See below for video and highlights/a partial transcript from Sen. Mark Warner’s press availability held earlier today (bolding added by me for emphasis of key points, things that jumped out at me, etc.).
- “I think I’d start with what’s breaking news today. The inspector general’s report on Secretary Hegseth’s irresponsible use of Signal phones on the strike that took place against Yemen a number of months back…Hegseth gave out all of this information on an unsecure line using his private phone that included not only security officials but family members. I was outraged in the spring, called for an investigation. I’d heard from sailors’ families in Norfolk who were frankly pissed off that their sons and daughters could have been put in harm’s way. And again so typical of this former Fox broadcaster, he tried to avoid responsibility or dance around it. Well, the inspector general’s come out and said the following conclusions. One, this was clearly classified information. Two, while the Secretary of Defense has the ability to declassify information, he made no indication at that time or frankly even afterwards that he went through any kind of declassification process. Again, somewhat similar to President Trump that he must have imagined it and somehow that makes it okay. But his initial comments that there was nothing classified here, clearly 100% wrong – was classified, he didn’t go through the formal process of declassification. And I think it was an embarrassment. And…most importantly, his actions by doing this kind of unsecure call and and including family members and others put our sailors in harm’s way. And again, I called for the Secretary’s removal in the spring. I think the inspector general’s report validates that even more.”
- “And then we’ve seen the next crisis…the bombing of the boats in the Caribbean. Again, from the secretary, we’ve had two or three different stories. At first he thumped his chest and said it was great that he watched this whole bombing incident take place. This was the initial bombing on…September 2nd where 12 people were on the boat. It came out subsequently that while he offered a order to kill them all, we don’t know was that verbal, was it written? …he said, you know, no foul here, no second strike. Then changed his position and said, well, there was a second strike, but it was ordered by Admiral Bradley. Admiral Bradley, who I will be meeting with today, to try to get to the bottom of it. So we’re clear. I mean, are we putting sailors in potentially in legal jeopardy because the military rules of conflict and international law, you know, you don’t blow up people that are no longer combatants. Even if you accept the fact that there could have been drugs on the boat, if they are in the water swimming, how are they still combatants? I’m going to try to press Admiral Bradley on that this afternoon. And I think what is really the the rub here is that as opposed to being this big tough guy that says the buck stops with me, whenever there’s controversy he tries to pawn it off on someone else. He’s now saying he didn’t see the whole video, it was the responsibility of the admiral, which is totally different than what he initially said. You know, again, this is one of those issues where if the administration had simply come clean with the unedited video from day one, this could have been cleared up. But I… presume will happen is there were questionable actions here and I just don’t think it’s fair that they throw uniformed military under the bus as opposed to taking responsibility. And we’ve seen two or three different answers from the president. He didn’t know, he did know. It is again symptomatic of this administration’s national security which is chaotic at best and downright making Americans less safe across the board.”
- “I do want to just is answer one or one other issue that is was clearly predominant in the last number of weeks seems to have faded a little bit. But…Democrats still believe very strongly that we should not allow the Obamacare coverage subsidies to expire at the end of the year. We’re hearing from Virginians every day, 24 million Americans overall that would lose these subsidies. I’m hearing from Virginia families all the time. Families who are currently maybe paying, you know, I think the average family about 65 years old that was maybe making 70 grand in Roanoke paying about average of 6 or 7 or 800 bucks a month, could see their premiums go up by $1,000 a month in certain cases. That will be devastating. And you know, it’s not only devastating to those families, those Virginians directly, but it’s also devastating if you’ve got traditional health insurance and you’re suddenly throwing a whole lot of folks off of the exchanges and back into the emergency room. That’s going to drive everybody’s costs up and those will be passed on to people with private insurance. And that’s all before the second shoe fall, which is the Medicaid cuts that will take place more close to the end of next year. But it is a double whammy on health care. And when the president keeps saying there’s no affordability crisis, well he obviously has not been talking to Virginians who are going to see their healthcare rates go up dramatically. We’ll have a vote on this next week, the Democrats will propose a simple extension of these subsidies. And if they want to come back and figure out how we can improve them, welcome to it. But can’t fix this with people right now buying their health insurance. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve seen any serious efforts from the administration or from my Republican colleagues. You know, they’ve had now 10 plus years to try to come up with a healthcare alternative. You know, they’re batting zero, I think they’re going to be batting zero next week. You always hope that they come to their senses and we end up with an extension that then we could figure out how to make ways to improve the program. But I’m not very hopeful that that will happen by by next week. And consequently, what a whole lot of Virginians are going to have for the Christmas holiday is dramatically increased health care costs. They’re going to put strain on them through next year, and many, many people will end up opting out of the marketplace and frankly going without health insurance at all, and they’re going to end up showing up at emergency rooms that are already overburdened.”
- “I want to hear [from Admiral Bradley], you know, was there one strike, two strikes? There’s been some reports there were up to four strikes. I want to hear how many strikes. I want to hear under what orders was he operating from Secretary Hegseth. I mean, was there not the order to kill them all regardless? I want to hear from him on that subject. I want to hear and see the unedited video. And I want to see if there was a secondary strike, what threat was being posed if you’ve got folks, you know, that are in the water, how are they still a threat, you know, scrambling for their lives? And, you know, I’m not an expert on military law, but my understanding from every expert I’ve talked to, you know, if you are killing folks that are in duress that are not trying to fight back, that’s against international law. And why did that happen? And I’ve got also basic other questions. You know, most of the other boats that have been exploded have been usually less than six folks. So if they’re drug boats, you want to put the minimum number of people on the boat and the maximum amount of drugs. This was a boat that was a speedboat that had 12 people on it. Were there really drugs on it or not? Did he have any validation and verification of that? You know, this has been again chaotic policy at best and potentially violations of criminal law, or I’m sorry, international law at worst. And I have a lot of respect for Admiral Bradley. I’ve never met him, but I know him by reputation and I hope and believe that he’ll tell us the truth.”
