We know that president Biden didn't just create this border crisis. He invited it with 90 executive actions in his first 100 days. >> When I took >> Office, I took a different approach. I traveled to the del Rio sector of Texas that's where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me she had been sex trafficked by the cartels, starting at the age of 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day but how many times a day she was raped we wouldn't be okay with this happening in a third world country this is the united States of America and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it president Biden's border policies are a disgrace >> Prison. Biden's border crisis, she calls it a disgrace. She said, not just created by the president, but invited by him according to the senator, which might be political hyperbole while addressing that problem is any president's responsibility. One could find facts and figures and personal stories to make a case that this president is failing on that score, she could have done that. The senator, but keeping them honest, that's not what Katie britt did. Instead, she made that woman's all too real horror story a centerpiece of her argument when it just doesn't belong there. Something a journalist named Jonathan Katz first picked up on, posted to social media Friday night. He'll join me in a moment. First though. Here's part of what he posted after watching senator britt's state of the union response specifically about the part when she
mentioned the woman who survived bray so I immediately had questions >> Who was this woman? How did she meet her? How did she get her to tell her this story? What country did it happen in didn't happen before Joe Biden was president so as Mr. Katz quickly discovered the woman's name is Karla Jacinto she's an advocate for tracking victims and a longtime acquaintance of CNN's Rafael Romo, who spoke exclusively with her over the weekend at one point when I met you years and years ago, you told me that you felt like at the beginning >> Mexican politicians had taken advantage of you by using your story for political purposes do you feel like that happened once again? Here in the United States >> Joy. >> Yes >> In fact, I hardly ever cooperate with politicians because it seems to me that they only want an image. They only want a photo. And that to me is not fair. To also told me that senator britt got manual but the facts of her story wrong. Number one, she was not trafficked by Mexican drug cartels, but by a pimp that operated as part of a family that entrapped vulnerable girls in order to force them into prostitution to she also said she was never trafficked in the United States. Senator britt appeared to suggest three, she was kept in captivity from 2004 to 2008 when president George W bush, a Republican, was in office as opposed to the current administration. As a senator implied. And finally, for she met the senator at an event that the border with other government officials and anti-human-trafficking activists, instead of one on one >> So just to recap, yes, Karla Jacinto was a tragic victim and incredibly brave survivor and advocate. But if she says it wasn't Mexican cartels trafficking her across the border in the United States. And the del Rio sector is it's a senator intimated and the nightmare which she courageously survived did not happen during the Biden administration, having 20 years ago during George W bush's presidency in Mexico, not the United States, but again, you would not know any of that from senator britt's account, the digging that Mr. Katz touched off only picked up steam throughout the weekend. So by the time senator britt was on fox on Sunday there was a big deal which senator britt tried to downplay. Here's what she said about it >> Did you mean to give the impression that this horrible story happened on president Biden's watch you can look. >> I very specifically said this is what president Biden did during his first 100 days. >> But to be clear, the story that you relate is not something that's happened under the Biden and administration. That particular person >> I very, very clearly said I spoke to a woman who told me about when she was trafficked, when she was 12. So I didn't say a teenager. I didn't say a young woman, a grown woman, a woman when she was trafficked, when she was 12 shame on everyone else. She seems to be saying for not doing the math in your head and figuring out that she was being misleading. Now we might have helped if she'd said in her speech when she was 12 back during the George W bush administration in 2004, when it actually happened, or if she'd had the grace and courtesy to actually mention the name of this courageous survivor, even the first name but she didn't do that. She just wanted to use her story. She implied this was a story that only she was told and it wasn't. She also implied that it took place the United States and it didn't. And she made this woman the emotional linchpin of her case against the current president. And in case you think that that wasn't deliberate, listen to what senator britt and Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn said back in January of last year, after meeting in public with Karla Jacinto >> We've also heard from victims of human trafficking let me tell you those stories are guy Chang as she talks about being abused from