Skip to playerSkip to main contentSkip to footer
TrumpReposter
  • 2 days ago

Category

✨
People
Transcript
00:00My name is Carrie Lake. I'm the Trump Administration Senior Advisor to the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
00:06Before I get started, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to let you know this opening statement I'll be delivering
00:10is a shortened version of a longer version that I have submitted to you earlier
00:14and would love to be put into the congressional record.
00:18Last December, President-elect Donald Trump called me and asked if I would help reform
00:22U.S. Agency for Global Media and the Voice of America, and I said yes.
00:26I was honored and eager to help these institutions tell America's story to the world.
00:31But within days in my role as Senior Advisor, it became increasingly clear that reform was nearly impossible.
00:37The agency was incompetent and mismanaged and deeply corrupt, politically biased,
00:42and frankly, a serious threat to our national security.
00:45USAGM oversees VOA, Office of Cuba Broadcasting and grantees like Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe,
00:51Middle East Broadcasting Network, Open Technology Fund, and Frontline Media Fund,
00:56all of which are 100% funded by the hardworking American people.
01:01Over the past 15 to 20 years, the agency has become a significant national security risk.
01:06They hire a shockingly high number of foreign nationals, and they conduct subpar security vetting.
01:13So bad that top intelligence agencies revoked this agency's ability to do even the most basic background checks.
01:19So many of USAGM's hires come from countries hostile to the United States.
01:25Over the decade from 2010 to 2020, Office of Personnel Management and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
01:32repeatedly flagged severe security failures, but USAGM leadership ignored them.
01:39They continued to grant journalists and technicians, many from foreign nations,
01:43high-level security access based on falsified documents and incomplete background checks,
01:48phony names, phony social security numbers.
01:51Even after corrective actions were taken in the final months of the Trump administration,
01:56these safeguards were reversed by the incoming Biden administration.
02:00The scale of the problem is staggering.
02:02During the first Trump administration, the political appointees, led by CEO Michael Pack, got to work fixing it.
02:08And they discovered that out of 150 people who were hired during that time period when they weren't doing appropriate vetting,
02:16500 of them were still out there and they could not find them.
02:20They went back and re-vetted everybody, but 500 had gone missing.
02:24They could not be located for further screening.
02:27Foreign employees with social security numbers that are fake and fake names given top-secret access now missing.
02:33That keeps me up at night.
02:36My team is working to track them down.
02:38Our new security director is working to try to turn this agency around and make it where it's safer.
02:44It's a vast problem that we've uncovered.
02:46We've also uncovered that the grantees like Radio Free Europe hired people later identified as foreign spies.
02:51At one point, they nearly hired more than 20 spies from a nation hostile to America.
02:56Those hires were stopped thanks to a timely tip, and I'm happy to give you more information on that in a secure setting.
03:03Voice of America has employed individuals with direct ties to hostile nations.
03:08They even once paid for somebody who worked previously in Russian media writing anti-American stories
03:15to come on the staff and continue to write anti-American stories.
03:18At one point, a serious security threat to America, an office of Cuba Broadcasting Cuba, was declared to be a national security threat.
03:28He was fired, thankfully, but he worked there for quite some time.
03:31So how did they get so many foreign nationals in?
03:34Well, they abused the J-1 visa program, which is a pathway to citizenship intended for exchange students and cultural exchanges.
03:41Students, camp counselors, and au pairs.
03:43It's not intended for journalists and has created severe vulnerabilities and, frankly, it has displaced many, many American workers who could have filled these jobs.
03:55VOA also sidestepped their charter to be reliable, authoritative news.
03:59Instead, being riddled with political bias and outright anti-American sentiment.
04:03Examples, you mentioned it, Chairman, refusing to call Hamas terrorists, glamorizing Che Guevara,
04:09airing campaign-style videos favoring President Biden,
04:12even broadcasting a graphic depicting President Trump with a swastika over his face on their news.
04:19I wouldn't want that, by the way, even if it was President Biden.
04:22That's totally inappropriate.
04:24And a ridiculous editorial firewall prevents agency leadership like myself from correcting any of the bias or having any say in the editorial content that goes on the air.
04:34We've also got financial mismanagement, which I hope we'll go into.
04:37$75,000 spent for a COVID study on how Mac computers can be used for social distancing.
04:43$100,000 in American taxpayer money to actually sponsor an Afghan cricket team.
04:51$400,000 for quid pro quo payments to African VOA affiliates.
04:56And they actually wrote quid pro quo next to the budget item.
05:00$825,000 for a New York music show and $6 million contract for consulting advice that was never even implemented.
05:08I told these stories to people, and many times they say, wow, this place sounds like a crime scene.
05:14And I frankly have just learned that it is indeed a crime scene.
05:18We've learned that there is an active investigation going on at VOA for a series of threatening phone calls that have been coming out going after one of your colleagues, a sitting member of Congress, with years' worth of threatening phone calls.
05:35And they've discovered that those phone calls were coming from inside the Voice of America.
05:39This place is rotten.
05:42It's rotten to the core.
05:43President Trump has asked me to go in and help clean it up.
05:46And he's also issued an executive order to reduce this agency down to its mandate, to what is mandated, statutorily required.
05:55That's exactly what I'm doing.
05:57I don't care if they attack me.
05:59We're going to make it right for the American taxpayers.
06:01And with that, I'm happy to answer any of your questions.
06:03We're going to make it right for the American taxpayers.