Video: Sen. Mark Warner Rips Trump’s Pardon of People Who Assaulted Cops; Attempts to “Traumatize” Federal Workers; Potential Immigration Raids on Schools; etc.

See below for video and highlights from Sen. Mark Warner’s press availability yesterday afternoon – *lots* of questions on some VERY important issues (e.g., Trump’s assault against federal workers, immigrants, etc.; also, Trump’s pardoning of violent 1/6/21 insurrectionists), and Sen. Warner had a lot to say, so check it out!

• “It feels like it’s been quite a week already. I attended President Trump’s inauguration on Monday, frankly to show support for a peaceful transfer of power…Even I was a bit surprised though when I saw some of the wealthiest people in the world lined up having better seats than anyone that was proposed by Mr. Trump for his cabinet. So the wealthy folks first, then the Cabinet. And to the extent that, you know, folks like Republican Governors including our governor were in the overflow room rather than where the inauguration took place. Listen, I celebrate success in America, I’m proud of my own business success. But it was a bit unsettling to say the least that you had the wealthiest people in the world so prominently positioned. And what kind of signal does that send to the American public, who I think at the end of the day elected Mr Trump because they thought he was going to cut grocery prices and find ways to make America stronger.”
• “The speech itself…sounded to me like more of a campaign speech. I wish we would have seen even a small gesture of grace, for example to President Biden on the the work that was done jointly, for example on bringing about a ceasefire in Gaza and starting the release of the hostages that have been so brutally taken by by Hamas.”
• “We’ve gone from that action on Monday to then a a huge flurry of executive actions. One of the most prominent was his unconditional pardoning of the rioters who assaulted police officers and took over the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. That speaks volumes in terms of Trump’s respect for law officers…He says he wants to be tough on crime, and one of his first actions is to pardon people who physically assaulted police officers and assaulted our Capitol. And remember, there were five deaths directly related to that tragedy, most of them were Virginians.”
• “We also saw a flurry of other executive actions, some things just plain unconstitutional. The idea that he can write away part of the Constitution by eliminating Birthright Citizenship. You don’t show respect for the Constitution by thinking that a presidential executive order can somehow override what the Founders put in place.”
• “So there’s so much action, I feel like he’s a little bit flooding the zone, maybe to take the eyes off of of some of these horribly unqualified nominees. But we’re going to have to sort through all of this. And I want to work with President Trump, I want him to be successful – he is the president of the United States, and if he is successful and America’s successful, I’m all for it. I’ve already voted for a couple of his his nominees. But where there are people that are clearly unqualified or clearly have interests that I think are adverse to our country… I’m going to stand up.“
• “One of those individuals I had a chance to question this morning in the budget committee, Russell Vought, who is the President’s nominee for OMB. This is a man whose resume looks like it reads right out of the description of somebody that comes using Republican terminology from the swamp. This guy has never managed anything, he’s not run a business, no private sector experience, worked on Capitol Hill, worked as a bureaucrat, worked as a right-wing think tank. But it’s a little curious that he for draining the swamp that does not seem like a drain the swamp kind of guy. But what concerns me more and I think is the thing that is deter this positive to me it’s not his it’s not his background is the fact that he literally used terms such as he would hope that all federal workers would be traumatized, they need to feel the trauma, they’re villains. He seems to measure success by how many people he can make quit the federal government. And again, this was the guy that was deeply involved in the Project 2025. In that in that missive, it laid out ideas to try to break up the intelligence community. I tell you, as somebody who’s worked so closely with the intelligence community is as chairman of the committee and long serving member, it would weaken America’s national security if we were to somehow take the CIA and break it up and put it all over the country. There is value and efficiency involved by having for example all of our intelligence agencies close together in the greater capital region. In my mind, that kind of mismanagement approach means that I will not be supporting him in terms of his willingness to break up the intelligence committee, in terms of his willingness to frankly politicize all federal employees with the so-called Schedule F effort. We created the Civil Service in the first place to make sure that government service was not going to be political, it was going to be protected, it could be independent. And Mr. Vought, unfortunately, represents a complete reversal on those issues. My good friend Tim Kaine followed afterwards, he uses some of the language that Mr. Vought uses about ‘weaponized governments’ and ‘woke government’ and as Tim Kane said, what is woke or or weaponized government in terms of assistance to to kids, in terms of food stamps for example. So clearly Mr. Vought will be one in a number of nominees that I will strongly oppose.”
