July 24, 2024 - MyronGainesX
01:54:37
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| Is delivery. | |
| And so I think, you know, he's clearly coming here to try to appeal to both Democrats and Republicans, which is profoundly important. | |
| Uh, to, you know, touch our muscle memory and say, look, Israel still matters. | |
| Well, I guess I don't know what's going on here. | |
| Uh comment on the state of affairs to say things like, you know, supporting our enemies like Iran's virulent anti-Semitism. | |
| These things are bad. | |
| Uh, and the United States and Israel matter, and Israel matters to the United States, that frankly has a lot of challenges around the world to face. | |
| And he very explicitly said, Israel is your front line of defense in the Middle East, which I think could have a lot of resonance with both Democrats and Republicans. | |
| Because a lot of our other allies don't really say or do things like that. | |
| He did address the protesters, both the ones that have been on college campuses across the country, but also the ones who are outside hundreds of them outside the Capitol protesting his speech right now. | |
| There were also protesters that were outside of his hotel where he's been staying, which is over on the Potomac. | |
| So any surprise that we did see that number of protesters that did turn out. | |
| It's doing that. | |
| Sadly, no. | |
| I wish I could have been pleasantly surprised that there were none or in an alternate universe that I could be shocked that there were there were any protesters at all. | |
| Uh unfortunately, I think it's a reflection of a lot of deeper trends, most of which go well beyond Prime Minister Netanyahu himself or even the US Israel partnership. | |
| Uh negative trends about not only Israel's popularity in the United States and frankly Israel's struggles trying to do and how it supports the U.S. interests, which is uh one of the reasons that Netanyahu was was here. | |
| Um, but I think I I frankly have been shocked, and I'm not someone who's easily shocked. | |
| Since October 7th, should still be uh the veil has dropped. | |
| Uh any pretense of pretending that opposition to Israel is simply anti-Zionism, which in and of itself is a very problematic argument. | |
| But now, you know, the the fig leaf is gone. | |
| It's it's it's open season on anti-Semitism. | |
| And so I think that forms a very important critical and and you know, frankly, horrifying backdrop to one of the reasons that brought him here to Washington. | |
| What are your thoughts about the fact that Kamala Harris, vice president, was not there? | |
| Now she is uh campaigning, so to speak, over in Indianapolis. | |
| So that was a pre-planned trip, but obviously she is not there during the speech. | |
| What does that say to you? | |
| And is it significant in any way as she is likely to be the democratic candidate for president? | |
| Are we up on Rumble? | |
| I think on a substance level, it's not that important. | |
| Uh, but ironically, the optics of it are are bad, and that's that's more important. | |
| As I mentioned, any perceptions of daylight in the U.S. Israel partnership uh negatively impact both the United States and Israel and our shared interests in the Middle East. | |
| And there's plenty of blame to go around since October 7th, both here and in Israel, about people who've inserted that daylight needlessly into the partnership. | |
| And so I would fault uh Vice President Harris for needlessly inserting more daylight into this, especially when you have both Biden and Trump meeting with Bibi. | |
| We know that Netanyahu did touch on a variety of topics there. | |
| He spoke for nearly an hour. | |
| Is there anything that you hoped maybe you hear that you didn't hear from him? | |
| Uh certainly there were a couple things. | |
| Uh so I again I thought he did great on the big picture stuff. | |
| I was hoping for a little more substance on some of the key issues that he did touch upon in various ways, namely, what is the day after it look like in Gaza? | |
| Good now, guys. | |
| Uh he has said a demilitarized and de-radicalized Gaza Strip, which he has been saying uh ever since shortly after October 7th, which is a perfectly sound goal. | |
| Uh one that's earnestly should be pursued. | |
| But I didn't hear him say anything new about how we get from where we are today to that day after because there's a long way to go. | |
| It's a very complex issue. | |
| Uh, in terms of an actual plan on the ground, I think that's still missing. | |
| It's certainly a complex issue to have to wade through, but one that's all the more important because of that. | |
| Uh his separately, his mention of a multilateral alliance of Abraham accords partners in the Middle East. | |
| Uh, well, I think that's also a a long road to have to walk down. | |
| Uh, I think it's it's much to be commended, and it's a reflection of the fact that there's a lot of things going on just under the surface in the Middle East that have a lot of positive potential, both for the United States and Israel that would center around hopefully getting off uh Israel Saudi normalization through because if you have that, then you have top cover for all the things, uh region wide alliance against an Iran-led threat that is, I think, a lot greater than people in America really even realize at this moment. | |
| And we are looking at a picture. | |
| This is a live image coming in from Washington, DC. | |
| This is uh ways away from the Capitol, but we were seeing what appeared to be smoke, and we are told that several people have climbed a statue, others are taken into custody. | |
| One question I do want to ask you, though. | |
| We know that the assassination attempt against former President Trump earlier this month is something that uh BB did comment on during his speech. | |
| Did that lead to any concerns about his travel here to the U.S. Uh I think I wouldn't be surprised if it did if there's a little more logistical effort going into security these days. | |
| Iran has made quite clear that they uh you know, put a price on the heads of a lot of people they deem responsible for the killing of General Qasim Solomani, the IRGC leader uh in Baghdad in 2020. | |
| And certainly I wouldn't be surprised uh if if that has come into play in an area like this, but also you know, that's a top-down problem. | |
| I think what we're seeing on the screen right now is is a different type of problem from the bottom up, but which is frankly no less worrisome, which is again this sort of openly breaking. | |
| So there's two parts of the stream. | |
| Protesting, which the protest in itself is not the problem, it's a healthy part of democracy. | |
| It's the intimidation, the militarization and the open anti-Semitism of the protests, which bleeds over again, as Prime Prime Minister Netanyahu mentioned in his speech. | |
| This is all being courage by an Iranian regime that not only wants to delegit legitimize Israel and U.S. support for Israel, but also so dissension here in America's democracy. | |
| That all fixed. | |
| One thing that's interesting that we did mention is that Biden will meet with Netanyahu tomorrow and then Trump on Friday. | |
| My question is I know initially there was going to be a conversation and a meeting between Biden and Netanyahu. | |
| I believe it was initially scheduled for today, but was pushed back. | |
| And then we had word that he was going to meet with Trump uh tomorrow, and then that was pushed to Friday because Biden had said I want to meet with him Thursday. | |
| So my question for you, is there any way to know if Netanyahu was going to meet with Biden if he hadn't met with Trump? | |
| It's a great question. | |
| Uh I I worry any any answer I give would be would be mostly speculation. | |
| Uh I do know that the at least the Biden team is saying they want the president uh to be fully clear of of his COVID diagnosis before meeting with Netanyahu. | |
| But I think the fact that the the Biden and Trump meetings are on the schedule, even if they're that schedule is is a lot of moving parts. | |
| I think that's the critically important part because I think when when Netanyahu came here in 2015, uh to say the right thing, which was to criticize the Iran nuclear deal which was then in the works. | |
| I still think there was uh some political collateral damage, some partisan collateral damage here in America, the way that speech was was perceived. | |
| Um, because as we say at my organization, Israel has long been a bipartisan issue and it must remain one. | |
| And so I think the fact that now that uh BB is going to meet with both Biden and Trump, I think that that is more important than anything else. | |
| That's the message that needs to be gotten across, is that his his visit here is part of a strengthening of the bipartisan bilateral relationship with Israel. | |
| I did want to ask, because we know that the people of Israel do know who President Biden is, they know who former President Trump is. | |
| Now Kamala Harris is believed to be the front runner. | |
| Are the people of Israel familiar with Kamala Harris? | |
| Our mission. | |
| That's the same thing. | |
| I think they're becoming familiar with her given events of the of the past week or so. | |
| Accreditive. | |
| Uh my organization has done a lot of uh work on the importance, arguing for the importance of maintaining U.S. uh military assistance to Israel for all the benefits it brings to U.S. national security interests. | |
| Uh before she was vice president, uh Kamala Harris was uh was a strong advocate for that and for the bilateral relationship. | |
| I think uh like President Biden himself, who I certainly have. | |
| Let's go back to the uh what actually matters. | |
| Um let's go back to the inquiry that we're at with the FBI. | |
| I think we're good on Twitter. | |
| Oh, should hold on. | |
| FBI congressional hearing boom Go back. | |
| Okay. | |
| By exploiting the drone, uh determined use and flight paths. | |
| There were no uh pictures or videos on the drone of uh of the day of the rally, for example. | |
| But we have been able to to reverse engineer the flight. | |
| This is where we left off right around uh day of the rally, and that's how we know that for about 11 days. | |
| On the drone from I think it's around 350 p.m. to 4 p.m. somewhere in that range, he was flying the drone, and we have the flight path. | |
| It's about 200 yards away from where former President Trump would ultimately be speaking. | |
| Uh and so that would have primarily given him a vantage point. | |
| Um describe this. | |
| If if the former president's podium is that way, yeah, the drone would be uh over here looking, you know, say 200 yards again off this way, looking back. | |
| So it would have shown the shooter, we think. | |
| Again, this we're still doing more work on this. | |
| I really want to qualify what I'm saying, but I'm trying to be transparent and lean in here. | |
| We think it would have shown him uh kind of what would have been behind him. | |
| But when you say behind him, behind the the shooter, correct, like another almost like giving him a rear view mirror of the the scene behind him, except again he wasn't flying it overhead while he was later back for the stage I assume would have was already said he would have been able to assess that angle with rooftop as well, forward and backward, I assume. | |
| Uh well, certainly going towards the towards the podium. | |
| Again, we're still trying to figure out exactly what he saw because we're having to, in effect, because there's no recording of what he saw during those eleven minutes, you know, our hypothesis at this point, the experts think he would have been live streaming it. | |
| And so we're trying to, in effect, say, okay, what this was the flight pattern, given these capabilities of the drone, what would you have seen? | |
| What could you have seen for those eleven minutes? | |
| And again, it's it wasn't over the the stage or the the kind of the hub of the rally, it was about 200 yards away, but it would look like it would have been looking, let's say, you know, length of a football field or so more, you know, kind of towards towards the the podium. | |
| Great, thank you, Mr. How many separate times? | |
| And real quick, just so you guys know, uh a lot of the stuff just to give you guys my quick little take on the whole Netanyahu thing, bro. | |
| I knew who's gonna do that. | |
| Come in. | |
| We need money, we need support. | |
| We're your best partners in the Middle East. | |
| These guys are terrorists, blah, blah, blah. | |
| Um, we want a two-state solution, which is a lie, by the way, and I got proof of it right here. | |
| Um, this comes from uh Johnny Harris. | |
| This is a pretty good video that he made on um how Benjamin Netanyahu relies on Hamas. | |
| Hold on. | |
| Benjamin Netanyahu talking to some settlers in the West Bank. | |
| The cameraman does turn off the camera for a moment, but then turns it back on moments later. | |
| Boom. | |
| Why does this matter? | |
| Because at that moment I actually stopped the Oslo Accord. | |
| He is admitting to sabotaging the peace accords that the Israeli government had signed with the Palestinians. | |
| That because he disagreed with them, he wanted to sabotage them because he was so against a Palestinian state or any form of Palestinian autonomy in this. | |
| He claims he wants it, but it's a lie, guys. | |
| And then he goes on to explain what his real thinking is on the situation. | |
| The main thing is, first and foremost, to hit them hard. | |
| The main thing is, first and foremost, to hit them hard. | |
| The price is not unbearable now. | |
| A total assault on the Palestinian Authority, which guys, that's the PLO. | |
| That's the uh the guys out there in the West Bank. | |
| Nanyahu is a fantastic politician and statesman, and he's able to sort of cover up a lot of these policies in the name of security. | |
| But here we see a good speaker too. | |
| He had these guys clapping from what, 81 times, guys? | |
| What he really thinks as he's talking to these settlers, thinking he's not being recorded. | |
| So unsurprisingly, the appetite for peace breaks down on both sides. | |
| Palestinian that recording, uh, obviously not a lot of people talk about it. | |
| I couldn't even find it on YouTube unless on this video, which is for obvious reasons. | |
| Um but but guys, it's all fucking cap man. | |
| It's all cap. | |
| And the Oslo Accords, real quick, And it's important to notice that this is Yasser Arafat, right? | |
| Uh the leader of the Palestinian movement. | |
| The PLO. | |
| This is uh Prime Minister Yitzek Rabin, who uh was Prime Minister before Netanyahu, which explains why he wanted to sabotage it because he's not the one that actually put it into effect. | |
| Also, accords our pair of interim agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Libyan organization, PLO signed in Washington DC in 1993 with Clinton, obviously, and the Oslo two accord signed in Taba Egypt in 1995, they marked the start of the Oslo process of peace process aimed at achieving a peace treaty based on resolution 242 and resolution 338 of the United States Nations Nation Security Council Oslo process began after secret negotiations Oslo Norway, resulting in both the recognition of Israel by the PLO and the recognition of uh by Israel of the PLO as a representative. | |
| And Yitzhak Rabin, just so you guys know, right? | |
