Cory Booker: These Are The Three Most Concerning Trump DOJ Moves That Demand Investigations

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At Thursday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) spoke about the threat of antisemitism and the continued flights of migrants to foreign nations.

Transcript

00:00for many years. Thank you. Senator Booker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, I just want to

00:06join my colleagues and the ranking member and the chairman for condemning the violence of last

00:12night. We all abhor political violence and should in every way, I think, investigate. And as

00:18the ranking member said, I think that it would be good to have a briefing from the FBI.

00:24I take note of something as one of the bipartisan leaders of our efforts on antisemitism to note

00:32that hate crimes in this country targeting religious groups are seen in so many of America's

00:38great religions, but none come close to the targeting of American Jews. And that should

00:43be an added layer of analysis as we try to combat this kind of violence and these kind of hate crimes.

00:49Mr. Chairman, I wanted to make three points very quickly and ask for some oversight hearings.

01:00Trump's Department of Justice has taken numerous concerning actions that demand the committee

01:05to exercise constitutional oversight. We are a co-equal branch in a government with checks and

01:11balances, and we need to address these issues in hearings. There are three concerning DOJ actions

01:18that I hope we can discuss, Mr. Chairman. First, we have the issue of due process less

01:23deportations. This week, the conservative Cato Institute reported that over 50 of the Venezuelans

01:30imprisoned in El Salvador came to the U.S. legally with advanced U.S. government permission

01:35and entered at an official border crossing. Most Americans have only heard of Kilmar Obrego

01:41Garcia, but this report from the Cato Institute makes clear he is not the only person who was

01:49deported by the Trump administration without due process, who was legally in the United States.

01:56I'd like to, without objection, I'd like to enter this Cato report into the record.

02:01I want to reiterate the committee's request led by my colleague Senator Welsh for an oversight

02:10hearing to the circumstances surrounding the deportations of more than 200 people removed

02:14to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Acts, including the 50 individuals who, I repeat,

02:21entered the country legally through, with our permission, and are now in what is one of the

02:28more awful prisons on this planet. Mr. Chairman, you have for decades led and championed the

02:35Senate Judiciary Committee's exercise of our oversight, and we need to know who are these

02:4050 people. Can we at least confirm their names and that they're still alive? And understand that

02:46an assault on due process anywhere is threat to the due process rights everywhere. We have seen

02:51a 9-0 Supreme Court affirm that. Secondly, at last week's markup, you talked about the Department

02:57of Justice's cancellations of public safety grants. Here I have an unanswered letter I wrote on April 30th

03:05that was signed by every Democratic member of this committee and 30 Democratic senators total,

03:11which I'd like to enter into the record. Is there objection? I hear none, so it's entered.

03:17We were asking the Department for information about the Office of Justice Program's abrupt decisions

03:22to cancel at least 365 public safety grants on April 22nd, 2025 that serve crime victims and improve

03:32public safety, totaling an estimated $500 million. These are programs that were supported in a bipartisan

03:39way that have led to more safety and security and strength in our community. Some of them have

03:46helped victims of crime, and they have been unjustly canceled. On the day of this letter, DOJ defunded

03:53programs that prosecutors, police, and sheriff's departments, judges, mental health service providers,

04:00academics, and more depend upon to keep America safe. This is an outrage to all of us on this committee

04:07who share a commitment to public safety, to have resources that we put out that were being effective

04:14in an evidence-based way. To have them stopped by this administration demands that we at least have

04:19an oversight hearing to provide, to get a justification, or at the very least have letters

04:25responded to. Finally, Mr. Chairman, the Justice Department dismissed several civil rights cases

04:33against pattern and practice agencies of law enforcement yesterday. Almost five years to the day,

04:41this country watched in horror, and we all condemned, when a now convicted criminal, then a police

04:47officer, used deadly force to murder George Floyd. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division

04:53thereafter investigated the Minneapolis Police Department's pattern and practices of constitutional

04:59violations and proposed a fair, court-enforceable consent order to prevent future police misconduct,

05:06but to improve the excellence of police accountability and professional standards.

05:13They did the same in Louisville, Kentucky, after Breonna Taylor was killed by police during a no-knock raid

05:18that was condemned by people on this committee and beyond in a bipartisan way.

05:24Yesterday, A.G. Bondi's Justice Department dropped both consent decrees in Minneapolis, Minnesota,

05:30and Louisville, Kentucky, where neutral investigations and attorneys found evidence

05:36of constitutional and civil rights violations by those law enforcement agencies. Without more than saying

05:43that the consent decrees were, quote, no longer in the public interest, the department dismissed those

05:49cases along with six other investigations where it had shown a pattern and practice of the violation,

05:55constitutional violations against American citizens. I sent a letter to the DOJ yesterday with my

06:00Democratic colleagues requesting the preservation of and submissions to the committee materials related

06:07to retracted police misconduct investigations and dropped consent decrees. I asked to enter this

06:14letter into the record, sir.

06:16Is there objection? I hear none, so it's entered.

06:19To add to the further outrage to these DOJ actions, there are reports today that people are

06:25pushing the Trump administration to pardon Chauvin. This would be unacceptable, outrageous,

06:31and injurious to the public safety, injurious to community trust, injurious to the environments we

06:39need that keep people safe and support our law enforcement officers. We are lagging and lacking in

06:46our oversight of a department that appears to be on a turbocharged, turbocharged chip away at civil rights

06:53protections and not do common sense measures that can make our community stronger and safer and have

06:59the highest professional standards in policing. I ask again for this third time that you hold an

07:06oversight hearing so that we can get some of the answers that Congress and the public deserve.

07:10As someone who used to be a mayor and oversee a police department that itself had a pattern and

07:17practice investigations. This is not to an end other than making our police department stronger,

07:24raising our professional standards, deepening trust, and ultimately creating an environment

07:29where we have greater community safety. I hope on these three issues, we can have oversight hearings

07:34soon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

07:36With all the requests for oversight hearings, I think we're going to have to prioritize that. Before I call on

07:45the Senator from Rhode Island, you mentioned something I said last week about grants, and I think I had

07:55information yet before the meeting was over that grants for nonprofits and law enforcement, that they were

08:04going to reinstitute the ones for law enforcement. That's what I think I said last week, Senator Whitehouse.

08:11Mr. Chairman, can I respond to that, sir? Some of the proudest work that I've seen in this committee, done by people on both sides,

08:19courageous leadership by Senator Cornyn, and people on our side of the aisle, passed this extraordinary bill on public safety.

08:27And a lot of those grants weren't just to law enforcement, they were improved. They were to address mental health, something we've

08:34all talked about on both sides of the aisle. To focus just on grants directly to law enforcement,

08:39and not the grants that are going to institutions that help people with mental health.

08:43We know a lot of the gun crimes in our country have a lot of unaddressed mental health illness there.

08:49And so all of these grants are important, sir, not just the ones that are vital for law enforcement, but also the ones that are vital for

08:56public safety that go to nonprofits that deal with things like mental health that are critical for public safety.

09:02Well, Senator Whitehouse and Senator Schiff withhold. We've got 11 people here and I'd like to vote.

09:08Hold on.

09:09Hold on.

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