• “I have supported two of Mr Trump’s nominees so far – John Ratcliffe for the director of CIA and I believe he will be confirmed tomorrow, Scott Bessent as the Treasury Secretary. I was not totally pleased with his hearing presentation but I do think he has the financial background skills to be an able Treasury Secretary.”
• “And finally, I just want to touch on on immigration. I voted to support the Laken Riley Act. I wish it had been further amended. But the notional idea that if you violate the law and you are in this country illegally,  that could and should lead to deportation, is a theory that makes sense; frankly, it’s already partially enshrined in law. But let me be clear, that does NOT mean that I’m going to end or stop my career-long support for legal immigration and for the contribution that immigrants make to Virginia to our country. It means I’m not going to support getting rid of temporary protective status for our Salvadoran community or Sudanese community where I’ve been working very closely to try to end that conflict in Sudan or others who’ve come here under legal programs that are not yet fully citizens but are here legally. And if Mr. Trump or his actions start doing these mass deportations that have with no regard to the law, I will stand firmly opposed against that.”
• “But again, I’ll close with what I opened  – I want Donald Trump to be successful, but I hope he will understand he’s got to meet people halfway. That’s not been his approach in the past. But I want you know this is a second Trump presidency, I want to give him an initial benefit of the doubt. But I am deeply deeply concerned about the volume and tenor of these executive orders that he’s launched and in particular the notion of pardoning individuals who’ve assaulted police officers in the riot on January 6 2021.”
• “I have supported a return-to-work policy. I’ve agreed frankly with Mayor Bowser on this, we need to get federal employees back to work in offices. Not criticizing remote work, but I think the expectation of being in the office is something that makes sense. But I also believe if we go back to the pre-COVID policies, there are a number of jobs where telework made sense. Matter of fact, the champion for telework for many many years in Congress was Frank Wolf, a Republican member from Northern Virginia. So my hope is in the return to work that there will still be legitimate telework exemptions, but the kind of broad-based approach right now where people can only show up in some areas one day in the office for every pay period I think is too far on the other end.”
• “In terms of the kind of treatment why I’m going to not support support Mr. Vought, the idea that it is a good idea to try to get federal workers to quit or to put them in trauma, you know, I was a business guy, that would be you know malpractice in management if you’re trying to intimidate and traumatize your workforce. And so I’ve got legislation along with Gerry Connolly and Tim and a number of of the Virginia delegation to make sure that you don’t politicize the workforce with this Schedule F effort. So I’m going to stand up against any effort to get rid of the Civil Service protections for federal workers.”
• “I am waiting with some anticipation on what the so-called DOGE effort that now I guess is simply led by Elon Musk. If there are ways to bring efficiency to our government, count me in. And one of the things I was proud to of when I was governor was Virginia got named best-managed state. And we found a host of ways to leverage our purchasing power to cut back on our auto fleet, to try to bring smoother operations. There’s plenty areas in the federal government where we can find greater efficiency. But that starts by actually respecting your workforce and not demonizing them. And so far, we’ve seen from Trump and from some of his potential appointees, this notion of demonizing the federal workforce. That may be a political sound bite for some, but that is I can tell you as a former Governor as a former business guy, that’s not the way you make your workforce the most effective. Reform, count me in. Wholesale attack on federal workers, politicizing our workforce, eliminating any flexibility in the workforce I will stand strongly against.”
•  “I am concerned about that, and one of the reasons why I think law enforcement itself took these positions a number of years back was because law enforcement does its job best when it works with the community. And if anybody of Hispanic heritage, citizen, green card holder or not, suddenly fears that any police officer could potentially detain them or deport them, then you don’t drive crime down, you break off all kind of relationships between law enforcement and immigrant communities. So I want to talk again with the both the prosecuting and Commonwealth’s Attorneys in some of those jurisdictions, I want to talk again with law enforcement to get their views on this, but again, this is an example of kind of a sledgehammer approach as opposed to a scapel. You know, if President Trump simply does what at least some of his folks say, which is if you are here illegally, undocumented, and you commit a crime then you should be deported, I think one that’s already law, but two I’m supportive of those policies. But the idea of turning every local cop or sheriff’s deputy into an immigration enforcement officer, I think that would actually really undermine their top priority, which is keeping our community safe.”