| He is uh is he still alive? | |
| I think he got killed, if I'm not mistaken. | |
| Still alive. | |
| Um he was the uh Yitzeg Rabin on March 1st, 1922, 1995, was an Israeli politician, statesman in general, he was the fifth prime minister of Israel serving two terms in office, 1974, 1977 from 1992 until his assassination in 1995. | |
| I wonder who was behind his assassination, guys. | |
| There's a lot of talk that Netanyahu and his people were behind it. | |
| Because this guy pushed for a lot of peace of the Middle East, and uh Netanyahu does not have similar views. | |
| So yeah. | |
| Uh so again, with the caveat that we're continuing to do work on it. | |
| We we believe that the first time he traveled to back to the FBI director's testimony. | |
| Uh was I think a week before. | |
| Uh he spent roughly 20 minutes there. | |
| Uh then he went to the grounds again uh on the morning of the event, it appears, uh for about 70 minutes, I think. | |
| But again, I I qualify that I'd have to go back and look to be sure of that part. | |
| Um and then he came back in the afternoon, so that would be I guess a third time um for good. | |
| Uh but that included uh things like this drone activity we just talked about. | |
| Gentleman from uh California is recognized. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Um director, thank you for appearing. | |
| Thank you for the extraordinary job that you're doing. | |
| Uh please convey our thanks to the men and women at the Bureau for their incredible work. | |
| Um I work with them since I was an assistant U.S. attorney uh more than 30 years ago. | |
| Um let me start with threshold question uh curious about. | |
| Um when I applied to be an assistant U.S. attorney, I had to go through a background check. | |
| Um, do candidates for the FBI have to go through background checks? | |
| Yes. | |
| Uh would someone with course they do, bro. | |
| Dozens of felony convictions survive a background check for the Bureau? | |
| No. | |
| So they would never be hired by the Bureau. | |
| No. | |
| Um, clearly the Bureau has you don't have to comment on this. | |
| I know you won't, but clearly the Bureau has higher standards for their hiring than one of America's great political parties. | |
| Um let me turn to the events of the the tragic shooting. | |
| I knew he was gonna do he had to take a shot at Trump. | |
| Have you been able to gain access to the process? | |
| He had to take a shot at Trump, I knew it. | |
| Electronic communications, uh social media, and with the caveats that you mentioned that the investigation is still early. | |
| Uh, have you been able to make any deductions or uh are there any indications of the shooter's motivation from those uh electronic uh holdings? | |
| All right, now he's asking a real question besides taking these fucking shots at Trump. | |
| So, in terms of our ability to access it, we have uh been able to um get into and exploit a number of electronic devices, digital devices, but not all of them yet. | |
| And then within uh his various accounts, we've been able to get access to some of them, but some of them we're still waiting on, some of them we may never get access to because of the encryption issue uh that it presents an increasingly uh vexing barrier for law enforcement, not just the FBI, but for law enforcement all over the country. | |
| Uh but we're so we're still drilling into that. | |
| Uh we have some information, some places we've been able to look, some places we will be able to look, some places we may never be able to see, no matter how good our legal process is. | |
| But that's what we're looking at right now. | |
| In terms of what we've been able to find so far, a lot of the usual uh repositories of information have not yielded um anything notable in terms of motive uh or like ideology. | |
| Having said that, it does appear fairly clear uh that he was interested in public figures, kind of more broadly, And and I think this is important, that uh starting uh somewhere around uh July 6th or so, he became very focused on uh former President Trump and this rally. | |
| Um and so one of the things that I can share here today that has not been shared yet is that we've just in the last couple days uh found that from our review to your point about devices, uh analysis of a laptop that the investigation ties to the shooter, uh, reveals that on July 6th, he did a Google search for quote, how far away was Oswald from Kennedy. | |
| What the fuck? | |
| That's unique. | |
| Okay. | |
| He's over here Googling, and just so you guys know, some of you guys might not know who that is. | |
| Let's have some fun with this once again. | |
| Who is Harry Lee Oswald? | |
| Uh Lee Harvey Oswald, excuse me. | |
| I always fucking mess this up. | |
| This is the uh guy that allegedly shot Kennedy, but if you guys know better, you already know who really killed Kennedy. | |
| And I went over this on Rumble. | |
| Right? | |
| You just go ahead and type in um uh JFK, fresh and fit. | |
| Right here. | |
| Who killed Kennedy? | |
| The biggest cover-up. | |
| Watch this, it's a four-hour long plus podcast. | |
| I did it with Corey Hughes. | |
| But we went over everything, guys. | |
| Who the real shooters were, we went over a bunch of stuff, man. | |
| One of the one of my favorite podcasts we've done. | |
| We identify the shooters by fucking name and go over a lot of historical content. | |
| So please go check that out after I'll put the link in here in the chat for y'all ninjas. | |
| Because we actually know who was involved in Kennedy's death. | |
| Put that in here for y'all. | |
| Watch it after this stream, please. | |
| Boom. | |
| Put it in the chat for you, Ninjas. | |
| But let's keep going. | |
| Back to Ray's thing. | |
| Um, and so that's a search obviously is significant in terms of his state of mind. | |
| Um we that is the same day that it appears that he registered for the Butler rally. | |
| And same day. | |
| You say that his uh electronic holdings indicated an interest in different public figures uh without uh revealing anything you're not comfortable revealing about those public figures. | |
| Can you tell us anything generally about them? | |
| Um either the offices they hold, their political party, uh or was it simply people of a high profile. | |
| Uh well, a couple things. | |
| First, the um the images that we've recovered so far from I can't remember which of his various devices were appear to be what we call cached images from searches of news articles. | |
| So if you do uh a news article search, of course, image you know if there are photos on it, those photos get stored automatically in your cache, as opposed to me searching or him searching for a specific person and getting up images of that person. | |
| Uh as far as the pictures that are like that, there's doesn't seem to be a whole lot of rhyme or reason to it so far, uh other than these are you know all prominent public people, but they they cover both parties, they cover both um uh uh uh US people and even some foreign uh public officials. | |
| Uh so that part doesn't appear to that that one repository of information doesn't appear to be overly indicative of motive other than interest in in public figures, but that could be just because he was reading news stories. | |
| So we're still trying to drill into that. | |
| That's why all of these outstanding uh legal process returns that we're waiting on for various accounts, platforms, etc. | |
| You know, any one of them could be one that would have very indicative, very important information. | |
| If I can be permitted uh one very short additional question, Chairman, uh from that any indication of any other particular target, that is someone who uh was not just sort of generically the subject of the searches you described, but for which there was more of an interest than others. | |
| Uh there's the information I just described at the moment does not appear particularly indicative of targeting um in its own right. | |
| Uh but again, that dot, once we get other information could connect in a way that might be more meaningful. | |
| But uh I really I'm sharing that piece of information with This committee and with the American public, but I think it's important that we put down a qualification. | |
| This does not appear to be some kind of target list or something like that. | |
| This is cached images from running searches of news stories. | |
| And again, there's nothing at the moment that there's no pattern from that particular piece of information that is overly remarkable so far. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Thank you, Chairman. | |
| Mr. Director previously told us that you consider the situation on the southern border to be a massive security threat to our country. | |
| Is that still your assessment? | |
| I stand by my prior testimony. | |
| And in fact, um just uh in the last uh month or so we've done you know conducted a significant uh series of arrests. | |
| I say we our joint terrorism task force is working with ICE of a number of individuals uh with suspected international terrorism ties, and I have also been very vocal about the fact that uh since and this is really since the last time I appeared uh before you uh that we are increasingly concerned about the possibility of a foreign one second one second. | |
| What's that, ninjas? | |
| He's trying to kill me. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Foreign terrorist inspired attack, which is very much very much a concern, but the even the potential for a coordinated foreign terrorist attack, perhaps like what we've seen uh against the concert hall in Russia, for example, but just here in the United States. | |
| Well, the the the 19 suicide uh bombers overstayed visas were responsible for 3,000 American deaths on 9-11. | |
| What's your best estimate of the number of foreign terrorists who are now in our country? | |
| I don't I mean, I don't know that I could give you that number. | |
| Uh what I can tell you is uh we have lots of foreign terrorism related investigations, uh, but that doesn't mean that all of them came in, you know, illegally or anything like that. | |
| It seems to me that the the simplest act of terrorism would be for for uh dozens of uh guerrillas to attack low security, high density venues, for example, uh Friday night high school football games all across the country at the same hour. | |
| Uh sorry guys, I ordered some food and it's fucking taking forever to get up here, so that's what it was. | |
| Someone said Myron doing a coke, bro. | |
| Shut the fuck up, man. | |
| Like guys, I've never done a drug in my life, I've never smoked weed in my life, and I never will fucking do a drug in my life. | |
| Shut the fuck up. | |
| This shit pisses me off when people say that dumb shit. | |
| I will never ever do a drug in my fucking life, bro. | |
| That's just for losers. | |
| I tell you guys that shit all the time. | |
| I don't even fucking drink over at saying we do coke. | |
| I'm fucking sick doing this stream right now, and your dumbass over here saying that dumb shit. | |
| Fuck you. | |
| With bombs and automatic uh uh weapons that would produce thousands of casualties from coast to coast in a matter of time. | |
| I'm sniffing because I'm fucking sick and I've been six for a few days, but we still stream. | |
| The show goes on. | |
| What you're describing uh would require, of course, a lot of coordination. | |
| Uh but what I will tell you, and I think you're on to a particularly important point from my perspective, which is that the 911 attacks, which again, I was in FBI headquarters on the day of 9-11, and so I remember it vividly, and I've spent plenty of time in the period after that in my prior positions engaged with the families and the victims. | |
| But uh what we're seeing more and more with the foreign terrorist threat, and frankly, also the domestic uh terrorism threat is a focus on kind of like what you're talking about, what I would call soft targets, which is really for the American people's benefit, just intelligence communities speak for where everyday people live their everyday lives. | |
| What terrorist groups have now infiltrated our country that you are tracking? | |
| Well, in I don't know that I would say infiltrated. | |
| We have uh investigations as we speak that relate to ISIS and its affiliates. | |
| We have investigations as we speak that relate to Al Qaeda. | |
| We have investigations as we speak that relate to Al-Shabaab. | |
| We have investigations as we speak that relate to uh uh the Iranian proxies, Hezbollah, uh and so I heard the frankly even the IRGC cuts for us itself. | |
| What what foreign criminal uh gangs uh are now in our country that you're most concerned with? | |
| Well, foreign criminal gangs. | |
| I mean, I we obviously have investigations, a lot of investigations into you know gangs like MS-13, for example, uh and some of its counterparts. | |
| Uh although I think if you were to talk to most chiefs and sheriffs like I'm doing every week, uh we shouldn't underestimate uh how prevalent neighborhood gangs are really. | |
| It's a lot of the gang violence that we have. | |
| I'm concerned about the it looks like they're back. | |
| Let's see here. | |
| Let's bring it up to speed. | |
| ...to those foreign actors. | |
| The most recent example with the Russians, for example, is a... | |
| We're up to speed now, guys. | |
| Russia's action. | |
| Now we're live. | |
| Generative AI social media bot farm where they were posing as, among others, you as persons and not, in fact, you as persons and trying to, again, sow various narratives. | |
| In that case, very heavily focused on uh at the issue they picked there was you know the war in Ukraine, and again trying to kind of get everybody uh turned against each other. | |
| We've also seen that though from China and Iran. | |
| I mentioned China before. | |
| Uh we've had a case where they we charged, I think it was 34 Chinese Ministry of Public Security MPS officers for much the same kind of behavior, creating false personas pretending to be Americans, and then trying to kind of sew narratives. | |
| In that case, in the Chinese case, their narratives were trying to, for example, undermine any suggestion that COVID was the product of a lab leak or attacking U.S. law enforcement uh at the anniversary of George Floyd's death, for example. | |
| And then Iran uh in 2020, we saw them undertake similar kinds of efforts that were uh disrupted in the in the I think October of 2020. | |
| Thank you. | |
| And I yield back. | |
| General A yields back. | |
| Gentleman from Virginia is recognized for five minutes. | |
| Director A, thank you for being here, and thank you for the information that you've provided today. | |
| I greatly appreciate it. | |
| This event that occurred, uh, the attempted assassination of President Trump on July 13th in Butler, Pennsylvania, was a a level five alarm alert to this country that um that our elected officials, our leaders, uh the president, the uh former president uh are not safe, and we need to re-evaluate uh from the ground up exactly how we are to go about providing that protection. | |
| Um the information you provided uh dealing with eight cartridges from the roof, uh the drone, the fact that uh two explosive devices were found in the car, one at home. | |
| That was a remote detonation device that he had on him. | |
| Uh the fact that his phone was using encrypted platforms, he only had one phone, correct? | |
