President Trump’s US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) Senior Advisor, Kari Lake, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, where she exposed the massive abuse and national security threats she’s discovered since taking charge of the Agency.
Democrats began the hearing with Ranking Member Rep. Greg Meeks (D-NY) attacking the Trump Administration and Lake, accusing her of using “falsehoods to advance an agenda,” and
In Lake’s opening statement, she outlined her real mission to root out the bias and disinformation, waste, fraud, abuse, and serious threats to American national security that she’s discovered.
This includes foreign assets from hostile nations being hired to USAGM news organizations and grantees without background checks, and being given “high-level security access based on falsified documents and incomplete background checks, phony names, and phony Social Security numbers,” Lake told the committee.
“From 2010 to 2020, the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence repeatedly flagged severe security failures, but USAGM leadership ignored them.”
USAGM grantee, Radio Free Europe, at one point, “nearly hired more than 20 spies from a nation hostile to America,” and other organizations, such as the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, have abused the J1 Visa program to bring foreign nationals and national security threats into America.
The reporting is extremely biased and “anti-American” too! As Lake revealed, Biden was given preferential treatment by Voice of America with “campaign-style videos” aired on his behalf, but they broadcasted “a graphic depicting President Trump with a swastika over his face on their news.” They were scrutinized for “refusing to call Hamas terrorists” and “glamorizing Che Guevara,” the Marxist revolutionary and former Cuban Minister of Industries.
Lake also laid out the massive waste and fraud, including accounted for “quid pro quo” payments made to African VOA affiliates! How is this legal?
She highlighted the “$75,000 spent for COVID study on how Mac computers can be used for social distancing, $100,000 in American taxpayer money to actually sponsor a Afghan Cricket team, $400,000 for quid pro quo payments to African VOA affiliates— and they actually wrote quid pro quo next to the budget item— $825,000 for a New York music show, and $6 million contract for consulting advice that was never even implemented.”
Additionally, Lake revealed, “We’ve learned that there is an active investigation going on at VOA for a series of threatening phone calls that have been coming out,” threatening a sitting member of Congress for years, and the calls were coming from within the Voice of America!
“I told these stories to people, and many times they say, wow, this place sounds like a crime scene. And I frankly, have just learned that it is indeed a crime scene,” Lake said.
“This place is rotten. It’s rotten to the core. President Trump has asked me to go in and help clean it up, and he’s also issued an executive order to reduce this agency down to its mandate, to what is mandated, statutorily required. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I don’t care if they attack me, we’re going to make it right for the American taxpayers.”
Watch Lake’s powerful opening statement below:
Transcript below:
Lake: Last December, President-elect Donald Trump called me and asked if I would help reform the U.S. Agency for Global Media and the Voice of America. And I said, yes. I was honored and eager to help these institutions tell America’s story to the world. But within days in my role as Senior Advisor, it became increasingly clear that reform was nearly impossible. The agency was incompetent and mismanaged and deeply corrupt, politically biased and, frankly, a serious threat to our national security. USAGM oversees VOA, Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and grantees like Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe, Middle East Broadcasting Network, Open Technology Fund, and Frontline Media Fund, all of which are 100% funded by the hard-working American people. Over the past 15 to 20 years, the agency has become a significant national security risk. They hire a shockingly high number of foreign nationals, and they conduct subpar security vetting, so bad that top intelligence agencies revoked this agency’s ability to do even the most basic background checks.
So many of USAGM’s hires come from countries hostile to the United States. Over the decade, from 2010 to 2020, the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence repeatedly flagged severe security failures, but USAGM leadership ignored them. They continued to grant journalists and technicians, many from foreign nations, high-level security access based on falsified documents and incomplete background checks, phony names, and phony Social Security numbers. Even after corrective actions were taken in the final months of the Trump administration, these safeguards were reversed by the incoming Biden administration. The scale of the problem is staggering.
During the first Trump administration, the political appointees led by CEO Michael Pack got to work fixing it, and they discovered that out of 150 people who were hired during that time period when they weren’t doing appropriate vetting, 500 of them were still out there, and they could not find them. They went back and re-vetted everybody, but 500 had gone missing. They could not be located for further screening. Foreign employees with social security numbers that are fake and fake names given top secret access now missing. That keeps me up at night.
My team is working to track them down. Our new security director is working to try to turn this agency around and make it where it’s safer. It’s a vast problem that we’ve uncovered. We’ve also uncovered that the grantees, like Radio Free Europe, hired people later identified as foreign spies. At one point, they nearly hired more than 20 spies from a nation hostile to America. Those hires were stopped thanks to a timely tip, and I’m happy to give you more information on that in a secure setting. Voice of America has employed individuals with direct ties to hostile nations. They even once paid for somebody who worked previously in Russian media, writing anti-American stories, to come on the staff and continue to write anti-American stories.
At one point, a serious security threat to America, an officer of Cuba broadcasting Cuba was declared to be a national security threat. He was fired, thankfully, but he worked there for quite some time. So, how do they get so many foreign nationals in? Well, they abuse the J1 Visa Program, which is a pathway to citizenship, intended for exchange students and cultural exchanges, students, camp counselors, and au pairs. It’s not intended for journalists, and it’s created severe vulnerabilities, and frankly, it has displaced many, many American workers who could have filled these jobs. VOA also sidestepped their charter to be reliable, authoritative news, instead being riddled with political bias and outright anti-American sentiment. Examples, you mentioned it, Chairman refusing to call Hamas terrorists, glamorizing Che Guevara, airing campaign-style videos favoring President Biden, even broadcasting a graphic depicting President Trump with a swastika over his face on their news.
I wouldn’t want that, by the way, even if it was President Biden; that’s totally inappropriate. And a ridiculous editorial firewall prevents agency leadership like myself from correcting any of the bias or having any say in the editorial content that goes on the air. We’ve also got financial mismanagement, which I hope we’ll go into: $75,000 spent for COVID study on how Mac computers can be used for social distancing, $100,000 in American taxpayer money to actually sponsor a Afghan Cricket team, $400,000 for quid pro quo payments to African VOA affiliates— and they actually wrote quid pro quo next to the budget item— 825,000 for a New York music show, and $6 million contract for consulting advice that was never even implemented.
I told these stories to people, and many times they say, wow, this place sounds like a crime scene. And I frankly, have just learned that it is indeed a crime scene. We’ve learned that there is an active investigation going on at VOA for a series of threatening phone calls that have been coming out, going after one of your colleagues, a sitting member of Congress, with years worth of threatening phone calls. And they’ve discovered that those phone calls were coming from inside the Voice of America. This place is rotten. It’s rotten to the core. President Trump has asked me to go in and help clean it up, and he’s also issued an executive order to reduce this agency down to its mandate, to what is mandated, statutorily required. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I don’t care if they attack me, we’re going to make it right for the American taxpayers. And with that, I’m happy to answer any of your questions.
The post “This Place is Rotten. It’s Rotten to the Core” – Kari Lake Exposes Waste, Fraud, and Abuse at USAGM in Opening Statement – Reveals Over 20 spies from a Hostile Nation were Busted, Millions in Improper Payments and “Quid Pro Quo” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.