John Kennedy asks FBI Director who failed to get National Guard to Capitol on January 6th

thank you uh mr chairman i didn't hear you did you call me i called you mr chairman thank you sir thank you sir that sounds very good thank you again mr chairman uh mr director i've listened uh from my office to your testimony today tell me who had the authority to call out the national guard on january 6. my understanding well my understanding is that the decisions to call out the national guard in one sense are the responsibility of the secretary of defense but in another sense mr director i'm sorry to interrupt you um but i think we can agree that the fbi had credible information that there was likely to be violence from january 6th can we agree on that well i don't know that we had assessed its credibility we certainly had information that was concerning about the potential for violence in connection with the january 6th events and as we discussed here this morning one piece of information that was most specific uh that i'm aware of was past uh you know quite well based on that information i'm sorry to interrupt but we just keep nibbling at the edges and dancing around the issue and i understand i'm not asking to throw anybody under the bus chris i i i get it but we need to find out what happened now if if if you were king for a day based on the information that you had maybe not at the time but later on would you have called out the fbi i mean the uh the national guard you know senator as you said i really want to be careful not to be armchair quarterbacking uh others i think the national guard uh we have seen uh can play a very important role in that crowd well i sure you know i'm not trying to be rude but my time's limited um well who made the call not to based on your information who made the call not to call out the fbi whether they should ever shouldn't not call the fbi i'm sorry i'm tired the national guard um well i would defer to others who were more involved in that discussion but from what i have heard what i have read my understanding is that at one stage of the process the uh local government was of the view that it did not need the national guard's assistance who do you mean by the local government the mayor yes um so the mate the mayor didn't call out the national guard at the at the beginning uh what do you mean by the beginning well you know in the day or two leading up to the sixth then as to exactly how it played out on the sixth itself i understand not as sure about it i mean clearly our people uh were overrun but by by the nut jobs so we're making progress here okay so the mayor or the city government decided not to call out the fbi of the national guard ahead of time um what about the the house sergeant-at-arms uh i don't know what role the house has of arms played with respect to the national guard okay how about the senate sergeant same answer okay how about the capitol police the chief of capitol police did the chief capitol police make the call not to call out the national guard i don't know the answer to that my understanding is that the law enforcement officials here with responsibility over the capitol that they were varying just for differing views about whether or not the national guard was appropriate and when at what level but all i really know on that is what i've same thing you've seen you know in the press coverage of of the events okay that's enough on that um i listen to your comments about diversity and i thank you for your for your good work there i think any fair-minded person has to conclude that uh that diversity is a strength not a weakness but this subject comes up a lot and i think it's gonna come up a lot again and and uh that's not a criticism that's just a an observation um do you believe that the fbi is a systemically racist institution no i now having said that i do believe the fbi needs to be more diverse and more inclusive than it is uh and that we need to work a lot harder at that and we're trying to work a lot harder on that do you believe that the fbi is a systemic systemically sexist or misogynistic institution again that's not the way i would describe the fbi that i know and see every day but again it's a place where we need to be more diverse and inclusive and we need to work harder at that and we are working harder than we've got progress that we still need to make to at least to be satisfactory by my stance okay fair enough um mr director have you ever been to hong kong no wonderful place wonderful people um the chinese communist party is destroying it if congress passed a bill and and said to the good people of uh of hong kong who yearn for freedom come to america we're going to follow our friends in britain say come here you want to get out from under the thumb of the communist party come to america we welcome you do you think the fbi and law enforcement has the ability to to screen for spies one of the criticisms of the proposition i just stated is well we would be letting in spies do you think based on your knowledge of security that we could catch most of the spies well uh i yield to no one in my faith and confidence in the great work of the men and women of the fbi but i will tell you that the um the chinese counterintelligence threat is the greatest threat certainly the greatest counterintelligence threat that we face as a country and the this the sheer number of what we would refer to as non-traditional collectors um working on behalf of the chinese countries party is something that is a massive resource challenge for the fbi that was probably an unfair question i'm not asking you to guarantee anything and the few seconds i have left and begging the indulgence of our esteemed chairman who's doing a much better job than durban by the way oh he's back the horowitz report can you tell me how many people you have referred for prosecution at the fbi as a result of the harwich report for prosecution or for discipline for prosecution first just give me numbers because i don't want to abuse my time well i i you know the the prosecution issue related to anything to do with the horus report inspect specter how many of you fired so all the people all the cr most of the people involved in horus report are former employees of the ones who are current every single one of them even if mentioned only in passing has been referred to our office of professional responsibility which is our disciplinary arm now that piece and this is important that piece of it because we're cooperating fully with mr durham's investigation at his request we had slowed that process down to allow his criminal investigation to proceed so at the moment uh that process is uh still underway in order to make sure that we're being appropriately sensitive to the criminal investigation okay so you've had to hold up as a result of the criminal miss i'm sorry i went over mr chairman and you're i'm sure glad you hear booker was just screwing everything up senator padilla and i'm sure you'll do a better job than the previous questioner thank you seven i will do my best uh mr

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Keywords: Sen. John Kennedy, FBI Director Christopher Wray, FBI

Id: 5BfNba3i23U

Length: 8min 50sec (530 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 02 2021