| Um, sorry. | |
| Yeah, he had one phone, although we've identified other phones that he may have used that may not have been his phone. | |
| So, for example, we think in certain instances he might have used his dad's phone, again, not necessarily related to the attack, but we're trying to um we are trying to make sure that we process and exploit every device he could have used. | |
| Um and and we keep, which is part of why I keep making this point, uh, which I know you're all are probably tired of me making about this being an ongoing investigation, because we keep identifying new pieces of equipment, new accounts, what have you. | |
| And the fact that you are uh in real time informing us about what you're finding as you're performing this investigation is very helpful and clarifying the fact that he went to the range a day before uh and shot an AR. | |
| Now, my understanding is that the AR he used um on uh the 13th was his father's, is that correct? | |
| Well, yes and no. | |
| It was originally his father bought it legally, but then our understanding so far is that his father then uh conveyed it to him, sold it in fact to his son. | |
| Uh so originally his father's at the time of the shooting, the shooters. | |
| That's okay. | |
| So that's new information. | |
| Was that provided to you by the father? | |
| Uh I think it was partly from that. | |
| I think we also saw some documentation to support it. | |
| Okay. | |
| Um investigators also have said that the shooter posted, quote, July 13th will be my premier, watch it as it unfolds on an online gaming platform sometime before he uh tried to assassinate President Trump. | |
| Can you confirm that and how much time elapsed uh between this posting and the attempt on July 13th? | |
| So I'm I'm really glad you asked about that because uh that um is a situation where, again, in our effort to give real-time information, since we provided that information, we have since learned that that uh July 13th premier um, you know, profile page on the gaming platform. | |
| It turns out it was not the shooter. | |
| Okay. | |
| That it was some other individual as part of some sick joke who after the shooting created a profile page pretending to be the shooter. | |
| Wow. | |
| Um and so of course we've now that person is now admitted to it, and you know, we're gonna have to do that. | |
| Of course they brought a point being among the other challenges that we as investigators have. | |
| You have people who uh create accounts in today's world, create accounts pretending to be somebody that they're, you know, and it's not the actual person. | |
| Um the should be. | |
| That's that's troubling, obviously, and makes our jobs even harder as investigators. | |
| Thank you for clarifying that. | |
| Did he have a an online gaming account? | |
| We we do believe he was a gamer, and then he had different kinds of um gaming accounts. | |
| So, no, they paid us a while. | |
| Not yet, but again, some of those are some of those uh legal process returns I'm still waiting on. | |
| Now, during the attempted assassination, Crooks was wearing a t-shirt from a popular YouTube channel. | |
| Um selection of YouTube videos that he's watched. | |
| Uh I believe we have seen some of the some of his you know search history. | |
| Um, but I think we've got a a ways to go on that. | |
| Uh I know there's some manual work that we're doing on that. | |
| I think the most notable thing uh that we've found uh recently uh, which I I don't think has been shared until today, is that on a laptop that we've that the investigation ties to him uh that on July 6th, he it revealed a Google search uh and his search if it was him. | |
| Again, it's a laptop tied to him. | |
| We obviously believe it's him, but we'll we'll continue to investigate his Google search was how far away was Oswald from Kennedy. | |
| Yes, absolutely. | |
| Um, clarify that there that you have in your possession all the video that has that was taken on that day at the scene uh uh we've collected mountains of video. | |
| Uh part of the reason I commit to providing us with that video. | |
| Well, we we're gonna work with the committee uh and share information as best we can. | |
| Part of the reason I hedged on whether we have it all is as the as you can appreciate in today's world, uh everybody with a phone has the ability to take footage. | |
| And so we're we're finding things kind of left and right. | |
| You have all the law enforcement video. | |
| Uh I believe we have all the law enforcement video, but uh we're still sixty-five feet, guys. | |
| Um I hope you would provide that to us and to the American people. | |
| Thank you. | |
| I yield back. | |
| Gentleman yields back, Director. | |
| Just to be clear, the the photo and the message on the online gaming count. | |
| Um, you I think your testimony was to Mr. Klein that that was somebody else posing as the shooter. | |
| Is that right? | |
| Correct. | |
| Somebody after July 13th created this profile, pretending to be the shooter and sent us down a rabbit trail, which we've now tied off. | |
| That's important information. | |
| You might get Charles Pennsylvania's recognized. | |
| I thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Thank you, Director Ray, for being here. | |
| And I want to add my my voice uh to the chorus of folks who are just devastated by uh the illness and passing of Sheila Jackson Lee. | |
| What a champion. | |
| Uh what a role model. | |
| I always called her the hardest working member of Congress. | |
| She was everywhere on every issue. | |
| Uh she'll be greatly missed. | |
| Um Director Ray, I I thank you for what you said earlier, which is leaning in. | |
| This is such an extraordinary set of events. | |
| The attempted assassination of Donald Trump, uh, the stealing of the life of uh a father, a firefighter, somebody who protected lives, Corey uh comparator, serious injuries to two others. | |
| It's amazing to me how they only have five minutes to ask questions and they yap the first minute or two, and then they start rushing at the end. | |
| Stupid. | |
| Did the shooter also investigate other high-profile folks? | |
| We had heard some reporting around that early on. | |
| Well, you say investigate other folks. | |
| I think um this is a place where we still have a lot more work to do. | |
| Part of what uh part of what we did find was uh a bunch of cached images of a variety of public figures. | |
| Um but again, cached images are those images that you get when you like you pull up a news story from any number of news sites. | |
| The if there are photographs in the article, those images are automatically put into your the cache on your computer. | |
| Uh so it doesn't necessarily mean that you were searching for that person's image. | |
| Uh we do have um the the fact that starting around uh at the at the least around the period um uh uh early July. | |
| So this the search that I just mentioned uh related to Oswald and Kennedy. | |
| Uh that's about July 6th, which is the same day uh we believe that he uh registered for the rally. | |
| Um and the day before he traveled to the grounds for the first time. | |
| And so I think there is a certain amount of searches related to former President Trump that during that period we're seeing. | |
| I mean, Consistent with some kind of planning or reconnaissance, if you want to call it that in advance of the rally, but that's sort of confined to that or concentrated, maybe it's a better word, uh, in that July period, you know, after the announcement of the rally and before the shooting. | |
| Can you speak to the conveyance of the gun? | |
| So this is a 20-year-old young man. | |
| His father owned the gun originally, AR-15, am I correct? | |
| Uh AR style, yeah. | |
| Um 20-year-old man, when did the father sell the gun to him? | |
| And what documents do you have? | |
| How much money transferred? | |
| Bill of Sale probably. | |
| Uh yeah, I don't I don't I I do know that I say I know. | |
| We believe, based on what we've seen, that his father, uh, after purchasing the gun legally, sold the gun to his son. | |
| I don't know that I have the date uh of that transfer or the amount of the transfer, although we may be able to get that to you as a follow. | |
| I just don't have it in front of me. | |
| Do you know when the father bought it? | |
| Uh we know. | |
| I don't as I'm sitting here testifying in front of you, I don't have that in front of me, so I don't have it my phone. | |
| I'm just wondering if it's proximate to this event. | |
| Uh I do not believe that the gun was purchased that is the gun that was used. | |
| I do not believe it was purchased particularly close in time to the shooting. | |
| Okay. | |
| Um but how far in advance? | |
| It may have been a year before, give or take, but again, uh I'll uh we'll go back and double check that on you. | |
| So it was bought well before the event. | |
| That uh on the um the day of the shooting, uh at about 1.30 p.m. he bought 50 rounds of ammunition. | |
| So uh if you think about the day of uh, or if you back up a little bit, so the day before he goes to the shooting range, the day of he goes to the grounds uh the morning of the event for I think around an hour. | |
| Uh he buys the ammunition at around 130. | |
| Uh at around 350 is when he's back on the grounds uh of the rally, and that's when he used uh the drone that I've talked about already today. | |
| And then of course um fast forward till just after six o'clock when uh the worst happened. | |
| And we had thought uh maybe over the weekend there was a conversation around uh classified briefing for members. | |
| I hope that will happen uh as soon as it's feasible uh for you and for the other uh uh agencies involved. | |
| Uh and he he got off eight shots, and the reporting is that that was in under six seconds he got off eight shots, uh fatal uh to one. | |
| My question that I'll leave you with, and I know I'm over time, Mr. Chairman, is we all decry political violence. | |
| We decry any violence, but we decry the rise in political violence. | |
| What can you tell us that we could do better? | |
| What can what do you need uh for you to be able to help this country reduce the political violence tendencies? | |
| I think this is a moment uh where in the most stark way possible, all of us as Americans uh can see uh how out of control political violence is in this country. | |
| And it's an opportunity for everybody to come together and to try to show that this is not the kind of thing we're gonna tolerate in this country. | |
| Um the FBI's role is to focus on violence and threats of violence. | |
| Uh but there is a role for others in the public square to address how people communicate in this country. | |
| And every day in in our jobs, we see uh in social media in terms of threats that people are we get, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of tips reported to us, and the language that's out there uh is just mind-bogglingly hateful uh and and violence sounding. | |
| Uh people sometimes Shout out to Top Shea goes, let's help Myra Sickness. | |
| Uh other than that, it's not adding up. | |
| There are missing components of this. | |
| These guys should be pros. | |
| What are your thoughts, Martin? | |
| Could they do better? | |
| Damn the monk goes. | |
| Let's hear out the full testimony, and then I'll definitely get my take on it. | |
| So I want to hear everything he's got to say. | |
| That are very violent expressions. | |
| And so that that is a part of it. | |
| We can all do better uh in kind of being a little more thoughtful and measured in our language. | |
| But again, the FBI's we gotta stay in our lane. | |
| Our lane is the violence and the threats of violence. | |
| There's a role for everybody as Americans to try to see if we can take the temperature down. | |
| Agreed. | |
| Thank you. | |
| And thank you for the extra time. | |
| Yield back. | |
| Gentleman from North Dakota is recognized. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Uh and I really appreciate you correcting the gaming thing about this is my coming out party, because we're asking you to do something, and we've had acrimonious, you and I have actually had acrimonious uh interest, but we're not here for a gotcha moment. | |
| We're just not on this. | |
| And we're asking you to give us information before the investigation is complete. | |
| My only recommendation or suggestion would be when that happens, don't necessarily wait till you ask, because don't wait for us to ask. | |
| Because there's a and I'll go through why in a second. | |
| Uh I appreciate you coming in. | |
| I appreciate you telling us things. | |
| I appreciate you guys going against essentially your normal policy of waiting until an investigation is done because the American people need to know it. | |
| But here's why. | |
| It's a guy with a rangefinder walking around that everybody noticed and then couldn't find. | |
| You know, he scaled to the top of a roof within 150 yards line of sight to uh the presidential Republican former presidential candidate by coming at climbing a drain pipe, and then you said uh some equipment. | |
| He was being pointed out by rally goers. | |
| So now we know it's not a law uh ladder. | |
| For an FBI. | |
| There's maybe supposed to be local law enforcement in the building, either upstairs or downstairs. | |
| And all of this is going on. | |
| And I was talking to a colleague of mine yesterday on the floor, and it's like I hate the conspiracy theories that come out, but this is and this is not the FBI's purview. | |
| This is the Secret Services preview. | |
| This is so comically like inept to the average to the average North Dakota citizen is just they look at this and they're like, how could this possibly happen? | |
| And so when we by you giving us information in a really meaningful way, even though we know the investigation is ongoing and things can change, that at least helps us to deal with that and figure out where we're at. | |
| And so I mean, and you're doing all this. | |
| This guy had no combat training, no counter-surveillance training that you're aware of, right? | |
| I'm sorry, I couldn't quite hear that. | |
| No combat training. | |
| Oh. | |
| Uh no, not I don't think any certainly know what we would call what you and I would call combat training. | |
| Obviously, he was uh a fairly uh active um recreational shooter. | |
| So he did plenty of shooting. | |
| A lot of guys, uh no, not I don't think any certainly know what we would call what you and I would call combat training. | |
| Obviously, he was uh a fairly uh cut there for an odd second um recreational shooter. | |
| So he did plenty of shooting. | |
| A lot of guys in Western North Dakota, right? | |
| I mean, all of those different things, and somehow we came within under of an inch of a presidential candidate being shot and killed within a hundred days out from an election. | |
| And it when you look at it, so just I I just want to be really clear because there is a lot of this. | |
| There is no evidence of another shooter, right? | |
| Uh I mean another shooter to to I mean there's the counter-sniper who took out the shooter, but right away. | |
| But you're talking about uh like another. | |
| Anybody else? | |
| And then you're you're looking at his online and seeing all that, but there's no evidence he had any other accomplices on scene that day, correct? | |
