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Forbes Breaking News
  • 5 months ago
During a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) spoke about files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
Transcript
00:00Thank you sir. Gentleman yields back. Your recognizes Representative McBride.
00:04Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thank you Under Secretary Hooker for being here today.
00:07I'd like to hone in on Secretary Rubio's decision to decimate the Bureau of
00:12Democracy Human Rights and Labor or DRL. Most USAID programs and all but a
00:18handful of human rights programs have either ended or reportedly have been
00:22transferred to bureaus that lack the experience in this work. You just
00:26mentioned to Representative Jayapal that the reorganization quote-unquote of the
00:30State Department was not haphazard but you also told ranking member Meeks
00:34earlier today as of right now there's no plan for absorbing the work formerly
00:39done but formerly done by DRL into the regional bureaus. You said a plan is
00:43quote in process that does sound like a haphazard reorganization to me. Legal
00:49requirements for reporting to Congress on democracy and human rights programs have
00:53not been relaxed by law yet many of the staff and systems to ensure compliance
00:57are gone. So I want to start Madam Under Secretary how many State Department
01:02staffers and contractors have you all fired that worked in the Bureau of
01:06Democracy Human Rights and Labor? I don't have that number in front of me right
01:10now Congresswoman. So you don't have the number of folks that were in this bureau
01:17that presumably its work and they have been consolidated under your purview under
01:23the bureaus. You don't have a sense of how many remain? From the nature of your
01:29question I think you're interested in understanding whether these functions are
01:33continuing in the in the bureaus and I can assure you that the functions are
01:36continuing in the bureaus whether it's for DRL, PRM, foreign assistance, our CT
01:43functions as well. Those each of those functions are being integrated into the
01:48bureaus of each of the regional bureaus that I am responsible for. Well to to
01:55that point if the work is still being done I want to hone in then on the annual
02:02human rights reports which are of great importance to human rights experts around
02:07the world. But going back to 2017 the latest the latest that the country reports
02:15on human rights practices was published was April 22nd. It's now July 23rd and we
02:22have yet to see this year's report. Can you explain this delay and when we should
02:27expect to see this year's annual required report? Thank you for that interest. I'm
02:33happy to look into it I don't have an answer for you at the moment I'll take that
02:36back happy to report back. Well so it doesn't seem like the work of the Bureau
02:41of democracy human rights and labor is moving forward if they're not releasing
02:46reports in the same timely fashion that they did previously. I want to move on to
02:53to ask on this topic and of course these these bureaus absorbing this work and
02:58and presumably it's in some form or fashion moving forward or they're not
03:02clearly as rigorously as it used to. Since assuming your position how many times
03:08have you convened regional bureaus to assess or discuss a major human rights
03:11challenge or for that matter any human rights issues? I convene the bureaus weekly
03:18to talk about whatever issues they're facing. And have you discussed major human
03:23rights challenges in those meetings? I'm not going to talk about the specifics of our
03:27conversations with each of those regional bureaus. You know I gotta be honest I
03:33appreciate you taking the time but I just don't know what to make of these
03:38actions or quite frankly inactions by the administration. Either this
03:44administration is appallingly indifferent to human rights abuses and human
03:48trafficking as we heard last week in Secretary Regas' testimony or this
03:54administration is trying to cover up and paper over the scale of human rights
03:59abuses and human trafficking around the world and quite frankly given this
04:03administration's efforts to cover up abuses committed by Jeffrey Epstein and
04:06other powerful men it appears that there is a pattern here with this
04:09administration. The powerful get to do what they want whether it's powerful men
04:14here or strong men around the world and this administration will cover for them
04:20and it is deeply disturbing to me and I hope I hope that these regional bureaus under
04:25your leadership because I believe that you personally want to do this work I hope
04:32that this administration will fulfill its legal and moral obligation to report on
04:39to investigate and to hold other countries accountable for human rights abuses and
04:43with that Mr. Chairman I yield back.
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