Joni Ernst Grills Biden's DNI About Possible Risk From Bringing Refugees From Gaza To U.S.

very much thank you Mr chairman uh thank you Senator King Senator please yes thank you Mr chair and thank you both for testifying in front of us today um director Haynes of course we're here to talk about global threats we've heard about China Russia and so forth um but earlier this week the Press reported an effort that would bring one of our Global threats here to our homeland uh a recent poll found that 71% of gazans viewed hamas's brutal attack on Israel including the rape of innocent women their murder of children and their murder of and capture of Americans as quote the correct decision uh do you believe that welcoming a significant number of Gins who likely are harboring these views into the United States um do you believe that that would threaten the safety of Americans I mean I obviously think uh it is outrageous to think that that um that hamas's attack on Israel was anything other than a terrorist attack that was utterly brutal and depraved and uh and I you know I don't have enough information to understand you know as when we analyze threats and where the threats come from and how they develop that is something we do with great care and deliberation and if you pointed us to here's the you know individuals that we're concerned about then we obviously would do an assessment for you so just broadly though um 71% in this poll of those in Gaza support what Hamas did and yet our president is considering an action to bring gazan refugees to our homeland um so I know you've spent your career working in the intelligence field um but given this poll um which I would assume is factual uh can you tell me for certain that this proposed action by the president of the United States won't put our citizens at risk here in the United States I'm unfamiliar with the poll but I can tell you that the process for bringing individuals into the United States includes a very significant vetting process that would be the kind of process I would expect would occur and so therefore that would mitigate against any concern or risk that we would have okay um I know that we have tried to do vetting on Afghans and and other refugees as they come in um many times that has not been successful um I'm adamantly opposed to what the president is attempting to do um so you're serving by laws the head of the intelligence community and so you're saying basically under oath that you're really unaware of any risk that that that might pose to our citizens sorry I'm just what I'm saying is that if there's a process for bringing people into the United States I'm familiar with that process and that process is intended to against any risk of security and that's something that I would feel confident about okay thank you um I I'd like to Pivot now um to hamas's backers uh the Iranian mulas Iran is currently enjoying a golden era of oil profits we've seen over 80 billion dollar uh oil revenues enabling Iran to give pay raises and recruitment bonuses to its proxies and you've discussed some of those proxies earlier um and these revenues come from sanctioned transactions but the enforcement of the sanctions remains non-existent uh do you agree yes or no that the decision not to enforce sanctions has directly led to the death of US citizens I I couldn't make a sweeping statement like that I'm afraid I the um I think it's no question that Iran uh continues to benefit from oil sales and that they look for ways to get around sanctions and that's something we've seen uh them engage in and that they are um also as you say um funding and assisting various groups in the region I think it's also uh the case that frankly the Iranian economy is in deep trouble right now and is actually suffering significantly it's been one of the uh challenges that they're facing but beyond that unless I'm faced with a particular scenario that we can assess for you then we would obviously do that well um what I would say is that they do backas we we know that they backas and I wouldn't even say they're trying to get around sanctions because we just don't enforce them um so there's there's open trade of Iranian oil uh we as the United States have these sanctions we don't for force them so a a good deal of their profits of course will go to support these proxies and Hamas has killed Americans they killed Americans on October 7th um they have held eight Americans three we know are confirmed dead um they're still holding five so I would say that it just in my my mind my estimation is that yes they are using the profits to kill Americans they have done it already um I would like to see additional enforcement of these sanctions not your area but certainly um it all ties together so uh I look forward to visiting more about this um maybe in a Clos session but uh we have got to do better and uh I'm just using this time to make a a statement to that I disagree wholeheartedly with what the president is trying to do by taking people out of Gaza and bringing them to the United States I have seen seen failures in the vetting process before I certainly don't want to see those failures repeated so I appreciate your time today thank you thanks Senator Senator heron

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Length: 6min 10sec (370 seconds)

Published: Thu May 02 2024