| Correct. | |
| That not that we've seen yet, certainly. | |
| And you said, and we oversight's had a hearing, DHS had a hearing, we're having a hearing now. | |
| Um the inspector general is gonna investigate. | |
| Uh we're probably announcing a bipartisan outside panel. | |
| But there's another investigation, too, right? | |
| Because somebody has to clear the shooter. | |
| Like, even though it is a Secret Service officer deploying his I mean, when an FBI when when an FBI agent kills what somebody in the line of duty, what's the process? | |
| So uh we have what we call an agent-involved shooting, is I think what you're getting at. | |
| We have a whole process. | |
| It well, those some of those things depend. | |
| But we have uh our inspection division does uh a shoot review of each time when there's one of these situations, and they all sometimes have to coordinate with local prosecutors who are also doing some kind of review. | |
| But um but so yes, Secret Service would have a similar kind of process for the counter shooting. | |
| I mean, because you have to actually establish one of I mean one of the defenses to homicide. | |
| Just like I mean, you don't do it in a court system the same way everybody else does, but you have to justify that that shooting was justified. | |
| So when the FBI does that, do they conduct that all internally? | |
| Uh most of the time, yes. | |
| Every once in a while, there's a situation where the inspector general gets involved. | |
| Do you know how the Secret Service does it? | |
| I I don't. | |
| Okay. | |
| And I just think that's important because you guys know every agency is fairly similar with that, by the way. | |
| There is there's gonna be an independent investigation done by internal affairs. | |
| The state and local agency is gonna investigate it for potential murder, etc. | |
| And once the state and locals clear you, nine out of ten times you're gonna be cleared by your agency as well, assuming you didn't put any props or modifications on your service weapon. | |
| Because when we're talking about how this works, and I don't think anybody is arguing it wasn't. | |
| Anybody who's seen it knows what happens, but it's just it it knowing it and making sure that the process is handled correctly. | |
| Uh and I just want to shift gears with my last 30 seconds really quickly, because we had a hearing on the northern border in Grand Forks, and you were talking about specific threats from Iran, but also generally uh, and we've diverted an exceptional amount of resources at the southern border, our our interactions, a hundred and fourteen percent increase in apprehensions. | |
| And the one specific thing with I'll do respects to my friends and my neighbors from Canada. | |
| It's a lot easier to get into Canada for some of these countries where we have these real issues with terrorist threats than it is to the United States, particularly Iran. | |
| And are you guys monitoring that and making sure whatever coordination you have with Canada that we're paying attention to that as well? | |
| We have uh uh an excellent relationship, the we the FBI with our our Canadian counterparts, both uh RCMP, uh you know, the Mounties, as some people euphemistically call them, uh, and uh CSIS, they're um they're my uh intelligence service counterparts. | |
| Uh we have great relationships with them, and uh terrorism is I find uh probably the number one thing we talk about. | |
| Yeah, and they're understaffed and overworked on the northern border, and they can use all the help you get with that. | |
| I yield back. | |
| Gentleman yields back gentleman from Maryland's recognized. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Uh Director, thank you uh for today. | |
| I I think uh I greatly appreciate your candor. | |
| Uh I know it's highly unusual to go into this level of detail during an active investigation, and I know it's a special and unique circumstance uh given the nature of what happened that day. | |
| I I'll ask my colleagues that uh we not try and take advantage of this in in other circumstances. | |
| I think we need to be careful about it. | |
| Oh, finally, yes. | |
| He finally says it. | |
| Shut the fuck up and stop trying to put your policies on. | |
| We got a rare situation where we can ask the FBI director questions about an active investigation on a very sensitive topic, and we don't give a fuck about your gun control policies or my views on this. | |
| XYZ is being nice about it. | |
| Um pressuring uh our investigators, you know, to disclose information in the middle of an investigation in a casual or or routine way. | |
| But thank you for what you've you've done here uh today. | |
| I do want to mention this too. | |
| Like uh Congressman Correa, I went up to Butler with Homeland Security um committee, and the um had a chance to meet with a number of the people there, including people who were there at the rally. | |
| And um, you know, I and several of them were elected officials. | |
| In fact, one of them that spoke with me a lot was sitting directly behind Mr. Trump when he was shot, and she had video that she'd taken and she'd love to share it with you all. | |
| Uh but she mentioned a couple of things too that I I hope you all um will have a chance to have conversations about. | |
| And I know some of it's gonna be in the Secret Service lane, some's gonna be in the FBI lane. | |
| But uh one of the things she talked about was the fact that the day before the shooting, um she and other uh officials in the town and people who just wanted to prepare the stage um showed up and started working on putting the bunning up and and decorating it. | |
| But the point she noted was that none of them had been vetted. | |
| There was nobody there to keep an eye on them and make sure that you know everything that was being done was appropriate. | |
| Um and she actually sort of thought in this in the context of hearing that a gun was found uh or a gun was perhaps hidden at the site before the s the shooter was uh uh able to get it and use it. | |
| I don't know those details, but those are some of the things that that came up that day. | |
| She also mentioned that uh there was sort of the outer perimeters. | |
| You had a perimeter around the stage that the Secret Service had set up. | |
| Beyond that, you had a field, and then you had the uh the building where the uh the company was and the shooter got on the roof. | |
| Apparently, there was a sort of a second level of a perimeter there that wasn't particularly restricted from an access standpoint, as with the street that was just beyond that. | |
| So she raised, and another another elected official raised uh as well issues about security that may actually kind of get into what you're talking about, what whether the ladder was there, how the guy got on the roof, there are all sorts of issues with respect to that. | |
| And there was a lot of people, as you said, that had video tape. | |
| I just I talked to three that were showing me videos while I was standing out there on the in the grounds. | |
| But I had a couple of questions to ask of you briefly. | |
| Um apparently there was no Secret Service recordation of communications during that day. | |
| Um, you know, there's no no no radio runs, we call them, but there's no tapes. | |
| Do you know if there are any recorded conversations among law enforcement from that day? | |
| Uh I don't know the details of that. | |
| I I I believe there may be some. | |
| Um, but I don't uh I don't have in front of me exactly what what we've seen uh or heard. | |
| Okay. | |
| And then with respect to email communications, there were a lot of issues about, you know, because my personal view haven't gone to the site was that they shouldn't have they just shouldn't have had the rail the uh rally there, it should not have been permitted. | |
| I thought there were just too many roofs. | |
| You know, he picked one, but there was like a half dozen others that he could have picked on the other side of the field. | |
| And as uh Eli Crane, a congressman who was a sniper for the U.S. military said there was a water tower uh that actually would have been a better site, probably the sort that uh Secret Service should have used, but could have been used as well. | |
| But had the lead up to that decision, and Congressman Correa raised this. | |
| Who made this decision about how to pick the site? | |
| And apparently there was back and forth between local law uh enforcement, Secret Service, and the campaign. | |
| And I was kind of curious as to whether that's something that your investigation is going into or not. | |
| So I think that primarily falls within the scope of the other the two other reviews that is the inspector, the DHS Inspector General review and the outside panel independent panel that's been announced. | |
| Uh certainly we are interviewing uh law enforcement personnel, um, but the security preparations, the adequacy of the security preparations that's the other lane. | |
| That's the other line. | |
| Right, I only got 15 seconds left. | |
| Quick question for you with uh probably not a quick answer. | |
| But this scenario is kind of the worst case scenario from a couple of standpoints. | |
| Got a lone wolf shooter with no red flags that we've heard of so far. | |
| Um, you know, nobody should have known that this was coming, didn't have a criminal record and that sort of thing. | |
| Easy access to an assault weapon. | |
| I had a discussion like this with um, I think Congressman Roy and Congressman Bishop several months ago. | |
| What is it we can do to try and preempt those kinds of scenarios? | |
| We've got gun violence all over the country, including in my district. | |
| This is one example, but you know, this scenario is the worst possible that I can think of from the standpoint of no intervention prevention efforts that can be put in place to try and address it. | |
| But I'm kind of curious if you have any thoughts to the contrary on that. | |
| I don't know that I have uh any uh magic solution to the to the problem. | |
| And I certainly don't want to be um proposing you know legislative ideas, that's not really my role. | |
| Um certainly uh dangerous weapons, especially high-powered weapons in the hands of the wrong person, uh, represent a real concern for for law enforcement, um, including two law enforcement, uh sometimes as the victims, as we saw very tragically down near Miami with two of our agents killed. | |
| Um that's probably all I can say on that. | |
| I do while we're on the subject of firearms, Mr. Chairman. | |
| I do get I have an answer to Congresswoman Dean's question. | |
| I might as well go ahead and give it now, rather um, which is how the the purchase of the firearm. | |
| Uh I'm I'm told that the father purchased the firearm in 2013, so quite a while ago, and then he sold it to his son in October of 2023. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| I yield back and thank you, Mr. Director, for your great work. | |
| Uh, I'd ask unanimous consent that we uh enter into the record a statement from Representative Kelly and some questions for the Bureau. | |
| Um Representative McKelly represents Butler. | |
| Actually, that's his hometown. | |
| So without objection, those will be entered into the record, and we'll we'll make sure you get those directors. | |
| The gentleman from New Jersey is recognized. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Before I begin, and this is not directly with you, actually. | |
| I just wanted to straighten something out. | |
| I know My colleagues, the gentleman and the gentle ladies from Georgia, Washington, California, uh Pennsylvania. | |
| They all mentioned Project 2025. | |
| Well, I don't know how they expect you to know about that, number one. | |
| Uh, I'm pretty damn involved. | |
| I don't really know a whole lot about it. | |
| But President Trump has made it clear, and we're going to say it again, we'll say it over and over again, that there are some things he disagreed with, some things he agreed with that he wasn't that familiar with. | |
| It was from the Heritage Foundation. | |
| And that was just raw politics, to be honest with you. | |
| It was just because 2025 has some things. | |
| I don't know why he's bringing up Project 2025 right now. | |
| And it very well may. | |
| And so they want to pin it on the presidential candidate. | |
| He didn't author it, he didn't condone it, he didn't put his seal of approval on it. | |
| It's getting old. | |
| It really is. | |
| We do this little other thing. | |
| Just like in this committee, when anything goes wrong, anything, somehow Donald Trump's name has to be brought into it. | |
| And it gets tiring. | |
| It's politics over reality. | |
| Second thing about picking the site, I was intimately involved in the Wildwood rally, the biggest rally President Trump's ever had, biggest political rally in the state of New Jersey. | |
| Uh I had spoken to the President about it, and he wanted to do it on the beach because we had over a hundred thousand people. | |
| And let me tell you, we had everybody out there because they were concerned, the Secret Service and the local police and the county police, and just about every entity could be. | |
| And so they had behind it was that iconic setting. | |
| They had the Ferris wheels on the pier and all the stuff. | |
| They had agents up in there. | |
| They had agents in the ocean, in the water, in boats. | |
| They had people coordinating, working with each other and talking with each other because they knew it was a risk. | |
| So we chose a site that was difficult. | |
| The president did, and I thought it was a great site, but nevertheless, we the law enforcement responded properly. | |
| Something went wrong here. | |
| You can't blame this on Donald Trump as well. | |
| The site was chosen. | |
| It's the responsibility of those who serve in law enforcement to make sure that he was safe, period. | |
| And I'm sure you'll find out why. | |
| On another tangent here, you know, I I've got to wonder how many qualified people were passed in order for Director Cheadle to get her 30% quota. | |
| That's a lousy way to run an agency, especially when it's dealing with law enforcement to say we've got to have 30% of anything. | |
| And I worry about these practices because it's policy over protection. | |
| And Director Ray, um, I know that some things were left to you. | |
| I understand that. | |
| But one of your early acts on the Biden presidency was hiring the FBI's very first chief diversity officer. | |
| And since that time, and even before your time, but respectfully, I'm gonna disagree with you. | |
| Recruitment standards under your leaders resulted in deterioration in many areas, including physical fitness, illicit drug use, financial irregularities, mental health issues, full-time work experience, and integrity. | |
| Uh and I know you dismiss them, but in October 2023, they are a prestigious group of retired FBI special agents and analysts, both express concern regarding the FBI's willingness to recruit agents that quote, I'm not saying this, | |
| they said it, not me, can't even pass the new relaxed standards for fitness, who are illiterate in some cases and need lessons, educational lessons, don't want to work weekends or after hours, their words, and have serious disabilities or mental health issues, which is not the place for them. | |
| Most of your agents are great people. | |
| I love them. | |
