can you talk to us about how many individuals are going to be facing criminal prosecution, not simply just being deported, perhaps arrested and sent for? | ||
| Everybody arrested in this will be facing. | ||
| This is a serious amount of drugs. | ||
| Do you have a number? | ||
| Well, I don't off the top of my head because it was in multiple cities, but I think most of the pretty much at every place we're talking about. | ||
| I don't have exact numbers. | ||
| And to jump in on that same topic, though, minimum 10 years in prison for almost all of these defendants, some 20, some 40, depending on the amount of drugs, the type of drugs, the level of drugs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have an off-topic question for you, Attorney General. | |
| Today on social media, President Trump made allegations about mortgage fraud against Senator Schiff. | ||
| I'm wondering if you can comment on that and then whether or not that issue has been referred and been looked at by the President. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I just was told about those comments walking into this room, and we don't comment on whether there is or is not a pending investigation. | ||
| But thank you. | ||
| Anything else on topic today? | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Madam Attorney General, on this matter of fentanyl is a priority clearly for the DEA, the Department of Justice. | |
| Are you confident you're going to still be here to execute this because there's so many people calling for change at the Department of Department? | ||
| I'm going to be here for as long as the President wants me here, and I believe he's made that crystal clear. | ||
| It's four years. | ||
| Well, three and a half now, right? | ||
| We've got six months in. | ||
| Yeah, it feels like six years. | ||
| But I was with Director Patel this morning, and we are working on fighting violent crime. | ||
| We are working on all these issues that we deeply care about to make America safe again and get these drugs off our streets. | ||
| You know, we've been working on this since my really last two years, fentanyl was coming on the market when I was state attorney general. | ||
| And now with these cartels, it's coming back. | ||
| It's coming in more than ever. | ||
| And the border has stopped that, but we're going to catch them and we're going to prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| Is there a disruption to the leadership of DOJ and the FBI with your relationship with Dan Bongino that is affecting the operation of the budget? | ||
| No, I'm not going to talk about personnel matters. | ||
| No, I was with Director Patel all morning, and we are committed to keeping America safe, making America safe, working with our incredible partners at DEA, FBI, ATF, U.S. Marshals to do everything we can to make America safe, and that's what we're focused on. | ||
| And today, we're focused on protecting our kids. | ||
| And I would ask all of you, when you leave, go look at that wall outside, right outside this room, of all the fentanyl deaths, all the faces of fentanyl that you guys, you have done an amazing job putting up. | ||
| Thank you all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, following up on that, I want to follow up on that question. | |
| I think the American people have a lot of questions about your relationship with the Deputy FBI Director. | ||
| Do you believe that he should stay in his role? | ||
| I'm not going to discuss personnel matters. | ||
| I think we all are committed to working together now to make America safe again, and that's what we're doing. | ||
| Only on topic, guys. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
First of all, I believe when you're in a public forum, you can choose or not choose to answer any questions, but I don't believe it is your right to ask Mr. District. | |
| Those questions that said, I will keep this on topic. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How can you keep America safe again when the president's budget for 2026 cuts DBA by $212 million and the FBA by half a billion? | |
| Do you support those cuts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you think they will harm your capacity to fight? | |
| Well, it won't. | ||
| That's a great question. | ||
| It won't harm our capacity to fight. | ||
| I'll tell you that. | ||
| We can always do more with more, but we can do more with less. | ||
| And that's what we're committed to doing. | ||
| The Big Beautiful bill also adds a tremendous amount for us in combating, especially the drug crisis. | ||
| Billions of dollars, I believe. | ||
| I think it's a billion. | ||
| Yeah, let me see. | ||
| Yeah, $3.3 billion in the Big Beautiful bill to combat drug trafficking, support the prosecution of immigration matters, and gang-related crimes. | ||
| So that crosses all agencies as well. | ||
| So that bill will greatly help us as well in addition to the budget. | ||
| We also have a $3.5 billion reimbursement fund for state and local agencies that are enforcing the Immigration Act, drug and human trafficking laws, and human trafficking is also something we're not talking about today, but it's very, very important to us. | ||
| Yes, there are billions of additional dollars in addition to the original budget. | ||
| So that was a great question. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, guys. | |
| The president said today you would release credible files related to Mr. Epstein. | ||
| Are you prepared to do that and when would you release that? | ||
| Our memo today, our memo speaks for itself, and we'll get back to you on anything else. | ||
| I haven't seen all of his statements today. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| We're going to fight to keep America safe again, and we're fighting together as a team. | ||
| That's what's so important right now. | ||
| You know, we've got a war on drugs. | ||
| We've got a war on human trafficking. | ||
| We've got cartels in this country, and we are going to do, we've got foreign adversaries around this world as well. | ||
| And we're all going to work together as a team to fight to keep America safe again. | ||
| And I can tell you that's what we're all committed to. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you all for being here. | ||
| And thank you for please show these pictures today. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If anybody needs B-roll or some B-roll, especially of the cucumbers, the thing I talk about is some great video of that. | |
| If you need it, Shanaz, we can get that to them. | ||
| So there's plenty of it. | ||
| Is there anything new on Canada? | ||
| The President has talked about with respect to tariffs and tenants and concerns in Canada. | ||
| Have you seen anything recently that would be useful for the public to know about fentanyl from Canada? | ||
| I can just say that I myself have met with Canada, but I'm going to leave the rest of that to the President on those. | ||
| But we've met and had discussions, at least on two different occasions. | ||
| And we're going to do everything we can to keep every border safe, not just the border in Mexico. | ||
| And the reason we wanted you to look at the cucumbers, I've never seen anything like it. | ||
| There's a video of it that they'll get you. | ||
| But when you took the cucumbers out of the box, they just look like a normal vegetable crate. | ||
| And they even changed the packaging and the shape of the kilos to fit underneath the cardboard where it was virtually impossible to detect, but they did detect it. | ||
| And some of these new funds will help us with technology to continue to take these drugs off our street. | ||
| Thank you all, and thanks for covering this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, we can do that. | |
| Yeah, we can do that. | ||
| And they can get you the time they're facing too, whether it's 10, 20, or 40 years, depending on the pills. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, guys. | |
| I appreciate it. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum, inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington to across the country. | ||
| Coming up Wednesday morning, Washington Democratic Congresswoman Kim Schreier, a pediatrician and member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, discusses the impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on health care and layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services. | ||
| Then Georgia Republican Congressman Rich McCormick, a member of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committee, on the U.S. role in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, and Association for Women in Cryptocurrencies Amanda Wick on federal efforts to regulate cryptocurrencies. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Wednesday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| On Wednesday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy testifies before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on President Trump's 2026 budget request, efforts to modernize the U.S. air traffic control system, and other priorities for his department. | ||
| Secretary Duffy's testimony comes just a week since he was appointed interim administrator of NASA after President Trump withdrew the previous nominee from consideration. | ||
| You can watch the hearing live at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3, also on the free C-SPAN Now video app or online at c-span.org. | ||
| America marks 250 years, and C-SPAN is there to commemorate every moment. |