Dan Crenshaw Cracks Joke About Leaked Signal Chat With War Plans About Bombing Houthis

2 days ago

At a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) cracked a joke about the leaked Signal chat.

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00:00Gentleman from Texas, Mr. Grinshaw.

00:04Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:05Thank you all for being here.

00:06Good to see many of you again.

00:08And thank you for enduring two long days.

00:14I will note I always use fire emojis when

00:16I see terrorists getting killed.

00:19I want to talk about cartels.

00:21This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart.

00:25I've been investigating it thoroughly

00:26for the last couple of years.

00:29And I'm glad to see that it's mentioned

00:31in all of your opening statements

00:33and mentioned at the very beginning of the threat

00:37assessment.

00:39There's a lot to work on here.

00:40One of our task force, we had a cartel task force in Congress.

00:43One of our key findings was that there

00:45needs to be a centralized, maybe call it authority,

00:49or maybe call it office, maybe call it cartel czar

00:51within the administration that actually coordinates

00:53all the very different aspects of fighting this battle.

00:56Has anything like that been talked about?

00:59I'll go to you, Director Gabbard.

01:01Thank you, Congressman.

01:02It's good to see you again.

01:04This is very much central to the conversations

01:07in planning and execution of the president's focus

01:10on targeting the cartels and the threats

01:12that they pose to the American people.

01:15Homeland Security task forces are

01:19being set up that include, across the government,

01:23integration.

01:24I can speak from my standpoint from the intelligence

01:27community.

01:28And our National Counterterrorism Center

01:30is leaning heavily forward into gathering and consolidating

01:35and integrating the intelligence that

01:37comes from DEA and others who've been working

01:39this issue for a while to make it so that it can be shared

01:43and integrated through the federal, state,

01:45and local law enforcement equities who

01:48are going after this problem.

01:49Yeah, we'll talk a lot more about that exact thing

01:52in closed session.

01:53At a higher level, our recommendation

01:54is there needs to be someone at a much higher level that

01:57coordinates state, DOD, CIA, FBI, Homeland.

02:01It's a massive problem, one I'm all too familiar with.

02:04Director Patel, the FBI is tasked

02:06with working foreign corruption charges.

02:09In the past administration, the FBI

02:12told me they actually don't focus on Mexico very much.

02:16Now, in their defense, they say the reason

02:18is because they won't get anything out of it,

02:20because they don't have a cooperative government

02:22to work with.

02:23I think a lot has changed.

02:25Do I have your commitment that we will at least start

02:27following up on those?

02:29Because the judiciary system in Mexico

02:30is a key component in our failures

02:32to address the cartels.

02:34You do, Congressman.

02:34Apologies for not getting back to you sooner.

02:38You're good.

02:39Appreciate it.

02:41I also want to ask you that the FBI has disrupted

02:44an alarming number of terrorist attacks in the last year,

02:50the last two years.

02:52Great on the FBI for doing that.

02:53I don't think many Americans realize how good

02:56the FBI has been at this.

02:58But this also gets to the conversation

03:01earlier about FISA 702.

03:03One of the main arguments I tried to tell my,

03:05wanted to argue with my colleagues on this

03:07was, when you have a warrant process for the query,

03:11what you will fail to do is connect

03:13the dots between the domestic and the international threat.

03:16And those connections are there, as we see all the time.

03:20Would you agree with that, that we need to maintain

03:23that process in a responsible way, of course?

03:27I do, sir.

03:28Appreciate that.

03:29Director Gabbard, in my remaining time,

03:32I want to ask you, because of my,

03:34and this may go to our General Cruz as well,

03:39because of my work on energy and commerce,

03:41we have an issue there with broadband spectrum auctions.

03:44And of course, this affects our intelligence community

03:48in a very large way, and our DOD.

03:53Getting right to the question here,

03:55how much, if any, spectrum can the DOD give up

03:57without having a significant effect

03:59on the administration's prioritization

04:00of lethality and deterrence?

04:04I'll defer to General Cruz, specific to DOD.

04:08I certainly want to speak for all of DOD,

04:10and I think the committee is already

04:12in a fantastic conversation with the DOD on that issue.

04:16But broadly, what I would say is,

04:17DOD has laid out the portions of the spectrum

04:20that it believes, for both operational capabilities,

04:24and in closed session, I am more than happy

04:25to walk you through, from the intelligence portion

04:28of the mission that we do,

04:30there are two different portions of the spectrum.

04:32We often talk about one, but not the other.

04:33And in closed session, I'd be more than happy

04:35to tell you why the other portion of the spectrum

04:37is important in national security.

04:39Sure, and the details are obviously classified,

04:42but we can talk about X and S spectrums,

04:44and get a better idea for the public

04:47because the public would benefit from telecom

04:49having the ability to use some of these.

04:51When we look at 5G networks, 6G networks,

04:54so it's a conversation that we need to have

04:57in a much longer time to do so, which I've run out of.

04:59So I yield back, thank you.

05:01Gentleman yields, Dr. Barra.

Dan Crenshaw Cracks Joke About Leaked Signal Chat With War Plans About Bombing Houthis

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