On today's Firebrand Live Stream, we are broadcasting from Room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building in the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C. as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GAZETTE) is fighting for an amendment that would prevent the FBI from getting a new headquarters larger than the Pentagon for their Washington field office. The FBI wants a massive new complex for their DC-based activities, and they want to spend more than $300 million on that complex. Though the FBI has an employee base that s about 2.3% of the U.S. military, they are asking for something that is larger than The Pentagon for the FBI, and so my amendment would disallow any planning, spending, distribution, or distribution of funds for that purpose. And that's exactly what happens. The House votes against the amendment and the FBI gets what they want, and then the rest of the House votes with the FBI. What's going on in Washington? What's the problem? What are the real problems the FBI is facing? And why does the FBI need a new HQ in the nation's capital? and why should the FBI have one in the first place? And who's to blame for it? The answer may surprise you. It's not the White House, it's the FBI! or the DOJ, and it's not even worse than you think! . Listen to find out who's responsible and who s to blame, and why the FBI should not be allowed to have a new building in the United States. and who should pay for it! Subscribe to our new headquarters! Subscribe to Firebrand Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices! Download MP3 Podcasts Subscribe on Podchasermedial | Subscribe on Spare Card - use the promo code: "firebrand" and leave us a review and review our podcast on iTunes Subscribe on your favorite streaming platform so we can send you reviews and recommendations on what you're listening to us on your favourite streaming platform! Thank you for listening and sharing our podcast! Timestamps: 0:00 - What's your favorite podcast episode? 5:30 - What are you listening to? 6:15 - What do you think of the podcast? 7:40 - What would you like to do? 8:00 - What s your favorite part? 9:10 - Is the FBI a dirty cop? 11:00 | What s the worst thing you've ever heard of the FBI? 12:00 -- What s going to happen next? 13:30 -- What are your favorite place? 15:30 16:40 -- What's a good day? 17:10 -- How do you like the FBI's problem?
00:05:21.000I'm sending the Firebrands. - Welcome back to Firebrand Live.
00:05:31.000We're broadcasting out of Room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building here at the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C.
00:05:36.000And a big dispute over the willingness of Republicans to continue to back a corrupt FBI with all of their whims and demands has just brought down a major government funding bill.
00:05:49.000We've been talking about these single-subject spending bills.
00:05:51.000The single-subject spending bill that deals with general government appropriations, buildings, facilities was not brought up today as planned because of a big fight over the FBI.
00:06:01.000You've heard me go over their abuses, their problems.
00:06:05.000We're going to revisit some of that now.
00:06:08.000Wherever you're watching from, in the live streams, thank you for tuning in from North Carolina, Wyoming, Florida, Arizona.
00:06:15.000When I was in Arizona last, I was with Congressman Eli Crane.
00:06:19.000And in the many stops we made, people consistently were focused on why money and resources continue to flow to DOJ, FBI, ATF. And folks said, use the power of the purse.
00:06:34.000And what Eli Crane and I had to tell those folks at Stop After Stop in Arizona is that when we bring up the amendment just to stop giving the FBI a new headquarters larger than the Pentagon, Republicans will betray us.
00:06:53.000They will vote against that amendment and they will stand with the FBI. Won't matter how many illegal searches.
00:07:02.000Won't matter how many unjustifiable queries.
00:07:05.000Won't matter what Inspector General reports say.
00:07:08.000Won't even matter what whistleblowers say.
00:07:10.000Republicans will bail on us and they will vote with the FBI. And that is exactly what happened.
00:07:16.000I bring you now to the floor of the House of Representatives for my amendment to stop the FBI from being able to have a new building, a new headquarters, a new Washington field office.
00:07:31.000The FBI wants a massive new complex for their Washington, D.C., area-based activities.
00:07:38.000They want to spend more than $300 million on that complex.
00:07:42.000Though the FBI has an employee base that's about 2.3 percent of the United States military, Mr. Speaker, they're literally asking for something that is larger than the Pentagon.
00:07:54.000For the FBI, and so my amendment would disallow any planning, spending, distribution of funds for that purpose.
00:08:01.000I don't believe that the FBI deserves a massive new headquarters or Washington field office.
00:08:07.000The activities inside of Washington, the greater Washington metro area, have really driven a lot of the investigative work we have done.
00:08:15.000It's not bad folks from the FBI out at some field office in middle America or elsewhere in the country.
00:08:22.000It is the Washington, D.C.-based activities that have pressured other field offices for no good law enforcement reason.
00:08:29.000It's the D.C.-based entities that have suppressed credible investigative leads into criminal conduct over the objections of other bureaus and offices, and they've initiated investigations into American citizens Merely for engaging in constitutionally protected speech.
00:08:44.000They've attempted to entrap members of the United States Senate by holding false classified briefings.
00:08:49.000That's testimony we got from Senators Grassley and Senator Johnson.
00:08:52.000They've also worked hard to censor factual information harmful to their preferred political candidates, notably the Hunter Biden laptop story that the FBI, based in the DC metro area, were involved in cajoling censorship of.
