Rep. Himes on Democrats Going on Offense

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Speaker 9 We're seeing Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee fighting back.

Speaker 7 An incredible explosive hearing yesterday where Democratic members were not taking the BS peddled by the Trump regime officials who were testifying. Let me show you what went down.

Speaker 7 The ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Congressmember Himes, said the following to Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence. Let's play it.

Speaker 10 You on March 15th, as DNI, retweeted a post from Ian Miles Chong, who is listed on RT, that's Russia Today's website, as, quote, a political and cultural commentator who has contributed content to RT since at least 2022.

Speaker 10 Director Gabber, do you think that it's responsible for you as head of the intelligence community and the principal's presidential intelligence advisor to retweet posts from individuals affiliated with Russian state media?

Speaker 11 That retweet came from my personal account, and I would have to go back to look at the substance of the tweet.

Speaker 10 Can I, just to lack, just so that we don't have a lack of confusion amongst our allies and enemies and us, can I act perhaps that you not think that you should be saying one thing on your personal account than you say officially?

Speaker 11 I maintain my First Amendment rights to be able to express my own personal views on different issues.

Speaker 10 Thank you. I yield back.

Speaker 12 What?

Speaker 9 The director of national intelligence saying that

Speaker 7 she wants to use her First Amendment rights to repost Russian propaganda? Great questioning there by Congressman Himes. Then you had Democratic Congressmember Castro say the following.
Let's play it.

Speaker 13 Thank you, Chairman.

Speaker 13 Tulsi, you and I came into the Congress together in 2013. And, Cash, you and I, I was serving on the intelligence committee when you worked on the intelligence committee.

Speaker 13 And John, you and I are both from Texas, and we both serve together on the intelligence committee.

Speaker 13 Y'all, the idea that this information, if it was presented to our committee, would not be classified, y'all know, is a lie. That's ridiculous.

Speaker 13 I've seen things much less sensitive be presented to us with high classification.

Speaker 13 And to say that it isn't is a lie to the country.

Speaker 9 Then Congressman Raja Krishnamurthy, let's play it.

Speaker 15 Terrorist is at his known location, so should be on time.

Speaker 15 Also, strike thrones launch MQ-9s. MQ-9s is a weapon system, correct?

Speaker 14 They are.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 15 I think...

Speaker 15 Applying the executive order as well as the DOD manual to this fact pattern, we clearly have weapon systems that have been identified. That is classified information.

Speaker 15 Now, the reason why it's important that this information not be disclosed is that we don't want the adversaries to know what's about to happen, right, sir?

Speaker 14 Well, I would draw a

Speaker 14 small distinction there. You referenced and asked if that platform, those two platforms, are weapon systems.
They are, but those terms are used all across the globe in a lot of contexts.

Speaker 14 So it's really about how they're used in the context of this particular document. I just want to clarify that the use of those.

Speaker 15 I understand.

Speaker 15 In this situation, those are operational details.

Speaker 14 They are operational details. But again, as you've quoted the DOD instruction, it's about operations.
So as you further go down into what are the operational details,

Speaker 14 I think as we had a discussion yesterday, the important aspect, I think all of us are very familiar.

Speaker 15 This is classified information. This is classified information.
It's a weapon system, as well as sequence of strikes, as well as details about the operations.

Speaker 9 Let's bring in Congressmember Jim Himes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Speaker 7 I guess, first off, it is classified information, correct? As the ranking member, this was classified information that was leaked.

Speaker 14 Well,

Speaker 10 it absolutely should have been classified information, right? I mean, there's no doubt about that. Whether it was actually classified, I suppose it's something that they would like to argue about.

Speaker 10 By the way, if it wasn't classified, that's a whole other scandal because the timing and nature of an attack on a foreign country,

Speaker 10 you know, not a hard one, as Raja so ably pointed out.

Speaker 7 Where are we at with this right now? I mean, you led for the Democrats as the ranking member,

Speaker 7 the Democrats in the House Intelligence.