| I love them for what they do. | |
| I'm not criticizing most. | |
| But these new standards, don't you think this is a hindrance and reduces the morale of the vast majority of good people that you have in the FBI? | |
| And I ask you for a quick answer because they have a few other things. | |
| So I I respect our retired agents, that many of them come to our graduations now. | |
| Um, and I can tell you emphatically that they are mistaken, those who think of the woke bullshit. | |
| We have lowered our standards, whether it's on physical fitness or anything else, are mistaken. | |
| And you can prove that. | |
| The facts back me up on that. | |
| The standards are the same today as they were a decade ago. | |
| In fact, the physical fitness standards depends on how far back you go, but the physical fitness Standards that our current graduates have to have to graduate from Quantico actually exceed some of the physical fitness standards that were in place if you go back far enough with some of our retirees. | |
| But what I would tell you, I think part of the reason there's confusion, and again, I accept that these folks are raising their concerns in good faith. | |
| Because FBI fitness. | |
| We have actually access to the facts. | |
| And part of the reason I think there's confusion, just take the physical fitness thing as an example. | |
| Got on screen for you guys. | |
| Is that before you had to pass the physical fitness test up to one minute? | |
| Before you showed up to Quantico. | |
| Now you have to pass in order to get a badge at Quantum. | |
| Right now, the standard hasn't changed. | |
| You still have to pass the same test, the same 12-point standard, et cetera, all that stuff applies. | |
| The only difference is you can pass it while you're at Quantico. | |
| But if you don't pass that same test that's been in place for a long time now, you don't get a badge. | |
| And we will dismiss people from Quantico, and we do who don't pass the. | |
| It's actually the biggest thing that makes them lose agents is the fitness test. | |
| They actually have a compared to other law enforcement agencies, they do have a fair I think D EA has the hardest fitness test and the Marshalls, but they do have uh a pretty good fitness test. | |
| I ain't gonna lie, I've done it before. | |
| Um you do have to be fairly fit to pass it. | |
| I mean, it was a joke for me. | |
| Come on, I'm this is what I do. | |
| But you know, for a general person, I can see how they would struggle with it. | |
| Could get us information that's substantial. | |
| And then just do me a favor, please go ahead and if you're watching this on Rumble, we already got almost 2,000 of y'all plus watching on Rumble. | |
| Do me a favor, guys, open up a tab on YouTube. | |
| I'll drop the link in the Rumble chat and uh watch it on YouTube as well so we can get more viewers on YouTube so this thing can go out there and hit the algorithm a little bit harder because fucking the older stream went down, which pissed me off because OBS crashed on me. | |
| So I'll put the link in here for you guys. | |
| So please go ahead and share this thing on Rumble, open up another tab. | |
| Watch on Rumble still, because Rumble's on base, but please open up a YouTube tab, help us hit the algorithm a bit harder. | |
| Because watch we're doing this on Fed Reacts. | |
| You know, feelings in this administration are more important than functionality. | |
| It's resulted in a border crisis. | |
| We don't have time to talk about that. | |
| You've spoken out about it. | |
| I appreciate that you've spoken out about it. | |
| I think it's also resulted in shortages in our nation's law enforcement and our military, and I think it makes us less safe. | |
| So I look forward to seeing those statistics and that proof, because I have people talking to my ear that tell me otherwise, and I yield back. | |
| Gentleman yields back. | |
| Gentlemen, I'll talk for me, guys. | |
| Here I'm dropping a link in here. | |
| Director Ray, I appreciate you being here today. | |
| And I certainly appreciate your forthcomingness and information that I think uh that the American people want. | |
| And you know, to me, it's you have a very difficult job right now. | |
| Um in the past, and under call me certainly, uh the Russian collusion narrative got out pretty heavily, and uh that came out of the FBI with the FISA warrants and that sort of stuff spin on General Flynn. | |
| And then the laptop issue, the Hunter Biden laptop issue, which the FBI actually had in their possession. | |
| So I have 800,000 people thereabouts that I represent, and our job is to restore trust. | |
| And so in a lot of the hearings we've had this week, they say, well, the FBI is investigating that. | |
| So uh in some ways it kind of landed in your lap, and I appreciate you being here. | |
| But uh, you know, it's just for me, the question of how does a 20-year-old acting alone get a long gun, a range finder. | |
| We know he bought a ladder. | |
| I guess he recon here and realized he didn't need the ladder to get on top of the building, so he left it at the house. | |
| Get on a roof within 150 yards of the most one of the most famous people in the c the world, I guess, now, and a former president. | |
| How does that happen? | |
| And how do we restore trust in the American people at the FBI and the DHS who is under Mayorcus's directorate now? | |
| How do we verify and get trust back to the American people that these agencies are really working to protect the president? | |
| And and I'm not trying to place blame specifically, but I never thought that we'd rate his house. | |
| I never dreamed that they'd rate a former president's house. | |
| I certainly never imagined that they would actually indict him. | |
| And I felt well, they'll never find him guilty. | |
| And now we've had a threat on his life. | |
| So how do we restore trust in the government of this country and the agencies that are here that we pay and provide three billion dollars a year to the Secret Service to protect some of the leading political candidates in America? | |
| That's a lot. | |
| I'm sorry, that's a lot of questions, but I'm just I'm gonna give a little room to talk. | |
| Right. | |
| No, no, I I listen, uh obviously you included a lot, as you said, in your question, and as you might imagine, I disagree fairly strongly with uh a number of parts of it. | |
| Uh, but sensitive to the time, I guess what I would say this. | |
| I can speak to my approach to running the FBI. | |
| Again, the FBI is not involved in the physical security of the rally. | |
| That's, you know, we come in as the investigators afterwards. | |
| And as I've said before, our investigation is an investigation of the shooter. | |
| I love how he's had to say this ten different times to these Congress people because they're stupid. | |
| He's literally said this like 10 times, Gus. | |
| That would be looking at the Secret Service's performance. | |
| And those I think will be important. | |
| I've said this a million times now. | |
| Trust and confidence, if you will, in Secret Service. | |
| But from the FBI perspective, we can't promise that everybody's going to like the results of what we do. | |
| Right? | |
| What we can promise is that we're going to do our best to do the work in the right way. | |
| That's all we can do. | |
| And so I keep telling our folks every day on this and on everything else. | |
| Our focus has to be we got to do the work in the right way. | |
| We got to make sure we do the work in the right way, and then no matter who likes it, because everything we do, somebody doesn't like it. | |
| And we it's a credibility issue at this point. | |
| Do the American people trust what the FBI and the DOJ is going to tell them? | |
| And you know, that's the thing with this over when I was early on, and I've only been here about three and a half, four years now, but the the American people was the fear of the weaponization of government. | |
| So now we have this issue. | |
| Tucker Carlson asked the president, he said, are you afraid they'll kill you? | |
| And I remember that interview, and I thought, well, I I can't believe he went there. | |
| But here we are. | |
| And so as we work through this process, I think it's so important. | |
| And I think the chairman hit on this is the audio of of the shooter, this you you've interviewed the sniper, the Secret Service sniper that took out the target. | |
| Was he waiting on the green light? | |
| What was going on? | |
| And why did the why did the Mr. Crooks have a chance to get off eight rounds? | |
| And we knew he was only a little bit more. | |
| Okay, there we got a real question. | |
| But we know he was a marked target. | |
| So was he trying to get the green light and was somebody not giving it to him? | |
| So again, the the performance uh, the adequacy of the performance of Secret Service will be the subject of the Inspector General investigation and this outside independent panel. | |
| What I can tell you, um, and I'm glad you asked the question, because this goes to something that we uh that was part of an earlier exchange. | |
| Um the the first time that anybody from law enforcement uh saw the subject uh on the roof was a few minutes. | |
| Now that I think about it, FBI probably didn't get a chance to talk to the Secret Service agent that took the shot because when you get in a shooting, guys, they tell you you don't talk to anyone for like 72 hours and have your rep there with you a lot of the times or your lawyer. | |
| So he probably hasn't given a statement to the FBI yet. | |
| Um he's probably talked to OIG at this point in an OPR, but he probably is gonna talk to the FBI last. | |
| So he might he won't have that answer. | |
| That's why he said OIG, now that I think about it. | |
| though it would be pertinent for the FBI to interview that obviously the Secret Service agent that shot the guy. | |
| But yeah. | |
| Before the shooting. | |
| Not with a gun. | |
| They didn't, at that point, they didn't, they lost. | |
| Local law enforcement a few minutes before saw him on the roof and started raiding. | |
| Did he have a backpack going up the roof? | |
| Did they have a lot of people? | |
| Well, then nobody is we haven't found anybody yet who's who saw him climbing up the roof. | |
| The reason we uh the reason why I've talked about how we think he got on the roof is that's based on forensic uh our evidence response to even forensic analysis uh that were you know, without getting into all the details, footprints and things like that that we can uh you know, fingerprints, et cetera, that we can see how he got on. | |
| But we don't have an eye witness at the moment who saw him climbing up. | |
| So a few minutes before the shooting, uh local law enforcement uh saw him on the roof. | |
| Again, not no weapon identified at that point. | |
| A few seconds before the shooting is when the law enforcement officer that I've talked about already saw is the one who was assisted by another officer who saw up on the roof, saw the shooter in a prone uh shooting position with the gun. | |
| He turns How long did that happen before? | |
| That was that that sighting, that is the first time to my knowledge, the first time anybody from law enforcement saw him with a weapon. | |
| That is seconds before he shot at President Trump. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| I yield back. | |
| So did the counter-sniper not see the bad guy, the shooter, until after he fired a shot. | |
| Good question. | |
| You mean until after the sh the subject fired a shot? | |
| Until after the project, I don't. | |
| Yeah, I don't uh I don't know the answer to that. | |
| It's possible we've already determined that, but I don't, as I sit here right now, I don't have that. | |
| But I can. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I think that's the logical next question with with where the gentleman from Alabama's was questioning was going on. | |
| The gentleman from California is recognized for five minutes. | |
| Director A, to the best of your understanding, how close did the assassin's bullet come to killing President Trump? | |
| My understanding is that either it or some shrapnel uh is what you know grazed his uh his ear. | |
| So I don't know that I have the action. | |
| Very close though. | |
| What's that? | |
| Very, very close, you would agree. | |
| Yes. | |
| Is this the biggest security failure that you've seen in your career? | |
| Well, uh certainly I think director, former director Cheadle has already uh, I think acknowledged that this was uh a significant, at the very least, a significant operational failure. | |
| I forgot her exact words, but I I will defer uh on that. | |
| Well, we really haven't seen anything like this in at least decades in this country, right? | |
| The attempted assassination of a president, current or former, uh, is a historic event. | |
| Was this a sophisticated plot that uh Thomas uh Crooks carried out? | |
| Well, uh I think probably depends on your definition of sophisticated, right? | |
| So uh on the one hand, he's a a 20-year-old um seems to from what we've seen so far, loner. | |
| Uh you know, without a you know, a lot of um elaborate criminal history without any criminal history or anything like that. | |
| On the other hand, um he did clearly do some level of planning and recon. | |
| When did the planning start, to the best of your knowledge? | |
| What's that? | |
| When did the planning start? | |
| Well, we're still drilling into that, but we know we assess that uh that at on July 6th. | |
| So a week in advance. | |
| For example, uh, it seems to be that he seems to become very focused on it because that's when, as I've tested, today, that's when it uh the laptop that we've tied to him has the Google search. | |
| How far away was Oswald from Kennedy? | |
| I mean, that seems like an indic indication of a total amateur, right? | |
| Someone who's searching for that and he's doing it a week in advance. | |
| Again, I don't want to characterize him. | |
| I frankly don't want to give him the credit of characterizing him as amateur or professional, but what I will say is that there are some things he did that involve a certain amount of planning and preparation. | |
| On the other hand, if you're telling me, uh do I think this is the most sophisticated ever, of course not. | |
| We deal with much more sophisticated adversaries all the time. | |
| And you probably prepare for more sophisticated plans to target high-level officials. | |
| Sorry, couldn't you? | |
| You probably prepare for more sophisticated plans to target high-level officials, correct? | |
| We well, we we don't do physical security, but yes, obviously, we're investigating much more sophisticated attacks all the time. | |
| How about the encrypted uh applications on his phone? | |
| Did the were those there for a while, or did he download them uh you know in the days or weeks leading up to the assassination attempt? | |
| Uh I don't have the answer to that sitting here right now. | |
| Um I think it may vary from platform to platform because he had a number of encrypted messaging uh apps uh on it. | |
| And again, as I've I've said, we're we're trying to get access to that content. | |
| And that's important. | |
| I think it's important for everybody on this committee to understand that this is a real problem for law enforcement. | |
