See below for video and highlights from Sen. Mark Warner’s weekly press availability.
- “…once again it’s been a wild and wacky week here in your nation’s capital.”
- “Let me start with a subject that I’ve been spending a lot of time on this week, which is the kind of crazy unconstitutional efforts by this president to try to nationalize our elections. The Constitution is very clear that elections are the purview of the states and localities. Yet, Donald Trump wants to pick certain states, probably including Virginia, to say that the Republicans or the feds ought to take it over. That is counter to a fair process. I’ve gone from a year ago when people asked me about concerns about the ’26 or ’28 elections being interfered with by this administration. I thought it might have been a bit of a wild claim a year ago, but now I believe it is, I’m concerned that this could be a very serious effort. And in Virginia, where we have not only midterms, we have primaries, we may even have a statewide referendum on redistricting, this is extraordinarily serious…”
- “Luckily, the majority leader, Senator Thune, sat up and said, ‘no, you can’t nationalize elections, Donald Trump.’ But this is unleashed. This plays entirely into what is the ongoing story of Trump’s effort to try to relitigate one more time the 2020 election, when there was an issuance of a search warrant to look at the voting machines in Georgia. Well, that is complicated by why in the heck was Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, down at that service of the search warrant? She has no role. She has no domestic criminal responsibilities. Her job is to look at foreign influence into our election. And if there was any claim of foreign influence, she obviously has broken her responsibility there because she’s not notified her oversight committees, my intelligence committee in the House and the Senate.”
- “On top of that, what we’re really seeing here is a return to Nixon era policies. I know most of you are not old enough to have been around with Watergate, but this was a time when President Nixon and his political henchmen broke in to the Democratic National Committee at Watergate Hotel and then the coverup ultimately led to Nixon’s impeachment and removal from office. Well, we may be seeing the beginnings of the similar approach. Gabbard, director of national intelligence, says that she was there at the request of the president. Well, the president of the United States is not supposed to be knowing about a search warrant before it’s issued. This is the kind of stuff that’s right out of the Nixon era. And all of the reforms, including the formation of the intelligence committee, was to make sure that kind of activity didn’t happen again. So if Gabbard was there because Trump said, ‘hey, we’re going to stick it to Georgia,’ that violates all of the reforms and rules that were put in place after the Watergate era. Now he’s changed his position three or four times. He said he didn’t know why Gabard was there last night. This morning he said he she was there because of Pam Bondi. But this is the kind of classic Keystone cops screw-up. And when we’re talking about our election security, this is not a laughing matter. On top of that, didn’t get a lot of attention, but director of national intelligence acknowledged her office was also looking at voting machines in Puerto Rico, part of America. And there was no foreign connection. This is a director of national intelligence that’s run amok. And either she is lying or the president’s lying. Regardless, we’ve got to be laser focused, people of goodwill of both political parties on protecting the integrity of our elections and not only from foreign interference, but frankly now from a president who can’t still accept the fact that he lost in 2020, and not unlike Richard Nixon is going to do everything in his power to make sure he doesn’t get beat again, at least his political party beat again in the midterms.”
- “Another issue that obviously has captured the nation’s attention, which is the activities of ICE in Minnesota, the killings of two Americans, and the need to rein in this frankly rogue department at this point. And while we’ve seen some cutback in troops and agents in Minneapolis, they still more than double the number of local police in that city. And remember what’s happening right now in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, could happen in Richmond, could happen in Norfolk, could happen in Roanoke, could happen in Fairfax County, if Trump directs this unregulated group of literally thousands of agents to descend on the Commonwealth of Virginia. So, we’ve got to put reforms, common sense reforms in for ICE. Things like, hey, ICE agents, you ought to adhere to the same standards that other law enforcement, our state police, our local police, the FBI – you can’t come be masked and unidentified everywhere you go. You got to turn on your body cameras. You can’t have these roving patrols showing up and intimidating people and randomly knocking on doors. You need some some level of warrant. You need to have basically the same rules apply to ICE that applies to most all of other law enforcement.”