Speaker 7 Where are we at? Where do we go from here? What's going on?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I think, you know, there's a couple of pieces that have to be satisfied here. Number one, we need to get a complete inventory of whatever was on this crazy signal chat, right?

Speaker 10 That is not provided to us by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, right? So step one,

Speaker 10 you got to produce the entire signal chain, everything that was on it. Secondly, there needs to be an investigation over precisely how it happened for two reasons.

Speaker 10 Number one, it can never happen again. We're getting all twisted up in the underwear here over, you know, is it classified or not classified or, you know, is it a a violation of the reports act?

Speaker 10 This can never happen again.

Speaker 10 If, and I know my Republican friends want to convince you that, well, they didn't precisely name the target. Guess what?

Speaker 10 If the Houthis knew that we were coming on any given day, that could have resulted in dead pilots or it could have resulted in them sinking a naval ship, right?

Speaker 10 So anyway, we need to know exactly what happened. We need the investigation to cough up how it happened.

Speaker 7 And then, of course, we need a commitment that it never happens again and that we learn from it and whatever accountability this unaccountable administration thinks is wise to uh uh to impose on the people who are involved but congressman this couldn't possibly just be the only one like the way they name the chat houthy small group the way everyone seemed to conduct what was taking place as business as usual at least it tells me that this is what they're doing all the time every day with other plans other attacks we don't know that yet for a fact, but it seemed, as a lawyer, it seemed pattern and practice-like.

Speaker 7 So what's being done to determine if this is rampant, if this is how they do it all of the time?

Speaker 7 And do you think this is how they've been conducting business all of the time like this on signal chats with very sensitive information?

Speaker 10 Okay, broadly, let's start with a slightly even broader question, which is, is this an administration that is operating with prudent guidelines, following rules, doing things with competence.

Speaker 10 No, this is the administration that, apart from setting up a signal chat, decided to fire the people who maintain and look after our nuclear weapons. Oops.
Well, that was a mistake.

Speaker 10 I mean, there is absolutely no reason to believe that this signal chat about, you know, a pending attack is anything other than indicative of the way they do business.

Speaker 10 And so you raise exactly the right questions. But for Jeffrey Goldberg, we would never know about this in all likelihood, right?

Speaker 10 So you raise a critical question, which is where else are they screwing this kind of stuff up, right?

Speaker 10 Is there a Facebook page that Elon Musk set up where there's a whole bunch of social security numbers or, you know, medical records?

Speaker 10 The oversight task is enormous. And then let me say this too.
I know what was happening here.

Speaker 10 You know,

Speaker 10 you just have to read. Pete Hegseth's typed-in text about F-18s launching accompanied by MQ9s, weather good, you know, CENTCOM says go.
This is Pete Hegseth playing soldier, right?

Speaker 10 It's just the testosterone upwelling he gets when he gets to type MQ9s and route is his life right now. You know, he's a guy who is, you know, not even closely qualified to the position he has.

Speaker 10 And so when he gets to get on a signal chat with his buddies and say, we're a go, CENTCOM says all in F-18s, it just makes him feel really, really good. Sadly, of course, it puts our people at risk.

Speaker 7 Now,

Speaker 7 your Republican colleagues, who I think once upon a time would like labels like National national security hawk and this and that.

Speaker 7 Their response has either been, this is normal, this is cool, oopsies, mistakes happen, or yeah,

Speaker 7 I'm concerned about it.

Speaker 7 It's a mistake. I think the strongest statement we got was somewhere between oopsie and it's a mistake.
Maybe on the Senate,

Speaker 7 slightly stronger. So

Speaker 7 what could you do, though? As the ranking member, that means you're the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, but you still don't control the committee. You don't have subpoena power.

Speaker 7 They get to control the course of what can you do in that reality?

Speaker 10 Yeah, it's a great question. And it's a question that when you're in the minority, like I am, like the Democratic Party is, is always has a somewhat unsatisfying answer.

Speaker 10 You know, in the Senate, the Democratic senators have a few more tools at their disposal.