| That these companies, let's be clear here, these companies are designing their platforms in a way to, no matter how heinous the crime, no matter how rock solid the legal process is. | |
| Run out of time to get the next question. | |
| Um at this moment, I think. | |
| It's very hard to get into Christian software is what he's trying to say. | |
| Are you confident that high-level protectees, presidents, former presidents, are well protected? | |
| Well, it's not really for me to say. | |
| I have a lot of respect for the men and women of the Secret Service who provide protection just as I do for their counterparts at other agencies. | |
| See, he had a good question with the encryption stuff. | |
| And interrupted it to ask a C for Secret Service question. | |
| Bro, I'm not an expert. | |
| What I would tell you is that uh wrong guy to ask. | |
| Let him talk about the encryption software and tell you guys what do you want to tell about that? | |
| But you want to ask a question about security, which isn't his fucking forte. | |
| Who are literally willing to take a bullet for their protectee? | |
| You mentioned uh a thwarted assassination attempt against former President Bush. | |
| Are there any other uh thwarted assassination attempts against current or former presidents that you could discuss not that immediately come to mind, but you know, I'd have to go back and think about that. | |
| I mean, it's uh you know, obviously we've been around for a while, and current and former presidents are um high-profile targets who are attractive to all kinds of bad guys. | |
| Sure. | |
| There's also been reports that uh the uh uh shooter's parents called uh local law enforcement to say he was missing on the day of the shooting. | |
| Is that correct? | |
| And uh if so, is that something that you would see him as a sort of a natural thing for them to do? | |
| It seems like a 20-year-old who's been missing for a few hours, maybe his parents don't first thing they do, call the police. | |
| What's what was going on with that with that situation? | |
| Uh so my recollection, I don't have this in front of me, my recollection is they did call uh concerned that he was missing. | |
| Uh my recollection though is that they didn't call until this was after the I think this was after the event. | |
| I see. | |
| Um but I I'm not certain of that, so uh I want to you know hedge on that slightly because I have to get back to you to be confirmed that. | |
| I believe that part of the issue was that um when he last saw his father, he I think indicated to his father that he was going to shoot at the range. | |
| And then of course he didn't go to the range and he didn't come back from that. | |
| And so I think that may have added to the level of concern. | |
| Thank you. | |
| I yield back. | |
| Gentleman yields back. | |
| Gentlelady from Wyoming is recognized. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Director Ray, I'm gonna go a little bit different route with my questioning. | |
| In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in December of last year, you stated that the FBI is, quote, especially concerned about the possibility of Hamas supporters engaging in violence on the group's behalf, end quote, and that the threat from a quote terrorist organization who may exploit the attacks at Israel as a tool to mobilize their followers around the world, end quote. | |
| We've seen uh a lot of conduct today that I think is concerning to many people in terms of Hamas terrorists and their sympathizers. | |
| Reports have surfaced alleging that many of the groups intimidating and violating the civil rights of Jewish American students, like the students for justice for Palestine, received guidance and financial support from American Muslims for Palestine, and that AMP's directors allegedly have links to groups which fundraise for Hamas. | |
| Director Ray, is the Bureau aware of or investigating whether these groups violating the civil liberties of Jewish Americans are connected to or affiliated with Hamas or other terrorist organizations? | |
| So we are investigating uh a lot of uh attacks and threats against the Jewish community. | |
| Uh I've been very vocal on how big a concern that is, and certainly that was already heightened even before October 7th, and since October 7th, it went to a whole nother level. | |
| We are actively engaged with uh Jewish community both locally and nationally. | |
| Uh when it comes to foreign terrorist organizations and their role uh or foreign adversaries in their role, we are looking hard to see if we can find linkage. | |
| Uh, you know, for example, uh you know, funding or things like that. | |
| Uh nothing that I can report at this time, but it's something that we're looking for, absolutely, because we know that there's an interest in their part uh to uh fomental. | |
| We're watching it in real time today. | |
| Yes. | |
| Um there are other reports that Mayor Bittard, National Security Council coordinator for intelligence and defense policy and deputy assistant to the president, was an active member in students for justice in Palestine at Georgetown University, Which is one of the groups alleged to have ties to Hamas. | |
| Is the Bureau investigating whether the Biden Harris administration is compromised by pro-Hamas groups and organizations? | |
| What does it have to do with the assassination group? | |
| I'm asking specifically about the Bro, what the fuck does this have to do with the assassination, bitch? | |
| Like what the fuck, man? | |
| There's nothing along those lines that I uh uh can think of to report. | |
| Um I also want to talk to you a bit about the FBI's investigation and involvement with the Russia collusion hoax. | |
| And the the FBI was involved with that because of its potential relationship to end election interference. | |
| Is that correct? | |
| The FBI's involvement in investigating the Russia collusion hoax. | |
| That was because there was concern about election interference. | |
| Is that correct? | |
| Well, the FBI was involved and staffed as investigators, the uh special counsel and mueller investigation uh into efforts by the Russian government uh to influence and interfere? | |
| With the election, correct? | |
| Yes. | |
| All right. | |
| So uh is the FBI investigating what just happened with Joe Biden being forced out of the race after winning the Democrat primary as election interference? | |
| Is the FBI investigating that right now? | |
| I am not aware of any investigation uh along those lines. | |
| Okay. | |
| Um Director Ray, it was reported in March that the FBI's foreign influence task force resumed communication with social media companies. | |
| And an FBI spokesman has stated that, quote, in coordination with the Department of Justice, the FBI recently implemented procedures to facilitate sharing information about foreign malign influence with social media companies in a way that reinforces that private companies are free to decide on their own whether and how to take action on the information, end quote. | |
| Director Ray, what specifically is the FBI FBI doing to reinforce that such decisions are in fact for the private companies to make and not the administration? | |
| So uh I think that the best way to summarize it is that the guidance uh makes uh all kinds of additional steps to underscore that the FBI has no interest in participating in any way whatsoever in the company's decision making that companies are completely free to take any actions on their own, | |
| that we are simply passing information on to them uh for them to do whatever it is they want to do independently, uh consistent with I should say uh I very much appreciate the Supreme Court's finding that no evidence that the FBI coerced platforms to take content down. | |
| Well, I don't believe that that's what the Supreme Court found. | |
| What the Supreme Court found was that the parties involved didn't have standing, but I think there is a whole body of evidence and legal analysis demonstrating that in fact this administration was violating the First Amendment rights of of folks through social media companies. | |
| I'm just gonna ask one very one final very quick question. | |
| If the FBI was involved in the removal or restriction of speech of Americans, do you agree that this would be a violation of the First Amendment? | |
| Well, again, I'm not gonna engage in hypotheticals. | |
| My understanding and my strong view from everything I've seen is that we did not violate the First Amendment. | |
| Okay. | |
| Thank you, Director. | |
| I've I've just got two easy questions for you. | |
| In February, Donald Trump Jr. received a letter containing a white suspicious powder that read, quote, Lee Harvey Oswald's grandson must complete his contract, in quote. | |
| The United States Secret Service and the FBI said they would investigate the matter in five months later, and no more information has been released. | |
| I've also visited with Mr. Trump, and he has not received any information either. | |
| Why is that? | |
| So as I sit here right now, I'm not familiar with the specific investigation, but I do know that we uh have had unfortunately quite a few investigations of um threatening mailings and white powder letters and things like that. | |
| So I'm happy to drill into it and have us circle back to you and see if there's more information we can share about it. | |
| Thank you. | |
| And would you maybe circle back to the Mr. Trump Donald Jr.? | |
| I think they'd like an update as well. | |
| Uh sure. | |
| Let me again I don't like I said, I'm not familiar with the specifics, but I'm happy to have us look at the same thing. | |
| brought up a random case as if the director is going to know about that. | |
| He ain't going to know about that. | |
| Pittsburgh field office now handling the assassination attempt investigation. | |
| Is that right? | |
| Well, there's several there at Pittsburgh Field Office is the lead office. | |
| We obviously have uh lots of activity half, maybe over half of the FBI's field offices are working on this, including almost every headquarters division. | |
| Uh so we have lots and lots and lots, several hundreds of employees working on it. | |
| But yes. | |
| Okay. | |
| This is the same office that botched the Hunter at Biden laptop case. | |
| And they, in my view, and my constituents and many Americans uh displayed a clear reluctance, quote that's a quote, reluctance to really do any tasking, quote, effectively failing to investigate, according to the U.S. attorney on the case. | |
| My question is how can we trust this office and why does it keep reappearing in critical election-related investigations, or is that just dumb luck? | |
| So I want to be a little bit careful in what I can say here, because some of what you are talking about relates to an ongoing investigation being led to by the special counsel, uh, Mr. Weiss. | |
| But what I can tell you is that the Pittsburgh Field Office's involvement in the matter you're talking about was uh the choice to by the Attorney General, Attorney General Barr to have the U.S. attorney and the FBI field office at Pittsburgh handle that particular matter. | |
| As to your summary or characterization of what uh U.S. attorney now former U.S. Attorney Brady actually said, I'm I'd have to see the whole context. | |
| I'm not quite sure that's what he said, but uh I think as to the your overall question about confidence, uh what I would tell you is we have uh that's the point I'm trying to make about the sheer breadth of our investigation. | |
| Yes, the Pittsburgh Field Office is the office on the ground, that's where the sh the attempted assassination happened. | |
| But we are using the full might of the FBI, criminal and national security, as why I'm pointing out that multiple field offices, over half of our field offices, almost every headquarters division, several hundreds of employees. | |
| These are people uh who are working around the clock to deal with this historic attack. | |
| Uh and I have the utmost confidence in those hundreds of employees, agents, analysts, and professional staff, and the American people should too. | |
| I yield uh to Mr. Jordan. | |
| I appreciate the gentleman yielding. | |
| Uh uh Director. | |
| I guess I'm not clear exactly where all you said there were eight shell casings on the roof, so eight bullets were fired. | |
| We obviously know that Mr. Compertori lost his life. | |
| Two other two other rally goers were injured, seriously injured, and then the one that hit President Trump. | |
| Um does that account for was it were some of these individuals hit multiple times? | |
| Where did all eight bullets go? | |
| Is I guess my question. | |
| Uh I don't have that in front of me. | |
| I'm happy to circle back and get that to you. | |
| Uh assuming we have that information yet. | |
| Um as I said, I think with uh with respect to former President Trump, um there's it there's some question about whether or not uh it's a bullet or shrapnel that you know that hit his ear. | |
| So it's it's conceivable, although as I sit here right now, I don't know whether that bullet, in addition to you know, causing the grazing, could have also landed somewhere else. | |
| Um but I believe Where is the fucking case agent, man? | |
| Like, yo, the see with stuff like this, the case agent is gonna know all this stuff. | |
| And I'm surprised he's not sitting here behind them right now. | |
| Like he should be the ones you see, these guys? | |
| These three dudes behind the director? | |
| One of these should be the fucking case agents. | |
| So he can answer the qu tell him, hey, actually it's XYZ, boo, boo, boo, boo, boom. | |
| I believe we've accounted for all of the shots and the cartridges. | |
| So let us if that is. | |
| It's my understanding that the very first one was the one that hit the president. | |
| Is that the very first shot, or is that not accurate? | |
| Uh I I don't, as I sit here right now, I don't know the answer to that. | |
| I believe we know the answer to that. | |
| I just don't have it in front of me. | |
| Okay. | |
| Okay. | |
| Um is there any chance this this I mean it seems to me that this bad guy, the shooter, was was focused on President Trump. | |
| But you indicated that he purchased 50 rounds of of ammunition, I believe, earlier that day. | |
| Do you have any indications thus far in your investigation that in addition to going after and trying to assassinate The former president, he was also looking to do a lot more damage to other individuals. | |
| That's a hard question to answer. | |
| What I would say is uh I agree with you that his preparatory activity is what we've seen so far, the limited information that that has been relevant and interesting about his preparatory activity does seem to be that he had settled on former President Trump as a target and this rally as his moment to try to take a shot. | |
| Um in addition to the 50 rounds, of course, you have the issue of these explosive devices. | |
| Right. | |
| Um so what else he may have had in mind is is something that I think is very much of an open question. | |
| Um you have these explosive devices, including the one still back in his home, uh that wasn't in quite the same stage as the one in the vehicle, vehicles, uh the ones in the vehicle. | |
| But uh he clearly had those explosive devices for some reason. | |
| Um and so we're trying to figure that out. | |
| As I've said before, I think that's a good thing. | |
