Schumer Slams Hegseth For Attacking Journalist Despite White House Authenticating Leak

3 days ago

During remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, Senate Minority Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke about the Defense Secretary.

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Transcript

00:00Mr. President, yesterday it was reported that classified war plans were leaked by the Secretary

00:06of Defense over unsecured text messages.

00:11These text exchanges, confirmed by the administration as authentic, included the Defense Secretary,

00:18the National Security Advisor, the CIA Director, the Vice President of the United States, and

00:24unintentionally, a journalist with no security clearance.

00:29For the Defense Secretary to coordinate war plans in such a haphazard and dangerous way

00:35puts our national security, our troops, and every single American at risk.

00:42They intentionally put highly classified information on an unclassified device.

00:50Every single Senator, Democrat and Republican and Independent, must demand accountability.

00:58I am calling for a bipartisan investigation in the Senate of this mishandling.

01:04I am also calling for the Defense IG to fully investigate.

01:10This is too serious not to know exactly what happened, why it happened, and how to prevent

01:16it from ever happening again.

01:19The Senate and the Executive Branch have an obligation to fully investigate how this

01:25mishandling of sensitive national defense information was allowed to happen.

01:32Republicans must not just shrug their shoulders and call this incident, quote, one of those

01:37learning moments.

01:38No, no, no.

01:40This is a serious matter, a potential breach of classified intelligence, of imminent war

01:46plans against America's adversaries.

01:49The Senate, as well as all relevant authorities within the Executive Branch, must investigate

01:54this incident fully.

01:57We need to know how this conversation was allowed to happen in the first place on an

02:02unsecure channel.

02:03We need to know the potential damage it could have caused our national security.

02:08And we need to know how to prevent this from ever, ever happening again.

02:14Any Senate Republican who was up in arms years ago about emails and unsecured servers should

02:20be outraged by the Secretary of Defense's carelessness.

02:25What if Russian intelligence gained access to this text thread and shared it with their

02:30Iranian allies?

02:32What if the Iranians had shared it with their allies, the Houthis?

02:37A terrifying thought, putting American lives, the lives of our armed forces, in jeopardy.

02:44At best, at best, Secretary Hegseth showed a colossal lack of judgment.

02:51At worst, he put America's national security and perhaps American troops in danger.

02:59And once he got caught, did Secretary Hegseth take responsibility for this fiasco?

03:05Did he exhibit any kind of leadership Americans expect from the man who may deploy our troops

03:10into battle?

03:12From the man who may send our family members, our friends, our neighbors into harm's way?

03:17Did he show how he'd do things differently next time?

03:20No, he did not.

03:24Instead of accepting responsibility outrageously, Secretary Hegseth attacked the journalist

03:29and called him deceitful.

03:33He took the deny-till-you-die approach, even though these messages were already authenticated

03:40by the National Security Council spokesperson.

03:44Secretary Hegseth's refusal to accept responsibility yesterday was eerily similar to the way he

03:50conducted himself during the confirmation process.

03:54I fear how he will react to future moments of crisis.

03:59And again, when Pete Hegseth came before the Senate as a nominee, Democrats warned

04:05something like this could happen.

04:08These people, Secretary Hegseth and so many others, are clearly not up for the job.

04:15We warned that confirming them was dangerous, that they would behave recklessly, and unfortunately,

04:21unfortunately, we were right.

Schumer Slams Hegseth For Attacking Journalist Despite White House Authenticating Leak

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