00:00Mr. Kremlev, tight with the Kremlin, paid for the wedding festivities attending the nuptials of Donald Trump Jr.
00:11Hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars spent in that way, and everybody just keeps going like, oh, well,
00:18that's no big deal.
00:19Might hold war criminals accountable for their aggression against humanity.
00:25To be clear, out of expressed concern for our troops, the U.S. is not now a party to the
00:32ICC.
00:32Our permanent membership of the U.N. Security Council makes it virtually impossible, however, for the U.N. to make
00:39a referral to the ICC over our objection.
00:42Is that right, Ambassador Rapp?
00:44Correct.
00:45But the U.S. has for decades, under presidents of both parties, cooperated with the ICC and helped our allies
00:51pursue justice through that forum.
00:54Authoritarian regimes that thrive on lawless violence against their own populations and against their neighbors have every reason to fear
01:04the ICC.
01:05I wouldn't be surprised, for example, to hear that Vladimir Putin complains that the ICC represents a threat to the
01:13sovereignty of his bloody, corrupt imperialist government.
01:18Ukraine agreed to allow the ICC to prosecute war crimes committed within its borders more than a decade ago and
01:24became a full party of the Rome Statute last year with the objective of holding an invading army accountable for
01:30its war crimes and its atrocities.
01:32Even then, the ICC is a threat to Russia only if Russia commits war crimes and human rights violations.
01:41Do I have that right, Ambassador Rapp?
01:43As long as they commit them in Ukraine, there's a jurisdiction, yes.
01:46They commit them in Russia, no jurisdiction.
01:48Because they've refused to sign on to.
01:50Right.
01:51Well, I was surprised to learn that our colleagues have decided to repeat what I take to be Kremlin propaganda,
02:00that the very existence of the ICC threatens their sovereignty.
02:08And I'm especially surprised because it's actually the behavior of our president which presents the greatest threat to our sovereignty.
02:17And just yesterday, we saw how Mr. Kremlev, tight with the Kremlin, paid for the wedding festivities attending the nuptials
02:29of Donald Trump Jr.
02:31Hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars spent in that way.
02:36And everybody just keeps going like, oh, well, that's no big deal that you've got this authoritarian tyrant and dictator
02:44in Russia.
02:45Now one of his close friends is paying for the president's son in the United States wedding party.
02:53That's wild to me.
02:55I mean, we're talking about a president who has now made, by his own accounting, more than $2 billion.
03:02And by some accounting, it's more than $4 billion from crypto.
03:07In his first year in office, as the money pours in, anonymously from foreign governments, kings, princes, militarists, autocrats, contractors
03:17from all over the world.
03:20And in January of 2025, the family crypto business got $500 million from the United Arab Emirates.
03:29Just months later, the administration granted the United Arab Emirates access to highly sensitive AI chips.
03:37In May of last year, Donald Trump held a competition dinner for the biggest purchasers of his meme coin, where
03:43the reward for investing the most was private access at a dinner to the leader of the free world.
03:49More than half of the 220 attendees were foreign nationals, including investors with close ties to China's governing party.
03:58They've turned the presidency and the White House into a bonanza, an international pay-to-play fair for governments and
04:09contractors to come in.
04:10And we're having a hearing about the ICC when everything's being given away right here.
04:17I mean, Ambassador Rapp, I don't know if you know anything about that UAE, but I've been concerned about that
04:22$500 million crypto payoff from the beginning.
04:26And then, in return, them getting the AI chip.
04:28Is that something you think that compromises the sovereignty and national security of the United States?
04:35Well, it's the kind of thing that can compromise the security of the United States.
04:38We're not talking about a war crime.
04:40We're talking about corruption.
04:44You mean we're talking about corruption?
04:46Not a war crime specifically.
04:48Not a war crime.
04:49It's something that compromises, yes.
04:50Fair enough.
04:50Fair enough.
04:51But I took the, I mean, I guess we're having a hard time nailing down the elusive topic of today's
04:56hearing.
04:56But I thought it was about sovereignty.
04:59Sovereignty generally.
05:00And I think our sovereignty is a lot more threatened by the practices of a government which accepts, for example,
05:06a free $400 million jet from Qatar as an unconstitutional, illegal foreign government emolument to the president than the existence
05:18of an institution that we were involved in creating, but we ourselves are not bound by today.
05:24Well, so I don't know if you're willing to opine on the question of sovereignty or, I mean, do you
05:31think that all of these financial entanglements with foreign governments compromise and undermine the sovereignty of the United States?
05:39What we have is our international peace negotiator, Jared Kushner, who has received billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and
05:50from the United Arab Emirates.
05:52Mr. Smith, would you comment on that?
05:54Because you're an expert on foreign ties, right?
05:58I can't comment on the UAE specifically.
06:01Well, let's say the DSA did that.
06:03If the DSA took several billion dollars from Saudi Arabia, would you have a concern about, even more concern about,
06:11the DSA's involvement in American politics?
06:16I think it's an interesting question.
06:18I would be concerned, with the DSA specifically, I'm always concerned about how they are going on these international delegations
06:26abroad where they're interfacing with organizations like ICAP.
06:30All right, well, let's say the DSA organized some of that notorious foreign travel you're talking about and went to
06:38Qatar and came back with a $400 million airplane that they then gave to the President of the United States.
06:46Do you think that that would present a problem, either constitutionally or if that's not your expertise, just in terms
06:53of the activities of DSA, if they did that?
06:57Well, the issue with DSA is that DSA is not even a political party, it's a political organization.
07:02Yeah, as a political organization, if they did that.
07:04So, as a political organization, it would look at, we would have to see how that would show up on
07:08their 990s, and I would imagine that would be a conflict.
07:12Yeah, and what if they gave, you know, say $2 billion to the President or a $400 million jet to
07:21the President?
07:22Would you be troubled by that if DSA did it?
07:26Possibly.
07:27I would like to look at some other issues.
07:30All right.
07:31Well, Mr. Chairman, I suppose I'm going to have to yield back to you at this point.
07:34We may have exhausted the knowledge base of our witnesses on what I'm interested in, which is actually the sovereignty
07:41of the United States being drained away by violations of those safeguards that the framers of the Constitution put into
07:48the Constitution,
07:49Article I, Section 9, that none of us in federal office, including the President, can receive a present, an emolument,
07:57which means a payment, an office, or a title of any kind, whatever, from a king, a prince, or a
08:02foreign government.
08:03That is the principal constitutional blockade against the draining away of our sovereignty through corruption of the agent, which is
08:12the President of the United States.
08:13His job is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.
08:16If he's being corrupted by foreign governments, we can't trust him.
08:19And I'm a little bit more concerned about that than about an international organization, which has generally done excellent work,
08:26and we helped to start it, that we're not even governed by.
08:28I yield back to you, Mr. Chairman.
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