| Sometimes in these kinds of situations you find like a manifesto or something like that. | |
| It's frustrating to us, and I'm sure frustrating to you and the American people that we haven't found anything quite like that. | |
| We'd be love to have a roadmap that tells us exactly what he was thinking. | |
| We haven't found that yet. | |
| Doesn't mean we won't. | |
| We're looking all over the place, and we're gonna leave no stone unturned. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Uh, gentlemen from Texas is recognized. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chair. | |
| Uh thank you, Director for being here today. | |
| I know it's been a very long day, busy day on Capitol Hill, and also I want to apologize in advance if there's any uh repetitive questions uh from me. | |
| Uh but I have to ask, uh given that our sitting president resigned from the campaign on Sunday and the Secret Service Director resigned yesterday. | |
| You don't plan on resigning any time soon, do you, sir? | |
| No, sir. | |
| Good to go. | |
| Uh earlier today, uh you told this committee that you recovered eight bullet cartridges from the roof next to the shooter, and given that testimony, I have two questions for you. | |
| Uh how many shots were fired at President Trump and how many shots were fired in total of the entire day? | |
| I know I keep hearing eight, but were there any more that that were unaccounted for? | |
| Uh the best information I have right now is eight shots. | |
| Uh as to the sequence, uh, I'm not sure I have that sitting here right now. | |
| As I said to the chairman, I'm going to go back to my team and see if if we've got that nailed down yet. | |
| And if we have, I'm happy to share it with with you and the rest of the committee. | |
| Please do, sir. | |
| Thank you very much for that. | |
| Uh you also mentioned that that the shooter used encrypted messages to uh to to communicate. | |
| Uh, specifically, do you know what apps or what what apps he was using to communicate and can you confirm one of the things that we have to do with the if he was communicating with any foreign nationals through the encrypted messages the names of the apps, I don't have that uh right here in front of me. | |
| Um as far as um communicating with any foreign actors, um I'll say two things. | |
| One, we haven't, as I I think I've testified before, we have not uh at the moment at least identified any accomplices or co-conspirators, foreign or domestic. | |
| So that uh as to foreign contacts, of course, that's part of why we want to get access to the uh encrypted messages, because um that might tell us whether he'd been in contact with somebody. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Um let's talk about motorcycles. | |
| Wait, they should have access to that when they they have his phone. | |
| You should be able to see all that. | |
| It's a little weird. | |
| Uh I know the FBI has taken the taking a lead role in investigating the assassination on. | |
| See, this is the problem. | |
| These congressmen are idiots. | |
| Like like I would counter that and I'd say, okay, but you have the phone, you got into it equatical. | |
| You have the live feed. | |
| You're looking you actually have the hard messages of who he's communicating with. | |
| Have you guys looked at that? | |
| See, this is a problem when you have congressmen that aren't law enforcement and don't understand this shit. | |
| On President Trump, uh, your team has uh searched the shooter's phone, uh to countless interviews, then extensive research into his motives as of today, July 24, 2024. | |
| Do you and your team know the motive of the shooter or have any idea on what could have driven it? | |
| Well, no and have any idea are two two very different things. | |
| Okay. | |
| Um we do not know the motive. | |
| Um that is obviously one of the central questions in our investigation. | |
| Uh and it's been very frustrating to us that a lot of the usual kind of low-hanging fruit places that we would find that uh have not yielded uh significant clues uh about his motive. | |
| Having said that, uh we have seen indications that he was interested in public figures uh and that in the period um around July 6th leading up to July 13th, uh he does seem to have become very focused on this particular rally and former President Trump. | |
| But exactly what his thought process was in doing that, uh that's something that's still very much under investigation. | |
| I want to make something clear to the American people who try to help out what motive could be. | |
| Uh and again, it's not my job to steer it, but here are some of my thoughts. | |
| Uh I'm not sure about motive either, specifically, but I can tell you that after the. | |
| What the fuck is this shit? | |
| American fascism, NBC analyst Trump re-raising U.S. flags, and like I said, every significant neo-Nazi movie, the Hill Biden says Trump uses Hitler's language, not America's after truth social vir video goes viral. | |
| It's not wrong to compare Trump's America to what? | |
| Just assassination of 10 people on both sides. | |
| I said that both parties need to tone down the rhetoric. | |
| But recently, just on Monday, in fact, President Biden called into the Harris campaign event and said that President Trump was a threat to democracy. | |
| Just take a look behind me at this photo at these photos. | |
| This is a magazine cover of the New Republic from June 2024, published just one month before the assassination attempt on President Trump in a tweet explaining the cover, the New Republic the the New Republic said this. | |
| Today, we at the New Republic think we can spend this whole this election year in one of two ways. | |
| We could spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism, or we could spend it saying he's damn close enough and we'd better fight. | |
| We unreservedly choose the latter course. | |
| Sir, I know you said that the FBI doesn't have a clear motive yet, and you've explained that, but in your professional experience as an investigator, do you think that language like this could radicalize someone to engage in political violence? | |
| Okay, I see what he means now. | |
| I certainly understand the point of the question. | |
| What I would tell you is that uh respectfully, uh I don't think it's appropriate for me as FBI director to be characterizing or engaging in public commentary on specific people's rhetoric. | |
| And that's because uh it's not that I don't understand why you're raising the question, but I'm saying that in my role, I have to be very careful to make sure we speak through our work, and we speak through our cases and our intelligence products, not the FBI director uh chiming in in the public square on different people's uh public, you know, political commentary. | |
| I'm saying for the record. | |
| Yeah, he gave the politically correct answer there. | |
| In other words, we got to let the investigation play out and find out why he really wanted to. | |
| We can't speculate. | |
| Uh there was an assassination attempt on an American president, and I will be asking these same questions, even if it were President Biden in my message to the American people is that we need to do better. | |
| I did like the rest of my time, and thank you for being here, sir. | |
| I know it's been a very long day. | |
| Gentleman yields back. | |
| Gentleman from South Carolina is recognized. | |
| Thank you, Chairman, and thank you, Director, for being here. | |
| I actually it's refreshing. | |
| I was in the oversight hearing earlier this week, and um although we don't have an idea on everything, um, the your ability to come in here and actually give way more than Director Cheadle ever did uh is somewhat refreshing. | |
| Well, that's because they're running the investigation, bro. | |
| Like, don't be disingenuous here. | |
| The reason why Cheadle couldn't say anything is because she's not running the case. | |
| This dude's agency is running the case, therefore he's giving way more answers. | |
| Like I told you guys on X a couple of days ago. | |
| Uh you saw some pretty bipartisan frustrations exhibited in that particular hearing. | |
| I'm sure you've seen part of it. | |
| Um I want to follow up on a couple of lines of questions that I had with Director Cheadle uh that she actually answered, which was remarkable. | |
| Um, um, she had indicated that Secret Service at the Trump rally had not did not have any uh radio recordings. | |
| Is that in your investigation, is that accurate? | |
| Uh I'm not sure I know the answer to that. | |
| Uh I believe we have some there may be some recordings uh on the local law enforcement side uh as to whether or not we have recordings on the Secret Service side. | |
| I'd have to drill back into that. | |
| And uh and the reason I'm you might say, well, how the heck can you not know? | |
| Well, we certainly have interviewed lots of Secret Service employees. | |
| So what we know from the interviews versus some other source, as I sit here right now, I don't I don't know. | |
| So on this on this particular case, but in your experience, and again it's a different agency, but uh she had indicated, Director Cheadle had indicated that uh recordings sometimes are done uh from radio recordings, I guess, of what happens at a Trump rally or any other thing that they're engaged in. | |
| Uh Is that your experience as well that sometimes there are uh audio recordings of communications between law enforcement officials? | |
| Just speaking very broadly, uh there certainly there are times when there are recordings, but it'd be hard for me to be more precise than that. | |
| And I know that you can't answer whether they were here in this instance or not, but what would cause recordings to not exist for the Trump rally if as a hypothetical? | |
| What would what would be the reason that that would happen? | |
| I'm afraid I I don't I don't know the answer to that. | |
| I mean, uh if they if they didn't record, then maybe situations where they just don't record in the first place, and why that would be though, I I'm not sure I can answer that. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Let me ask you this, and this is another line of questioning. | |
| Director Cheadle had indicated that seconds before this the assassin that would-be assassin fired the shot is roughly seconds, is when um he became a person of suspicion uh to an actual threat. | |
| Would you agree with that assessment from Director Cheadle? | |
| Well, let me let me try it this way. | |
| I think there are um there are sort of three, in my mind, there's sort of three, let's say three significant moments on this continuum that you're kind of getting at. | |
| There is uh roughly an hour before the shooting when local law enforcement observes uh the individual, uh this the shooter at that point uh as somebody that was a person of concern. | |
| I forgot the exact phrasing, and that was based on seeing him with this range finder, uh no observation of a weapon, but there was something odd and off about them that caught local law enforcement's attention. | |
| So that's the first moment. | |
| Then there's a second moment, which is um uh, you know, I think just minutes before the shooting, where local law enforcement um observed him on the roof, but didn't see a weapon, is my understanding at that point. | |
| Uh and at that point, uh their level of concern obviously was even higher. | |
| And then there's the third moment, uh, which is that moment when local law enforcement saw him, uh, you know, the officer who climbed up with the assistance of his colleague and saw the shooter in the prone position uh with the weapon, and that's seconds before the uh event. | |
| And so you know, terminology. | |
| So that right there, now we know that the cops that tried to intervene and got the gun pointed at them and stopped literally like seconds or maybe a minute or two before the shots were shot at Trump. | |
| That's why the guy probably missed. | |
| He was nervous as fuck, because he knew the cops run to him at that point. | |
| Uh you know, I'm not sure, but it seems to me there's an evolution of concern over that time period. | |
| Correct, and that an escalating uh concern. | |
| What what uh at what point, and and uh this again I just don't know, so I'm curious at what point is uh say the sniper who um who killed Mr. Crooks, at what point is he able to fire a shot, and does he have to have authorization in which to do that? | |
| Uh I don't know that I know Secret Services rules of engagement uh in that situation. | |
| Um it's possible that our interview uh of the counter-sniper has uh uncovered that again. | |
| Our focus has been I certainly understand why you're asking the question, but our focus has been on the shooter himself and his actions uh and the attack. | |
| Uh these two other reviews, the DHS Inspector General and the outside independent panel are both looking at the performance of the Secret Service, which would uh I'm confident include the question that you're talking about. | |
| Thank you. | |
| I actually think you know, from from a legislative purpose and what this body will probably ultimately do, uh it's it's of uh great importance that we uh break down barriers of communication and that we allow um you know officers to do their job without uh so that this doesn't happen again. | |
| And I appreciate you being here. | |
| Thank you, Director. | |
| Gentleman yields back, gentlemen from Ohio is recognized. | |
| Well, once again, as Congressman Fry said, uh we want to thank you for your time and a lot more uh information today than Monday. | |
| So thank you for that. | |
| I just have a handful of questions. | |
| I would Love to have just a simple yes or no so we could get done with this. | |
| So on day one, President Biden issued an executive order mandating DEI programs in the executive branch. | |
| You responded by hiring FBI's first ever Chief Diversity Officer. | |
| You're even on the Bureau's website quoting saying that diversity and inclusion of the workforce is something I care deeply about because the success of our efforts impacts our operations, our culture, and our future. | |
| End of quote. | |
| So, Director, just a simple yes or no. | |
| Do you still find DEI hiring practices to be central to the FBI's operations, cultures, and future? | |
| I believe that diversity is an important part uh is a core value of a high-performing organization. | |
| Do you have any concerns that our homeland security efforts will be hampered if the FBI if the FBI continues to use DEI as a primary hiring measure? | |
| I don't believe that we use DEI as a primary hiring metric. | |
| I would say that we have not lowered our standards. | |
| Yes, and I feel like let me, if I could finish. | |
| It's not a yes or no question. | |
| Uh we have not lowered our standards and the facts back that up. | |
| Are you aware of a 112-page report compiled by senior agents and analysts which stated, quote, if the current trajectory of the FAI special agent recruitment and selection continues, using DEI as the primary and sole measure of our homeland security efforts will be significantly hampered? | |
| Do you know about that 112-page report? | |
| I I'm aware of a report uh from a number of anonymous uh former employees. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Do you agree that protecting former president falls under the umbrella of Homeland Security? | |