- “And one area that’s not gotten as much attention, but I think we should be enormously concerned is that we now have information that ICE is using a series of new technology tools to literally identify American citizens to look at, to go up to them and question their you know who you are, they know where you live, they know your social media activities. This is a kind of Orwellian approach and we have are demanding frankly that ICE share with us how they are using and DHS is using these new technology tools…Do you really trust Kristi Noem to have all your personal information and then to extract retribution against you, because she doesn’t like what you what you’re doing if you’re using your first amendment rights? So luckily just as I was walking in…the inspector general just got back to us literally as walking in to say they’re going to investigate this and if these tools are you being used inappropriately particularly on American citizens that they will put…an end to it.”
- “…I’m a little old-fashioned. I actually think classified information should be kept classified. So I can’t comment on the substance of the claim. I do believe it was so heavily redacted it’s hard to sort out and I take the claim seriously and we’ve got to get more information. But what I can tell you is one more example of Director Gabbard not following the law. This complaint was brought forward in May of last year. All of the appropriate hoops were jumped through by, I believe, June 9th. That complaint should have been relayed to Congress at that point. 21 days after a complaint is issued, it needs to come to Congress. And the complainant ought to be able to have an ability to tell us directly. We didn’t even know the complaint existed until November. And let me be clear, this is not just the Democrats’ concern. The Gang of Eight, the Speaker of the House…the majority leader of the Senate, we’ve all asked, we got to see this. Why didn’t she follow the law? Why didn’t she we get the complaint on a timely basis? And then in testimony just yesterday, we have somebody lying because her lawyer said she told he told Gabbard about the complaint and the legal requirements back in June. She says she didn’t know legal requirements. Well, she testified when she got the job that she would honor the laws around whistleblower complaints. So her incompetence or the incompetence of her lawyer means that this stinks to high heaven. And why did they sit on this complaint literally for almost nine month or at least six months before even notifying Congress and then redacting it so much that we can’t ascertain the veracity of it or not. This is a theme, whether it’s about whistleblower complaints, whether it’s about the integrity of our electoral system. This is a crowd that thinks that laws do not apply to them, that rules don’t apply to them. And there’s nothing partisan about this. We all who are concerned about the integrity of our political system and the safety of not having foreign influence on individuals close to the administration, we need to be vigilant.”
- “Well, you send ICE to polling stations and you’re intimidating American citizens who vote. They may have a member of their family that is not fully documented. If ICE has got information, all your personal information, and you may have protested at some point against the policies of this administration, and you’re going to vote, and an ICE agent come up comes up and says, ‘well, I saw you protested in Norfolk, I saw you protested against a president’s policy in Richmond, why are you doing that, why are you voting?’ If you don’t think that would scare American citizens, registered voters, or at least put a pause in their voting, I don’t think you’re being realistic. I know in Virginia right now, there are literally particularly thousands of Latino Virginians who are American citizens who are afraid to go to school, who are afraid to go to work. And I sure as heck believe they would be afraid to vote even though they’re perfectly legal if ICE agents who are racial profiling. And that is one of the reforms that need to be taken place are singling out every Hispanic looking individual. And on top of that, if ICE has access to all your personal information, do you really want to run that gauntlet as an American citizen, regardless of your heritage or background if they said, ‘well, my gosh, you know, you may have missed a a parking ticket at some point, ICE has that information. Are you going to vote? Are you going to simply say, you know what, I think I’m going to sit this one out. This is an effort to intimidate voters. This is an effort to undermine democracy. And you take that combined with the efforts around seizing voting machines and voting files in Georgia. Anyone that doesn’t understand this is a direct threat to free-and-fair elections. And the whole notional idea that on top of that that Trump is saying we ought to put Republican and nationalize elections, you know, a basic hallmark of conservative Republican orthodoxy for years has been we don’t want the feds in our local elections. Well, in a world where up is down and down is up and Donald Trump is president, that’s all been turned on its head. And I’d be curious about those who are who are asking what registered, you know, Americans would have, do they really want the feds controlling our local elections and looking at whether you’ve got a parking ticket or not and then trying to scare away you from the election voting machines? That’s not the way our country operates.”