00:09:08.000Building a new headquarters would condone, reinforce, and enable the Washington field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's nefarious behavior.
00:09:16.000We shouldn't do it, and we should adopt this amendment to ensure that's the case.
00:09:20.000Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and my thanks to the minority side for giving me an opportunity to speak.
00:09:27.000I rise in opposition to the gentleman from Florida's amendment.
00:09:33.000We're not always going to hate the FBI. But what I do know is that when I toured the FBI headquarters, I saw it in a state of disrepair that is going to need the attention of the owners of that property.
00:09:47.000The fact is, the building is crumbling.
00:09:49.000And there's going to be a need to do something.
00:09:53.000What that something is, I'm not an expert on.
00:09:56.000But I think it would be wrong for us to be taking this action today, pursuant to this amendment, without having at least a hearing and an opportunity for the people responsible for the facilities, FBI, GSA, any other stakeholder, to be able to help us understand what the situation is today and what the needs are of tomorrow.
00:10:22.000Mr. Speaker, it is not my grave concern that the FBI's building is crumbling.
00:10:26.000It is my grave concern that the civil liberties of Americans are crumbling, and I wish we were more worried about that and less worried about whether or not we got new carpet and wallpaper at the FBI building.
00:10:36.000My colleague from Arkansas says that the FBI headquarters is in a state of disrepair.
00:10:42.000Mr. Speaker, it is the FBI itself that is in a state of disrepair.
00:10:46.000And so, while my colleague from Arkansas may be right that we may not always hate the FBI, how about, while we are most concerned about the things they are doing, we not go build them a new $300 million building?
00:10:58.000My colleague says there needs to be a hearing.
00:11:00.000Well, let me tell you about the hearing that mattered to me, and frankly, many of my Democrat colleagues who were also worried about civil liberties.
00:11:06.000The hearing where we learned That the FBI has conducted over 278,000 illegal queries on the FISA system.
00:11:14.000Or the hearing that said that the Inspector General found that 38 times an hour these people were violating FISA. The notion that we would stand here and defend them, frankly, is deeply disappointing.
00:11:27.000And I think those folks deserve to sit in the rat-infested J. Edgar Hoover building until they get their acts straight with America's civil liberties.
00:11:46.000That was Arkansas Republican Steve Womack.
00:11:49.000So a Republican was leading the debate against my amendment to not allow these hundreds of millions of dollars to go out the door for a new FBI headquarters.
00:12:00.000Now Lisa on Facebook says it's time to dismantle the FBI and start over.
00:12:06.000I think if we started with a blank sheet of paper, even with the concept of federal law enforcement, it would look so different than the FBI today And we would build in, I think, a lot more of the capabilities at the state and local level to be able to solve crimes, and we wouldn't have this intelligence-gathering, political, predictive apparatus at the FBI that's been corrupted.
00:12:28.000DEMA on Facebook says they need to move out of Washington, D.C. There actually was a proposal to move them out of the D.C. metro area to Huntsville, Alabama.
00:12:58.000That'd be a better place for the FBI. And Minnie on Rumble says, Minnie wants names who were the 70 states 70 Republicans who voted with Steve Womack and against my amendment.
00:13:14.000These were the 70. I'm going to read you their names right now.
00:13:34.000Mike Carey, John Carter, Lori Chavez-Darimer, Tom Cole, Anthony D'Esposito, Mario Diaz-Balart, John Duarte, Chuck Edwards, Jake Elzey, Randy Feenstra, Drew Ferguson, Brian Fitzpatrick, Mike Flood, Andrew Garbarino, Tony Gonzalez, Brian Fitzpatrick, Mike Flood, Andrew Garbarino, Tony Gonzalez, Jennifer Gonzalez-Cologne, Kay Granger, Sam Graves, Brett Guthrie, Ashley Hinson, David Joyce, Tom Keen, Mike Kelly, Kevin Kiley, Young Kim, David Kustoff, Darren LaHood, Nick Leloda, Doug Landborn, Mike Lawler, Laurel
00:14:03.000Darren LaHood, Nick Leloda, Doug Landborn, Mike Lawler, Laurel Lee, Julia Letlow, Frank Lucas, Blaine, Luca Meyer, Nicole Malliotakis, Richard McCormick, Patrick McHenry, Daniel Muser, Max Miller, Blake Moore, James Moylan, Greg Murphy, Dan Newhouse, Zach Nunn, James Moylan, Greg Murphy, Dan Newhouse, Zach Nunn, J. Obernolte, Mike Rogers, Hal Rogers, Maria Elvira Salazar, Austin Scott, Pete Sessions, Mike Simpson, Jason Smith, Chris Smith, Lloyd Smucker,
00:14:32.000Dale Strong, Glenn Thompson, Michael Turner, David Valadeo, Dale Strong, Glenn Thompson, Michael Turner, David Valadeo, Derek Van Orton, Ann Wagner, Brad Wenstrup, and of course, Steve Womack.