Speaker 10 On the House side, where the House majority rules and where the Speaker of the House is a wholly owned owned subsidiary of Donald J.

Speaker 10 Trump and where with maybe one or two exceptions, I'm thinking Don Bacon and a few others,

Speaker 10 people are absolutely terrified by the political end that they will encounter if they get in the way of this president. There's just not a lot of things that you could do to even wake up.

Speaker 10 the Republicans who, if this had been done under the Biden administration, they'd have war paint on and be burning the buildings down.

Speaker 10 In fact, I pointed this out yesterday in closed session, which is, okay, folks, let's stop the pearl clutching and the arguments about whether

Speaker 10 F-18 is a precise war plan. You know that if Barack Obama's administration or Joe Biden's administration had done that, we would have to deploy the National Guard to calm you guys down.

Speaker 7 I want to get your take on

Speaker 7 Elise Stefanik. It's being announced that her nomination is being pulled for the ambassador to the United Nations.
This follows,

Speaker 7 I think Republicans are getting worried about the electoral map that they're seeing.

Speaker 7 They saw what happened in a Pennsylvania state race that never went Democrat since 1889 and a Democrat won in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 7 I think they're seeing kind of what's happening in Florida right now in these specials. People are saying that's behind it.

Speaker 7 But, you know, Elise Stefanik, she morphed from moderate to ultra MAGA, ultra-mAGA. And now Hagseth gets to be Secretary of Defense, and Stefanik does not get to be Ambassador to the United Nations.

Speaker 7 Some might call it karma. Some might use other words.
What's your response to all of this?

Speaker 10 Yeah, well, it certainly is interesting politically, you know, and I don't know. We'll see in this race in Florida that apparently is in a Republican plus 30 district.

Speaker 10 And gosh, the Democrat is five points behind. We'll see what's happening out there.
I don't think they really think that that very red district is at risk.

Speaker 10 But I do think inside this building, I do think that there are a whole lot of Republicans who have realized that the time has run out on the idea that you can cut $880 billion out of Medicaid through waste, fraud, and abuse.

Speaker 10 A lot of people got very sober wake-ups this week when they realized, oh my God, I got to go back to my constituents and tell them that we're about to destroy Medicaid.

Speaker 10 So I think they start to see the unanimity

Speaker 10 fraying here. You know, from Elise's standpoint, I know Elise really well.
We served on the intelligence committee together. It's almost, you said karma, it's almost Shakespearean, right?

Speaker 10 I mean, Elise was a classic Bob Dole Republican when she got here, you know, did what she needed to do to become a MAGA darling.

Speaker 10 And now just as high office is right there, you know, the Shakespearean gods have

Speaker 10 pulled that out,

Speaker 10 pulled the rug out from under her. So it's a karma, Shakespearean, whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 7 Congressman, as we start hearing more about the framework of the budget, as we start hearing about what they're doing as we reach the debt ceiling, we'd love for you to come back and talk about that.

Speaker 7 But any other thoughts where things start to head on that front this week, next week, as some of those details start to emerge?

Speaker 10 Sure. I mean, look, for the people

Speaker 10 who are sane enough not to immerse themselves in this stuff, what's about to happen, and this is part of what's happening with Elise Stefanik, is that the speaker has told his most ferocious budget hawks that we're going to absolutely obliterate the budget.

Speaker 10 He got their votes, and then he told the moderates, don't worry, we're not going to obliterate the budget. We're going to keep Medicaid safe.

Speaker 10 He's told people completely irreconcilable things and those chickens are coming home to roost right now.

Speaker 10 And so I think we're in for a pretty wild and woolly next couple of weeks as Republicans realize

Speaker 10 the canyon that they've backed themselves into.

Speaker 7 Well, we hope to have you back soon to walk us through that canyon, take us through the trail, and hopefully get us out of Magaland back into the world of normalcy, Congressmember.

Speaker 7 Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 10 Thank you so much. Take care.

Speaker 7 Congressman Jim Himes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. Thank you for joining us.
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