00:00Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member, and thank you to all the members of the committee here today.
00:04I wish we had Republicans here. I wish they would be talking about corruption in this administration.
00:09And I wish that going after corruption in this administration was more bipartisan generally.
00:14And you only see it here and there, but in the ocean of corruption that we've seen this, I only
00:21hear drops from them.
00:22And to me, this administration's greatest accomplishment is enriching itself. It really is.
00:28Trump himself has made an estimated $1.4 billion from just crypto alone.
00:35And then you put on top of that the couple billion dollars he's made overall, as well as all the
00:40trades he's made, 21,000 trades.
00:42That's 85 trades for every day the market was open.
00:46And I saw he tweeted a picture of himself at a computer with multiple screens.
00:52He must be doing that to be able to do 85 trades a day.
00:55I don't know how he has time to be president when he's doing so many trades.
00:59But the corruption is clear, and I don't even know if I have five minutes to go over all the
01:04corruption.
01:04I remember our committee put together a list of all the corruption we'd seen in the administration.
01:10The staff did an amazing job.
01:11It was, I think, in March, we put together a list.
01:14And there was 300 instances of corruption by March of last year.
01:17And so now it's been a year and a half, and it hasn't slowed down.
01:21If anything, it's sped up.
01:22And then they went out and they fired all the people who were in charge of preventing waste, fraud, and
01:28abuse,
01:29some of whom live in my district.
01:30But I will say that there is, we are doing something about it.
01:36The advocates here, thank you for being here and doing something about it.
01:38And even just talking about it is so important because I do not want an America where we give up
01:45on trying to enforce the law
01:47when it comes to corruption and self-dealing.
01:49Where we say all politicians are corrupt.
01:52This is just how the system works.
01:54Because that's how it works in other countries.
01:56And that's how other countries' democracies fail.
01:58That's how they lose trust in government.
02:00That's how you end up with a system that just doesn't work for the people there.
02:05And so we need to do better, and that's why it's so important.
02:08One particular instance of corruption that really bothers me is when our foreign policy is for sale.
02:16That really bothers me because we look at what's happened on foreign policy in this administration now.
02:22We are now in an endless war in the Middle East.
02:25I don't know who our ally is in the eyes of this administration when it comes to the Ukraine-Russia
02:31war.
02:32To me, to the American people, it's making sure we end that war by putting pressure on Russia.
02:37But then you look at all the money that follows.
02:41You'll look at who's negotiating with all these countries, and you see what's going on.
02:47What's going on is that people are financially benefiting from this administration.
02:51And I don't even need to talk about a cabinet official.
02:55There are people who are going out there on our behalf negotiating deals while still in the private sector.
03:00And so I've introduced legislation.
03:02There's a guy I know who's doing this.
03:03It's called the Jared Act, after someone who's doing this.
03:05And it's to make sure that people do not go out there and negotiate with foreign governments on our behalf
03:11while they're doing deals with governments who have an interest in that, while they are making money off of this,
03:17when they're so directly connected to the administration.
03:21And so this is common sense.
03:23It needs to get done.
03:24And thank you to the ranking member for introducing that bill with me.
03:27I will say that there are many bills like that in this Congress that have been introduced and have never
03:31gotten a hearing, never gotten a serious consideration.
03:34And we keep hearing from Republicans that they're so concerned about waste, fraud, and abuse and corruption.
03:40But then they are afraid of taking on the president and this administration and cabinet officials.
03:47It almost appears as though they feel it's their job to protect the people who are actually committing fraud in
03:54this administration while firing the people who prevent it.
03:58And there's so many whistleblowers in my district alone who come to me saying, this is happening.
04:05You guys got to look into it, right?
04:06And I want to thank our journalists and our advocates for getting the stories out because what has worked and
04:13what continues to work is speaking out about it and putting public pressure on them to change.
04:18That's the only time where things start to change because otherwise we don't have the numbers in Congress.
04:23We don't have enough Republicans who are here in hearings like this today who will help us.
04:28So thank you all for being here.
04:30I'm sorry I didn't have time to ask you guys questions.
04:32But I just know that you have many allies in Congress who will do the right thing and continue to
04:37do the right thing when it comes to corruption.
04:39Thank you and I yield back.
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