At a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) spoke about Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Mr. Swalwell is recognized for five minutes.
00:06 In the Department of "You can't make this up," the chairman of the whole committee is
00:13 approaching 700 days being out of compliance of a subpoena that was issued to him.
00:21 He was a witness to one of the greatest crimes that has ever occurred in America, the attack
00:26 on the Capitol on January 6, spoke to the president at the time multiple times, was
00:31 asked by a bipartisan committee investigating that crime, where hundreds of people have
00:38 pleaded guilty, not were found guilty, on their own pleaded guilty.
00:42 Others were found guilty.
00:43 The chairman was asked to cooperate and tell the bipartisan investigators what he knew,
00:49 and we're approaching 700 days in where he refuses to do that.
00:52 So the fact that you are here, you are doing more than the chairman of the whole committee
00:57 is willing to do.
00:58 You're willing to answer questions and engage in a helpful dialogue.
01:04 Would you agree, Secretary Butto, that if the Republican majority would just prioritize
01:13 for you what they needed, that that would be more helpful than just sending scattershot
01:18 subpoena requests?
01:22 Thank you, Ranking Member Solomon.
01:23 I think it would – it is always helpful when we are able to triage and prioritize
01:29 requests, particularly when an individual letter may request 10 different things that
01:37 may live in 10 different places within the department.
01:41 They do tend to start piling up.
01:44 And Secretary Gordon, would you agree it is more helpful when you prioritize rather than
01:51 hit send with a scattershot list of requests?
01:54 Ranking Member Swalwell, it is always helpful to understand the priorities of the committee.
02:00 It is also helpful for us to be able to share back expectation-setting based on those priorities.
02:06 And I know you're trying to do that.
02:08 I'm just going to go out on a limb here.
02:11 I think they may be trying to draw the foul.
02:14 I think the approach here is to overrequest, to overkill on their search for documents
02:22 and put you in an impossible position where you can't comply and they're unwilling
02:26 to prioritize what they want, and then they bring you here and, again, now it's the
02:31 foul.
02:32 You can't keep up with the overwhelming request of nonsense that's coming from them,
02:39 and they won't prioritize, and then they want to try and dirty up the administration
02:43 and say, well, they're not complying.
02:45 They have something to hide.
02:47 But actually, Secretary Butto, from the requests that you've received, is it true 87 letters
02:57 have come from just this committee?
02:59 Ranking Member Swalwell, that's correct.
03:03 And in response to those letters, the Department of Homeland Security has participated in 10
03:09 transcribed interviews.
03:10 Is that right?
03:11 Yes, sir.
03:12 And there are two additional interviews scheduled for the future.
03:17 Is that right?
03:18 That's correct.
03:19 And can you confirm that the records for individuals on the terrorist screening dataset have been
03:23 made available to this committee's staff for nearly 300 cases?
03:29 We have done in-camera review and briefings on that subject matter, and I know that this
03:35 is an ongoing conversation, but I believe that number is accurate.
03:40 And Secretary Egorin, despite the majority's unwillingness to prioritize what they want,
03:49 is it true that you've provided the committee with more than 12,000 pages of documents in
03:53 response to the requests?
03:56 Congressman, we have provided 1,400 pages in production, as well as an additional almost
04:03 4,000 pages of in-camera review.
04:05 I would also like to emphasize in your terms of prioritization, the other thing is we have
04:11 received inquiries from 17 different committees, both in the House and Senate.
04:16 So when we talk about prioritization, it's prioritizing for this committee, but it's
04:21 also understanding the larger context of oversight within the 118th Congress.