• “I think at the end, particularly with his family members, President Biden overused his pardon ability. Pardons by presidents in the past have been used selectively, targeted and on an individual basis. This across-the-board pardon of rioters, regardless of how violently they assaulted police officers, is irresponsible; it sends a awful signal about respect for rule of law. It also frankly, for those individuals on the far right who think, and in the militia groups that are out there, we’ve seen threats against elected officials increase dramatically. What signal does that send, if you can assault a cop and not have to serve time because Donald Trump will have your back, as long as you’re a political supporter, what does that say to more violent extremists, particularly on the right, but on either end of the political agenda, about a warning in terms of what consequences they’ll face? It sounds to me like the the underlying message is, if you got Donald Trump’s back, he’s going to have your back regardless of what you do. That is something that should concern all of us, no matter who we supported for president.”
• “My hope is working with the balance of the Virginia delegation, because you know we think about federal workers in Northern Virginia, but we got a ton of federal workers down in Hampton Roads as well. We also have a huge number of contractors. And while the venom has been approached at federal workers, there’s also been kind of ad hominem attacks against contractors as well. We’re trying to get those answers as quickly as possible. It is my hope before the end of the week that we can have better guidance. There were so many of these executive orders, and so many of them will obviously be contested in court. But this puts what’s so concerning to me is that this is exactly what the guy I questioned today, Russell Vought, who wants to be the head of OMB, and remember that’s budget and management, and using his own words that he wants to have do as much as possible to chase people away from the the federal workplace, to put ‘trauma’ and have federal workers feel ‘trauma’. They’re feeling trauma right now. And if we look at their past actions, I pointed out to him, you know last Trump Administration they moved the headquarters of Bureau of Land Management out of our region. The number of vacancies went up 170% and the General Accounting Office, the kind of independent auditor, said it dramatically degraded the service. This kind of action that seems more on a political vendetta as opposed to you know efficiency, this flies in the face of efficiency. You want to have a federal workforce that’s ready to go to work, that works hard, that is held accountable – count me in on the accountability piece. And if there’s ways to make it more efficient, particularly using technology, I’m wide open to that. But unduly bringing trauma, Mr. Vought’s own words, to the federal workforce is again management malpractice in terms of how you operate, I say that as a former business owner.”
• “I do believe obviously you they have not been able to change the law in terms of civil service protections. Whether…if somebody who was serving as a DEI officer has the ability to be terminated simply because of the nature of their job, truthfully I need to check that out in terms of what rights – I think you still have some appeal rights, but I want to, that’s a fair question, and I want to check it out. And…again, an area that I spend a lot of time on in terms of national security and our intelligence community, you know, I don’t care what you call some of these programs, but to have programs that our workforce actually looks like America, I think means you’re going to have a better level of service. Or one of the things that that I spent a lot of time with are folks at the CIA. The fact that if we have spies in Africa or Latin America or in Asia, they ought to look like the populations where they’re working. I don’t care what you call that, I call that good spy practice. I call that good intelligence hygiene. And I’m just so worried that under these kind of actions, you know there may have been times where where these programs went overboard, but to throw it all out and somehow go back to a workforce that’s simply made up of a bunch of folks that look like me, I’m not sure that’s in the best interest of our country, I know it’s not in the best interest of our country.”
