'Threatening To Commit The Felony Of Criminal Tax Evasion': Kiley Rips Newsom's Federal Tax Threat

5 months ago

During a House Judiciary Committee hearing in July, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) spoke about a proposal by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) to withhold California's federal taxes.

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00:00The gentleman yields back without objection.

00:03This is from the Pennsylvania Independent Convicted Sex Offender Serves as Faith Leader of Philly Moms for Liberty Chapter.

00:13We'll now recognize Mr. Kiley.

00:16Thank you, Mr. Chair.

00:17I did want to briefly address a comment that the ranking member, the representative from Texas, made about my state, California,

00:23claiming that our state gives disproportionately to the federal government and is some sort of donor state.

00:28Actually, the state of California gives nothing to the federal government.

00:32Individuals and businesses do pay taxes.

00:34And Governor Newsom's suggestion that we should withhold those taxes, as our Treasury Secretary has pointed out,

00:43is threatening to commit the felony of criminal tax evasion.

00:46As to this notion that Los Angeles is somehow a model of good governance,

00:51just today Los Angeles came out with its new homelessness numbers.

00:54The current count is 72,308.

00:58The police chief in L.A. has formally advised people not to wear jewelry when they go outside because they will get mugged.

01:05The city just announced 614 layoffs because the finances are such a mess.

01:10And this is to say nothing of the recent riots and the catastrophic fires that came after the mayor defunded the fire department.

01:19But on to the topic of today's hearing.

01:21It's bad enough that we have all of this funding going towards NGOs that then support radical ideological causes.

01:31Sort of the logical next step that we've seen is funding organizations that then directly commit or facilitate criminal activity.

01:39And this is exactly what we saw with respect to the recent riots in Los Angeles,

01:43where you had a group known as CHERLA, the Center for Humane Immigration Rights Los Angeles,

01:50that played a central role in organizing the riots.

01:54They made use of a hotline through Signal where they would inform rioters at any given moment where ICE personnel could be found.

02:02So those individuals could then converge, they could disrupt their operations,

02:05they could use commercial dumpsters as battering rams, they could assault officers, and so forth.

02:12CHERLA, by the way, has been implicated in other ways in all of the recent chaos that we've seen.

02:19For example, the incident where tire spikes were used to disable the vehicles of Border Patrol.

02:26The individuals engaging in these crimes were carrying the tire spikes in bags with CHERLA's name on them.

02:33And to top it all off, Karen Bass's recent proposal to give cash cards to illegal immigrants supposedly affected by ICE operations

02:43are being distributed to them by, you guessed it, CHERLA.

02:47So I've introduced a bill, the No Tax Dollars for Riots Act,

02:52which will make sure that organizations like this do not continue to get funding

02:56and, indeed, that they cannot claim tax-exempt status.

03:00President Trump has enthusiastically endorsed that bill and said it should be passed immediately.

03:05On top of that, this committee, the House Judiciary Committee,

03:08has opened an investigation into CHERLA's use of the federal funding that it received during the Biden administration.

03:15It also received $34 million from California, accounting for the vast majority of its revenue.

03:21It's effectively a subsidiary of the state or a subsidiary of the sanctuary state, if you will.

03:27So with all that being said, Mr. O'Neill, or if Mr. Gonzalez or other witnesses would like to chime in on this,

03:36how problematic is this that we now have these public taxpayer funds being used to directly facilitate criminal activity?

03:44Extremely.

03:46Thank you for your question.

03:47Yes, in fact, a lot of the riots we have seen on our streets, the college encampments,

03:55all of these things have paid for it, which CHERLA, I think, by the way, received $30 million, if I'm working from memory.

04:01$34 million, most recently from the state.

04:03Yeah, most recently from the taxpayer.

04:05And thank you for making that distinction between the state of California and California's hard-put taxpayers.

04:10So CHERLA just raked in government money and was one of the organizers of the riots we saw in Los Angeles.

04:17But everywhere, we've seen, you talked about the Tite Foundation, in New York, the Answer Coalition, Students for Justice in Palestine,

04:28all these groups are either received funding from these dark money people or these dark money centers are fiscal sponsors of them.

04:38So, you know, I think it is very concerning, even in cases where, and I think in these cases that I'm talking about, crimes have been committed,

04:47but even in cases where there's no, it's not illegal or criminal, there's such a thing as unseemly and disturbing,

04:55and we should be able to talk about these things.

04:57Absolutely, and there's certainly a whole range of conduct that is objectionable,

05:02but it's particularly objectionable where the funds are used in a way that actually violates other laws that we have in place.

05:07Thank you very much to my colleague from Kansas, Mr. Schmidt, for yielding the time.

05:12I reveal the remainder of my time to the chair.

'Threatening To Commit The Felony Of Criminal Tax Evasion': Kiley Rips Newsom's Federal Tax Threat

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