- “…I think our sailors are deserve a clear explanation that for example these strikes on the drug boats. One, are they drug boats? Two, are there narco traffickers on those boats? Three, if there are, why don’t you interdict them and show the world rather than simply blowing up to make sure their sailors, their family members and loved ones, are not doing something that’s inappropriate. I think we need to give them assurance of that. Secondarily, I can tell you, and you know, as a member of the Gang of Eight, there’s been no presidential directive on Venezuela. So, is the president trying to cook up a conflict to try to take people’s attention off of the affordability crisis? I don’t know what the goal is. And let me acknowledge the president of Venezuela is a bad guy. Maduro is a bad guy. We have not recognized his government as official for some time. And frankly, again, the Biden administration screwed up on this one because when the Venezuelan people voted to throw out Maduro, we didn’t put enough pressure on the countries down there to get him out. But that’s not a justification to suddenly put our troops in harm’s way without either coming to Congress and asking for…a declaration of war or approval, but to kind of simply keep ratcheting up the pressure. And you know, he continues, the president continues to make these statements like, you know, we’re shutting down the airspace or we’re going to start bombing. Listen, if he’d asked for any of that approval, I would know. I’m a member of the so-called gang of eight. He’s made none of those requests. So we owe those families and we owe those sailors to make sure that they are not being led into armed conflict without the president of the United States explaining to the American people and without going to Congress. If he’s saying we’re at war with Venezuela, he needs to declare war. And he’s taken no such actions. So those families need truth. They need clarity and they need somebody that’s going to be straight with them if we’re taking our most valuable assets, the men and women who serve to protect our country and potentially putting them in harm’s way.”
- “I literally heard about [the FBI arrest of a suspect in the 1/6/21 pipe bombing] as I was sitting down, so I don’t have any additional information. We have not been briefed up on this over these last few years. January 6 was an extraordinarily dangerous day. I was up here on the Capitol when the invaders and insurrectionists put the House and the Senate members and frankly Capitol police as well in harm’s way. I think it was outrageous that the president offered a blanket pardon and tried to say no harm, no foul here. I do remember the reports that day of the pipe bombs at I think it was both DNC and RNC, but I’m anxious to get the information and I’ll be back to folks as soon as I have. But literally I first thing I heard about it was Rachel told me is I just sat in the chair so let me get you some information...[Domestic terrorism] is still a threat. And that is what is so crazy about this administration, you know, they’re taking up to 45% of the FBI agents that are supposed to be doing counterterrorism or cyber security or sex crimes and taking them off those responsibilities and just simply adding their bodies to the immigration raids. That doesn’t make Americans any safer. It makes us less safe. And it is the height of irresponsibility as we’ve seen from whatever happened with the Afghan who shot those two guards from West Virginia. It happened in terms of we were luckily able to stop a terrorist incident that was going to take place in Michigan. You know, we see now this case finally potentially being resolved. I’m anxious to get the details. But with this boiling political cauldron that often times the president I believe adds to by his comments about his political opponents, the FBI should be doing his job. They shouldn’t be doing ride-alongs on immigration raids. And boy, I hear this from the FBI folks virtually every day. Let us get back to preventing terrorists. Let us get back to preventing foreign malign influence in our elections, which by the way, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who I equate with Pete Hegseth, disbanded the foreign malign influence task force and all of the things that were set up in President Trump’s first term where he did a good job about keeping foreigners out of our elections, those all being disbanded. This does not make America safer….I am always worried that we could have actions take place, terrorist actions, domestic or otherwise.”
- “…it’s not just me saying that. It is now the in the inspector general saying [Hegseth’s] actions potentially put pilots in harm’s way. Don’t believe me? Believe the inspector general. And it is so obvious on its face. I don’t know if you’ve looked at the emails… they cite the time of when the strike would take place. They cite what were the targets… And let’s remember the reason this all came to light was because they were so sloppy that they put a journalist on the Signal chat. If the bad guys had been able to figure that out and the Houthis did have missile defenses and do have missile defenses, we could have lost pilots. So that is the kind of sloppy, misguided and why I called for Pete Hegseth to be removed and be actually held accountable. We don’t have evidence of additional actions, but I would argue the action that now is being viewed whether it was actually legal or violated the rules of war in terms of these strikes, at least this strike on September 2nd. And the fact again, you know, the buck doesn’t stop with Pete Hegseth. He tries to throw uniformed military under the bus. I’m going to try to get those answers today from Admiral Bradley. But this is a pattern that worries, concerns me, and I think is irresponsible.”
- “Well, it would start with congressional oversight. You know, one of the most frustrating things of my whole time in Congress has been – and I’ve been more focused on the intelligence community than on DoD since my jurisdiction as chair and now vice chair of intel. We’ve seen political firings of leaders….we’ve seen individuals with intelligence covers where their identities need to be kept secret, identified to the public. We’ve seen people fired willy-nilly for political reasons. And I have begged my Republican friends, hey, we got to push back on this. So far, they’ve been privately concerned, but not willing to go public. Thank goodness…the Armed Services Committee, at least on this strike in the Caribbean, has said we’re going to get to the bottom of it. But we need to get to the bottom of all of this malfeasance – and the sooner the better, because until we do, until there’s some level of accountability, I can’t guarantee those families that their loved ones are as safe as they should be.”
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