- “I think in light of ICE’s behavior in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, in light of the fact that we’ve got no reforms in place, I think the governor took the right action. I’m not sure whether – my understanding is that there’s still, if you’ve got somebody that’s been convicted of a felony and they are an undocumented person that there could still be some sharing, I believe, but I’m not I know it’s 287g…But I think until there are reforms in place, I understand why she took that action. And I also tell you, my conversations with law enforcement have been that they’re concerned about this, because if you lose the trust of your community, your main job as the local police is to keep the community safe. If your community members believe that you’re working with a rogue agency, they can’t do their job. And the best evidence of that is look at the the Minneapolis police chief. Look at the International Association of of Police Chiefs who are all saying ICE has gone way too far and regular law enforcement can’t be carried out because they can’t respond to all the calls they’re getting if ICE agents are showing up unwarranted at people’s houses and somebody calls your local cops to come. And the idea of losing the faith of the community is really important. So, I think the governor made the right call.”
- [On the Tulsi Gabbard whistleblower situation] “…because I don’t know all the details because it was so heavily redacted, I can’t make that judgment yet. But the idea that this was sensitive and somehow shouldn’t be released, well that was why the Gang of Eight was set up, that’s why the intelligence committee oversight was set up. This is an outrageous false claim from the administration. They don’t get to pick and choose what they share with Congress. And again, to make sure that if it is terribly sensitive, it’s only shared with the Gang of Eight members who have never leaked. It’s outrageous this claim. Their claim is without merit. And they don’t know the law. And it they’ve clearly violated the law already, supposed to be 21 days and you’ve got to get it over to Congress. We didn’t even know the complaint existed for four or five months and then it took bipartisan efforts from November and it was still February before we saw it. I know this is kind of esoteric, but this is how democracies are destroyed. And again, remember whether we’re talking about the whistleblower complaint, whether we’re talking about, you know, the questions about whether the president should know about a criminal investigation before it happens, particular if it’s politically motivated, when we’re talking about a DNI running rogue, looking at voting machines in Puerto Rico and now in Georgia, where she has no right, we set up a whole set of rules. And you’re old enough to remember this, Nick, post Nixon in Watergate to make sure this kind of stuff doesn’t happen. This crowd is ignoring the rules, ignoring the regulations, and storming ahead. And until Americans of good faith in both parties step up and say no more, I’m not sure where this ends, other than potentially a corrupted election process in 2026, which I can’t even believe I’m saying those words., But a year ago, I didn’t believe they’d go this far. And now I believe this president will do anything not to suffer another defeat like he suffered in 2020. Listen, he won in 2024, he’s still obsessed about 2020. It looks because of his policies that Americans, nothing’s gotten more affordable, we’re seeing health care taken away from millions of Americans, we see an administration which makes our nation less safe around the world as he gallivants around and goes against our allies. The American people are going to say we don’t want that. And if the Trump administration tries to corrupt the process, if we don’t step up, then I don’t want to overstate, but the very future of our democracy could be at stake.”
- “…the idea that we all ought to take as part of Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist religion, take a deep breath and maybe be a little more centered as a human being, I think that’s something we all ought to be able to agree on. Whether you’re a Trump supporter or a Trump decliner, whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, an independent, a libertarian, even a vegetarian, ought to be able to say, you know, taking a moment to reflect and center yourself a little bit, which is part of Buddhist philosophy, is probably a step in the right direction. And maybe something if we all took a few minutes for that self-reflection and got off our screens, that might be a positive step as well.”
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