the time she was five years old to actually being traffic between the ages of 12 to 16 you know, you can't help as a mama, think about your and if we as leaders of the greatest nation in the world, are not fighting to protect the most vulnerable well, we are not doing her job >> And this is partisan and vice president >> Short time ago, CNN tried to ask senator britt about all this. She was leaving party leadership meeting. She declined to comment however, her colleague, Roger Marshall of Kansas, when asked about this woman story not being connected the drug cartel said quote, he said, yeah, I think we could have done a better job with that. I tend to use stories that I know firsthand perspective now from Jonathan Katz, who's tiktok post got this entire conversation started so Jonathan, what first made you suspicious of the senators story? And can you just kind of walk us through how you went about tracking it down? >> Well, the whole thing was weird, as you know, the entire speech. The thing that really stuck out to me about that one part was there was this weird combination of extremely lurid detail, but also no detail at all like she she she talked about very specifically the things that happen to this person that she talked to. But she didn't say anything about where she talked to her, what she knew about her where the events happened when the events happened, and the other thing that confused me at that moment was I was like, well, this sounds like somebody who'd be a perfect candidate for asylum, like did this person get asylum? Is this person still in the United States >> And I just was sitting there and during >> The extremely weird kitchen speech, I just started googling and it didn't really take much time at all. I think it's the fastest investigative work are done and didn't you I mean, did you immediately find the press conference that the senator held with this woman and others? >> There are a couple of steps in between. I mean, first I found out that senator britt had been telling the story over and over again because there were a whole bunch of hits for it, even though it made it sound like this was the first time she she had told it. >> Yeah. No, that was the first thing. I was like, well, this is not this is not a new story. This is something that's almost become maybe a stump speech for her in a way and then I realized that she had gone on this trip with Marsha Blackburn and Cindy hyde-smith in January of 2023. And then I looked at senator Blackburn's webpage, found that press release and that's when I saw the press conference. They call it a roundtable, but the press conference that they have with this woman, Karla Jacinto Romero. >> I'm wondering what she made of senator britt, defend yourself on fox yesterday because she essentially said, well it was implied. I wasn't I wasn't connecting this the Biden administration, even though she was connecting this, the Biden administration. And she said, well, I did say this was a child and I was that I'd spoken to a woman assuming I guess that viewers were supposed to have done the math and figured out that this was an old story that was one of the pieces of math that I did. There were a lot of things that were weird about it. That was one of them that she's describing something that happened to somebody when they were 12 years old and she calls them a woman. I was like, well, this couldn't have happened in last couple of years then, so I picked up on that. I think it was pretty subtle. But I thought her response wasn't really a response at all. I mean, the host on fox asked her very specifically, like, were you were you trying to imply that this happened during the Biden administration and then she says, no, and then she goes on talking about essentially how Joe Biden is responsible for this thing that happened 20 years ago.
>> It's also mentioning me that she never used the victim of this name generally, if you're telling the story of some buddy who it's something traumatic has happened to me just as a sense of decency and making them into a actual person you would at the very least use their first name with their permission in your tiktok, you mentioned that reaching out to senator britt's office. I'm wondering if if you ever heard back from them because they've they've put out stuff now, but I'm wondering if they ever actually responded to you because you are the one who really uncovered this. >> They have never responded to me. I was not easy to find her spokesperson, the parent. This is a hard thing to do these days to find legislators, spokespeople that used to be the easiest thing. >> But I sent him an email immediately. I sent an email that night at 11:20 P.M. Or something like that on these coasts. He's never responded to me. All I've seen are the responses that he's given to other people. He said, it seems like everybody else. >> This >> This kind of stock response in which he said that the story was 100% correct. And then I've seen the senator's response on Fox News, and I've also seen Carlos Santos response on CNN, where she said that the story was told without her permission, which was again, I I didn't know that for a fact, but it was just something that I kind of sense there was something that there was something about the way that she told that story that reminded me of the way that unscrupulous people tell stories of people from the