| Well, uh protecting the former president, the uh physical security, the protective detail on the former president is the province of the Secret Service, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. | |
| Is my understanding that historically the FBI had 100,000 applications for special agents on foul at any given time of the year? | |
| So talking about slipping recruitment, are you aware that on a February of 2024 a letter from the FBI's assistant director for training division, which reported the FBI only received an estimated 48,000 applications over a two-year period? | |
| I don't know if we're comparing Apple to Apple. | |
| What I can tell you is that in the time that I've been FBI director, the number of Americans applying to be special agent has gone up dramatically to the tune of, in some cases, double or triple the pace of the thousands of the year. | |
| If I could finish, sir, if I could finish, please, to a rate that is higher. | |
| You'd have to go back about a decade or so to find the number of Americans applying to be special agents that are currently applying. | |
| Okay, so for the record, the 48,000 is probably wrong, then in your eyes? | |
| I I don't know. | |
| I haven't the letter in front of me, but I'm what I'm not sure of is that that we're comparing Apple to Apple in terms of time periods and everything else. | |
| In advance of the Trump shooting, United States Secret Service Special Agent in Charge, Tim Burke reportedly told law enforcement partners that NATO summit in Washington, D.C. limited his resources available to the Trump rally. | |
| The service has similar DA DEI hiring aims and failed their zero fail mission to protect President Trump. | |
| Director Cheadle has since stepped down. | |
| Could the hyperfixation on hitting Biden administration's imposed DEI rules by causing the FBI and the Federal law enforcement agencies to not only miss their prime candid candidates, but also potential threats? | |
| Well, I can't speak to Secret Services hiring practice. | |
| What I can tell you is that in my view, diversity, like everything else, is something that has to be done in the right way. | |
| Just like everything else is a right way and a wrong way to achieve it. | |
| I think we can and have achieved improvements in diversity and at the same time not lowered our standards. | |
| And I think part of the reason we have been able to do that is because of the encouraging increase, increase in the number of Americans applying to be special agents. | |
| The investigation to the planning of pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC headquarters has been going on for over three and a half years and will soon have lasted longer than the Biden presidency. | |
| I look forward to you proving yourselves because we haven't received any update right now on the Trump shooting since July 15th, and the people really need that. | |
| Can the public expect a more transparent and timely investigation into the attempted assassination of former President Trump? | |
| I've been testifying here all day about the investigation into former attempted assassination of former President Trump, and we have done multiple briefings and I've answered multiple questions. | |
| Well, it just seems like there hasn't been a press conference to the people to go through all the different details that were already presented today. | |
| And I'll just leave you with one final question. | |
| Why would that be the government? | |
| Do you feel as the director that perhaps like not only the FBI but the Secret Service needs to have a complete reconstruction? | |
| Do you think it's still put together the way that could best do its job? | |
| The FBI that I see every single day, having visited all 56 of our field offices at least twice, many of them three times. | |
| The FBI that I see engaging with state and local law enforcement from all 50 states that I hear about from prosecutors, judges, business leaders, community leaders, foreign partners, is an FBI that is respected, trusted, appreciated, and that is there for people when they need them the most. | |
| And that is the FBI that I see, and I am very proud to be a part of them. | |
| Any comment on the other agencies? | |
| No, I'm not going to comment on other agencies. | |
| Yield back to the chair. | |
| Gentlemen yields back. | |
| Director, I have just a couple of quick questions, but I want to give uh to the ranking member a chance to say some remarks or questions, and then we'll then we'll be done. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chair. | |
| First, I would like to say, as somebody when I grew up, I watched the untouchables, and I think Elliott Ness would be proud of you. | |
| I don't know about Jaeger Hoover, but Elliot Ness for sure. | |
| Let me ask you this. | |
| In Memphis, you uh you you have put Memphis and Nashville's FBI together, kind of consolidated and in one office. | |
| And we have I know you have worked with our U.S. attorney and others to work on the our crime situation there, and it's gotten better. | |
| Uh, but is this change in the FBI relationship there? | |
| We're not going to have an office necessarily. | |
| Tell me how that's going to affect Memphis. | |
| So uh I want to be very clear. | |
| We're not leaving. | |
| We're not leaving Memphis. | |
| Uh we are what we are doing is nobody should leave Memphis. | |
| In fact, most of the songs are about people going to Memphis. | |
| We are leave Nashville. | |
| They go to Memphis. | |
| Recognizing population growth and the threat environment, we have instead uh taken, if you look across the state, instead of having two field offices in Knoxville and Memphis, we're creating a Tennessee division headquartered in the middle in Nashville. | |
| But we are keeping, we are keeping the offices in Knoxville and Memphis. | |
| Uh and in fact, when it comes to Memphis specifically, not only will it not result in any decrease in the number of agents there to work, actually, strange as it might sound, it's going to allow us to increase the number of agents who will be assigned to the Memphis office, uh, including to tackle things like violent crime, which I know is a of huge concern. | |
| Uh and the reason for that is really the effect of this reorganization is to be able to reduce administrative roles that will be more consolidated in the middle in Nashville, but it allow us to increase the operational roles, the agent roles, uh, the number of them in Memphis. | |
| So I think not only are we not leaving Memphis, uh, we're actually increasing our investigative presence in Memphis as part of this, and we're gonna be able to continue to collaborate closely with our great partners there without skipping a B. Thank you. | |
| That is reassuring. | |
| One of the questions was asked over here was about uh previous assassination attempts on presidents. | |
| And obviously, I know you are a lot younger than me, but you probably did. | |
| Do you ever watch the Untouchables? | |
| I I have watched it. | |
| They had a one of the programs was on Mayor Sirmac. | |
| You don't know Mayor Surmack. | |
| I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. | |
| Mayor Sirmack, do you know who he was? | |
| I do not. | |
| He was the mayor of Chicago, and in February of 1933, there was an assassination attempt on Franklin Roosevelt in Miami, Florida, and Mayor Sarmax, CER MAK, was killed and said, I'm glad it was me and not you. | |
| Allegedly, he said that. | |
| But anyway, that was an attempt and it failed. | |
| And that was untouchables brought it into my consciousness. | |
| Allegedly, he said. | |
| Thank you for your work. | |
| I appreciate it very much. | |
| And uh and I appreciate you're not looking into changing our Democratic nominee. | |
| That is something we normally do. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Director, um I'm still not clear in my mind. | |
| When did the counter snipers? | |
| When did they first get eyes on the bad guy, uh the the would-be assassin um on the on the on the roof of the AGR building? | |
| Uh I'm not certain, but I'll take my best effort here. | |
| I've I guess I'm if I am sorry to interrupt, but it's did they have eyes on him before the local law enforcement was looking up on the roof and engaged with the the bad guy shooter. | |
| I don't know the answer to that. | |
| I will look into that and get back to the case agent would know that. | |
| I believe we have the answer. | |
| I just don't know that I have it. | |
| I want to make it definitely know it. | |
| It's just that he's not gonna know because he's so far up as a director, and I've told you guys this before. | |
| Directors, a lot of the times, in this case, this guy's not even an 1811 guys. | |
| He's not even technically a special agent. | |
| He's a director. | |
| He's never carried a gun in his life. | |
| He's a former AUSA. | |
| So this is why it's so important to have the case agent there. | |
| He should be the one sitting here behind. | |
| You can see that these guys roll FBI, very obvious from their pins and shit like that. | |
| But yeah. | |
| Make sure I answer accurate. | |
| Because we thought from the briefings that uh Mr. Abbott gave us, or Baker. | |
| Excuse me, Abate gave us um and the briefings you gave the Congress that they did, but I I I what it wasn't clear from your testimonies. | |
| If you can get that answer to us, that would be helpful. | |
| I want to circle back just a third time if I could to the Iranian uh uh threat to President Trump and and some others, uh former. | |
| Netanyahu was trying to the reason I want to go back to that because we now know that the Secret Service and Homeland Security denied resources to President Trump's detail that they had asked for. | |
| And it seems to me if that all happened after you guys knew about the Iran threat and had briefed the Secret Service on that real threat, that's an even bigger problem. | |
| And that's why I was trying to get that timeline down when you knew about it and when you briefed the Secret Service on the Iranians' threat to kill President Trump. | |
| So again, I really want to be careful to uh both be accurate, but also not to kind of stray into any kind of classified information or confirm the existence of classified information. | |
| Um let me see if there's a way for us to get back to you on that question. | |
| I understand why you're asking. | |
| I knew that was coming. | |
| It may be easier to answer than I think, but at the moment, in an open hearing, I'm not sure if I can see the right way to do that. | |
| Fair enough. | |
| We'll we'll we'll expect answers to both of those questions and you can get back to this. | |
| That'd be great. | |
| Finally, anything else you want to tell us that that we didn't ask him. | |
| You you you came today and you told us some things that weren't even prompted by questions, and I just want to make sure if there's anything else you want to tell us um regarding July 13th and what you've discovered, you know, now's the time. | |
| Well, again, we're gonna continue to engage with the Congress. | |
| Um I think we've covered a lot of the the points that I really wanted to make sure um that uh I got across on just as I'm looking at my list uh in one way or another through the course of today's questioning. | |
| I think we've gotten through most of it. | |
| That concludes today's hearing. | |
| We thank our witness for appearing before the committee today without objection. | |
| All members will have five legislative days to submit additional written questions for the witness or additional materials for the record without objection. | |
| The hearing is adjourned. | |
| Cool. | |
| All right. | |
| So he answered quite a bit of questions, guys. | |
| We got some new facts. | |
| Obviously, the Oswald thing still didn't have answers for a lot of things. | |
| Um obviously the investigation is active, guys. | |
| I mean, it's it's kind of crazy that this we're not even barely two weeks in, and uh, you know, they're answering questions on the case. | |
| So and you got hundreds of agents involved, so that's what it is. | |
| Uh it's what, five o'clock now? | |
| We got a show fresh a fit coming on later tonight. | |
| Uh we got after hours as well. | |
| I think we got something uh I think it's fresh match tonight, guys. | |
| Um I we will see who's uh tomorrow. | |
| Um I'm gonna go ahead and hit the gym here soon. | |
| Uh but yeah. | |
| But I got y'all, man. | |
| I hope you guys enjoyed this stuff. | |
| Big announcement coming very soon as well, guys, that you guys are really gonna enjoy. | |
| I got a trailer that I'm gonna play for you guys, working with some people on it. | |
| We covered two things. | |
| We covered the um Meet Asana. | |
| We covered not only the FBI testimony, but we also covered the uh Netanyahu speech. | |
| Uh sorry guys that the stream went down. | |
| If you guys go look and I'll show you guys kind of how it's organized on the channel, I have a part one and a part two. | |
| Okay. | |
| So You go here, boom, you'll see we're still live, obviously, on this one, but you're gonna see a part one and a part two, right? | |
| So just go ahead and uh you know check it out. | |
| I'm gonna get stamps for both of them for you guys as well. | |
| On Rumble, though, right? | |
| You literally have it all in one. | |
| Uh and go follow my Fed Reacts channel is doing crazy numbers. | |
| It just doesn't have only got 21.8k followers, guys. | |
| Follow me on Fed Reacts on Rumble because I go live whenever I go live on Fed Reacts, I go live on YouTube and on Rumble. | |
| We got almost 3,000 people watching on Rumble. | |
| But yeah, it's all in one stream, one shot here. | |
| So you might want to watch on Rumble, to be honest with y'all. | |
| So go check it out, guys. | |
| Uh there's a minor interruption while I was like fixing everything, but yeah, and then also CastleClub.tv. | |
| We were back up on there. | |
| Guys, if you really want to support, CastleClub.tv is the place to do it, man. | |
| Okay, guys. | |
| As you guys know, we're demonetized on YouTube for being some real ninjas. | |
| And uh, you know, Cal's Club is how we are able to do what we do and stay free. | |
| So, guys, check us out over there, please. | |
| I gave y'all two streams, by the way, just so you guys know. | |
| Um, even though uh I was sick on Sunday, I made up for it. | |
| Gave you guys two different streams. | |
| I streamed yesterday and I streamed today. | |
| So uh, you know, obviously some breaking stuff. | |
| We covered the uh but the uh state police, Pennsylvania State Police testimony from yesterday uh and Cheatle, right? | |
| So that was uh yesterday. | |
| So yeah, man, go go make sure to uh support over there, ninjas. | |
| It's it's uh we go hard in the paint. | |
| So the Cheeto one is on the Fresh of Fit uh one. | |
| I did everything today on Fed Reacts, just so you guys don't get confused. | |
| Um, Destiny debate is going to be tomorrow, 8 p.m. between Andrew Wilson and Destiny. | |
| So I will be hosting that as well. | |
| I'll be uh uh monitoring that one. | |
| It's gonna be a good one. | |
| And uh yeah, catch you guys back here in a few hours for Fresh of Fit, man. | |
| Okay, tune in. | |
| We're gonna be live on Rumble and on YouTube, as you guys know. | |
| Uh I'll end the stream here so that I can go ahead and hit the gym. | |
| Love y'all ninjas. | |
| Peace. | |
| Timestamps are gonna be up soon. |
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