• “I think Richmond, I had the opportunity to live there back when I was governor. Richmond is a great city, it is a hot city in terms of how it’s viewed around the country, it ranks so high on quality of life – and not just Richmond but the surrounding suburban counties…I do feel like the idea that the kind of COVID work schedule was going to last forever was probably not feasible. I do believe that there is value in working in the office that sometimes you can’t measure… especially for younger employees to learn and and be part of a culture. But it ought to be done with some level of flexibility. And I hope people wouldn’t leave federal government employee, but there are obviously I think a lot of job opportunities open in the Greater Richmond market. But at the same time, I’ve known folks that have made that commute for years long before we had this remote work process. My hope and belief is that the ability to do that commute is actually going to improve dramatically as we construct what’s called Long Bridge from the district to Virginia that will double the amount of rail capacity coming into Virginia. The ability to get on a regular, convenient and fast train from Richmond that could get you to DC quickly could be the best of both worlds. I mean, you could end up still having the benefits of living in the Richmond region, but hopefully in a commute that’s feasible. That is one of the outgrowths of the infrastructure bill…that 700 million dollar plus project on this bridge is one of the biggest achievements we got for Virginia out of the infrastructure bill so far. So that increased rail will help…And it goes back to my first answer though, which is you know for a long time we promoted some level of telework as long as it didn’t you know as long it was it was in certain areas and it didn’t degrade the quality of the output. I do worry that we may have during COVID where we went so much the other way. Bringing it back to a kind of pre-COVID balance makes sense. At the end of the day, that doesn’t mean… getting rid of all the pre-COVID telework policies. I do think you have to make the case and show that you can still be as effective. And that’s why I’m fearful,  that in the effort to kind of get a headline, that any kind of nuance or any kind of non-sledgehammer approach to a lot of these issues I think is not going to work. And again, the focus on these activities, where’s President Trump’s effort to try to lower grocery prices to bring down inflation – I don’t think we’ve heard barely a word on those subjects. We’ve heard more about renaming bodies of water or trying to take over other countries or some of these efforts going against our federal workers. I don’t believe that’s what Virginians expected whether they voted for Trump or didn’t vote for Trump.”
• “In terms of naming these drug cartels as terrorist organizations, being able to bring fuller power against them, I’m supportive of. And I go back again, these drugs are not coming for the most part over actually on undocumented individuals, they’re coming through our ports of entry. And I really think the the bipartisan immigration bill we had last year would have made sure that those ports of entry had much better protections. I also think we need to continue to hold China accountable  – the precursor chemicals that go into fentanyl still come in many cases from China. And so the ability to bring further resources, I can tell you, particularly in the realm that I have a lot of oversight…the intelligence community understands you the power of these drug organizations to not only destabilize Mexico or potentially destabilize Central America but this is an assault on America. And bringing our full resources to bear I think is the right move.”
• “I’ve had a very strong working relationship with Governor Youngkin and particular on economic development; we’ve worked on a lot of projects together. And we worked very closely together to make sure that Virginia got the kind of emergency relief that we deserved after Hurricane Helene – and we were very successful there. On this one, I just disagree with the governor. I think the federal workforce is a critical part of our economy. These are folks that are well educated, well trained, I think do their job well. Matter of fact, if you look at the number of federal workers all in today it’s about the same number as it was in the 50s and 60s. The federal workforce has not expanded…at any dramatic rate with the growth of our economy… our population growth. If there are ways to be more efficient, again count me in; that’s why I’m not going to you know criticize the DOGE effort until I see what they’ve got, and I would I’m willing to work with them, I’ve even had contact with some of the leadership there. But the federal workforce and then the contractor workforce as well you know are what not only keep our economy strong but we disproportionately have federal workers that are involved in the defense area, we have contractors involved in the defense area. Willy-nilly cuts to those individuals or trying to bring ‘trauma’  -again, not my words, the potential OMB director’s words, he wants to ‘traumatize’ and ‘bring trauma’ to the federal workforce and he wants them in effect not to go to work so they’ll quit. That’s not good management and that’s sure as heck not good for Virginia and in terms of trying to get a workforce that’s going to be more productive, I’ve run enough businesses to know that you don’t demonize your workforce if you want to get more production from them.”
• “This is a challenge we’ve been struggling with for a long time in Virginia, and it’s one of the reasons why we do need a tighter border. And I do think one of the areas I was quite critical of President Biden, the border was too open for too long. But the notional idea that you were to have kids at schools, documented or not, that somehow might be singled out just because of their ethnic heritage or what they look like or their color of their skin or the idea that you would have local law enforcement potentially coming to raid schools, that just goes way too far. Let’s tighten up the border. If people are here undocumented and they’ve committed a crime and been convicted of that crime, there ought to be a deportation process. But the idea that you’re going to simply spread fear across communities – and one of the communities that I think a lot about in disproportionately in Northern Virginia, it’s the El Salvadoran community. We’ve had folks from El Salvador in large numbers in our region going back to the early 90s when there was a brutal civil war there. They have been in our country, many of them for 25 to 30 years, they’re deeply ingrained and a valuable part of the community, most all of them have kids that have been born here or or so that the idea that they are suddenly thrown into this level of trauma and fear, you know I’m going to do everything possible to make sure that we keep schools safe and not places that are subject to any kind of raids that are not appropriate or not about law breaking.”