Kari Lake Details 'Totally Inappropriate' She Was Shocked To Find Voice Of America Had Published

Forbes Breaking News

At today's House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Voice of America Director Kari Lake detailed the reforms she is seeking at VOA.

Transcript

00:00back the balance of my time. I thank the ranking member for his comments. I'd say

00:03be careful what you wish for. Ms. Lake has provided binders and binders of

00:07information that have been included in her opening statement, so they are in the

00:11official record and I'm sure everybody will looking forward to reading that

00:14documentation. Other members of the committee are reminded that opening

00:18statements may be submitted for the record. We are pleased to have the senior

00:22advisor for the U.S. Agency of Global Media, Ms. Carrie Lake, before us today.

00:26Your full statements will be made a part of the record and I'll ask you to keep

00:29your spoken remarks to roughly five minutes in order to allow time for

00:33member questions. I now recognize you, Ms. Lake, for any opening statement that you

00:37may have. Good morning and thank you Chairman Maas and ranking member Meeks

00:42and members of this House Foreign Affairs Committee. Thanks for having me. My name

00:46is Carrie Lake. I'm the Trump administration senior advisor to the U.S.

00:50Agency for Global Media. Before I get started, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to let you

00:55know this opening statement I'll be delivering is a shortened version of a

00:58longer version that I have submitted to you earlier and would love to be put into

01:02the congressional record. Last December, President-elect Donald Trump called me

01:07and asked if I would help reform U.S. Agency for Global Media and the Voice of

01:10America and I said yes. I was honored and eager to help these institutions tell

01:15America's story to the world. But within days in my role as senior advisor, it

01:19became increasingly clear that reform was nearly impossible. The agency was

01:24incompetent and mismanaged and deeply corrupt, politically biased, and frankly a

01:28serious threat to our national security. USAGM oversees VOA, Office of Cuba

01:34Broadcasting and grantees like Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe, Middle East

01:38Broadcasting Network, Open Technology Fund, and Frontline Media Fund, all of which are

01:43100% funded by the hard-working American people. Over the past 15 to 20 years, the

01:49agency has become a significant national security risk. They hire a shockingly high

01:54number of foreign nationals and they conduct subpar security vetting. So bad that

01:59top intelligence agencies revoked this agency's ability to do even the most basic

02:04background checks. So many of USAGM's hires come from countries hostile to the

02:09United States. Over the decade from 2010 to 2020, Office of Personnel Management and the

02:15Office of the Director of National Intelligence repeatedly flagged severe

02:20security failures, but USAGM leadership ignored them. They continued to grant

02:26journalists and technicians, many from foreign nations, high-level security access

02:30based on falsified documents and incomplete background checks, phony names,

02:35phony social security numbers. Even after corrective actions were taken in the

02:39final months of the Trump administration, these safeguards were reversed by the

02:44incoming Biden administration. The scale of the problem is staggering. During the

02:49first Trump administration, the political appointees led by CEO Michael Pack

02:52got to work fixing it and they discovered that out of 150 people who were hired

02:58during that time period when they weren't doing appropriate vetting, 500 of

03:03them were still out there and they could not find them. They went back and

03:06revetted everybody, but 500 had gone missing. They could not be located for further

03:12screening. Foreign employees with social security numbers that are fake and fake

03:16names given top-secret access now missing. That keeps me up at night. My team is

03:22working to track them down. Our new security director is working to try to turn

03:27this agency around and make it where it's safer. It's a vast problem that we've

03:31uncovered. We've also uncovered that the grantees like Radio Free Europe hired

03:34people later identified as foreign spies. At one point, they nearly hired more than 20 spies

03:40from a nation hostile to America. Those hires were stopped thanks to a timely tip

03:45and I'm happy to give you more information on that in a secure setting.

03:49Voice of America has employed individuals with direct ties to hostile nations. They

03:54even once paid for somebody who worked previously in Russian media

03:59writing anti-American stories to come on the staff and continue to write

04:03anti-American stories. At one point, a serious security threat to America, an

04:08office of Cuba Broadcasting Cuba, was declared to be a national security threat.

04:14He was fired, thankfully, but he worked there for quite some time. So how do they

04:18get so many foreign nationals in? Well, they abused the J-1 visa program, which is a

04:22pathway to citizenship intended for exchange students and cultural exchanges,

04:27students, camp counselors, and au pairs. It's not intended for journalists and it's

04:32created severe vulnerabilities and, frankly, it has displaced many, many American

04:38workers who could have filled these jobs. VOA also sidestepped their charter to be

04:43reliable, authoritative news, instead being riddled with political bias and

04:47outright anti-American sentiment. Examples, you mentioned it, Chairman, refusing to call

04:52Hamas terrorists, glamorizing Che Guevara, airing campaign-style videos favoring

04:57President Biden, even broadcasting a graphic depicting President Trump with a

05:02swastika over his face on their news. I wouldn't want that, by the way, even if

05:07it was President Biden. That's totally inappropriate. And a ridiculous editorial

05:12firewall prevents agency leadership like myself from correcting any of the bias or

05:16having any say in the editorial content that goes on the air. We've also got

05:21financial mismanagement, which I hope we'll go into. $75,000 spent for a COVID study on how

05:26Mac computers can be used for social distancing. $100,000 in American taxpayer

05:31money to actually sponsor a Afghan cricket team. $400,000 for quid pro quo payments to

05:41African VOA affiliates. And they actually wrote quid pro quo next to the budget item.

05:46$825,000 for a New York music show and $6 million contract for consulting advice that was never

05:53even implemented. I told these stories to people and many times they say, wow, this

05:58place sounds like a crime scene. And I frankly have just learned that it is indeed a crime scene.

06:04We've learned that there is an active investigation going on at VOA for a series of threatening phone

06:12calls that have been coming out going after one of your colleagues, a sitting member of Congress,

06:18with years worth of threatening phone calls. And they've discovered that those phone calls were

06:23coming from inside the voice of America. This place is rotten. It's rotten to the core. President

06:29Trump has asked me to go in and help clean it up. And he's also issued an executive order to reduce

06:35this agency down to its mandate, to what is mandated, statutorily required. That's exactly what

06:42I'm doing. I don't care if they attack me. We're going to make it right for the American taxpayers.

06:47And with that, I'm happy to answer any of your questions.

06:53Thank you, Ms. Lake, for your opening statements. We're now going to move to

Category

Transcript

Recommended