00:14:42.000Those are the people who have not yet been sufficiently convinced that there is corruption in Washington, D.C. that would warrant not giving the FBI hundreds of millions of dollars in additional resources to have a massive headquarters here.
00:14:56.000Now, is this an indictment of every single person who works for the FBI? No.
00:15:01.000But what we learned in our investigations is that good people who worked at the FBI and other places, Wichita, Boston, They were getting misinformation, disinformation, bad information, bad instruction, and bad intentions that was all coming out of the rot of the swamp of Washington,
00:15:21.000D.C., where people here in the FBI actually think that their job is to function as some sort of political enforcement wing, not a law enforcement wing.
00:15:31.000And you don't have to believe me, as we've showed you before, but it is worth visiting again on the heels of that vote Here's George Hill, an FBI whistleblower, talking about how the badness comes out of Washington.
00:16:35.000Show us where they were inside the Capitol and we'll look into it.
00:16:39.000To which WFO said, we can't show you those videos unless you can tell us the exact time and place those individuals were inside the Capitol.
00:16:48.000To which the SSA responded back and I was privy to these conversations firsthand.
00:16:53.000Why can't you show us Why can't you just give us access to the 11,000 hours of video that's available?
00:17:02.000Because there may be UC's undercover officers or CHS's confidential human sources on those videos whose identity we need to protect.
00:17:20.000We need more George Hills in the FBI. People who just want to get the facts.
00:17:25.000But you had all kind of gamesmanship and politics and even seeding the January 6th riot with confidential human sources, perhaps undercover agents.
00:17:41.000The problems arise when more of the decision making in the FBI is made within the beltway, within the influence of D.C., not when good patriotic Americans sign up to be part of a premier law enforcement agency and are just trying to do good.
00:17:57.000We saw that from so many whistleblowers.
00:17:59.000We also saw systemically how the FBI has just blown through our civil liberties.
00:18:05.000Used to be Democrats cared about civil liberties.
00:18:08.000But when I think about the abuses of the FBI, I cannot get past their illegal queries of the FISA system.
00:18:15.000And again, you don't have to believe me.
00:18:19.000Listen to the Obama-appointed Inspector General Michael Horowitz talking about how abusive the FBI is to the Constitution and our civil liberties and our laws.
00:18:32.000I want to get into the 3.4 million backdoor searches that the ranking member pointed out in his opening statement.
00:18:42.000Mr. Inspector General, how should the public think about those?
00:18:46.000Well, I think what we've seen in the various public reports, and I'm limited in what I can say about what's public, which I think is one of the issues, by the way, that's worth talking about is transparency here.
00:18:58.000It's obviously very concerning that there's that volume of searches, and particularly concerning the error rate that was reported on in the last two years in the public reporting.
00:19:16.000I think, fellow members, I think it's around 30 percent.
00:19:21.000I'm a lawyer, not a mathematician, but 3.4 million, about 30 percent, you're talking about Seven figures of error in terms of these searches.
00:19:30.000I'm wondering how many people can perform these backdoor queries?
00:19:36.000I'm going to defer to board members because you have the review ongoing.
00:19:41.000I'm afraid I don't have those figures at my fingertips in terms of the number of people that can conduct those types of searches, but I share the concern expressed in the question that we need to Have greater safeguards, and I urge Congress to incorporate a requirement for FISA Court review of these kinds of searches to protect Americans' Fourth Amendment rights.
00:20:04.000Yeah, 3.4 million backdoor searches, more than a million of them in error.
00:20:09.000If I represent to you that we believe there may be north of 10,000 people in the federal government that can perform those queries, would anyone here have a basis to disagree with that assessment?
00:20:46.000That amendment failed by 70 votes, and you all seem quite worked up about it.
00:20:51.000Preg Mima on Getter says, Lord protect George Hill, and I agree with that.
00:20:55.000But when our amendment went down, we got the conservatives together and said, well then guess what?
00:21:00.000We're not going to pass a bill to continue this type of funding.
00:21:04.000So the entire general government bill did not get voted on today.
00:21:10.000Not exclusively, but in large part because of the way these guys were treating our conservative amendments.
00:21:17.000People on this list of 70 continuously vote against the amendments to reduce spending and provide accountability offered by Republicans.
00:21:26.000And so we're not going to vote for government spending bills that continue the status quo and the problems and that don't showcase that the accountability and oversight work we do has to be lashed to Money consequences to these different fiefdoms within our government.
00:21:45.000So the bill that was planned to be passed off the floor today did not get a vote because it did not have the votes because too many so-called Republicans keep voting against actual Republican conservative amendments.
00:22:00.000Speaking of so-called Republicans, we're now going to address the curious case of Carlos Jimenez.
00:22:05.000Carlos Jimenez had quite an interesting reaction from a From a crowd last evening in Miami-Dade County when President Trump mentioned his name.
00:22:13.000But before we get to that, we have to get to the backup.
00:22:19.000During the speaker contest, there were some people who disliked me so much for whatever reason.
00:23:31.000He said that picking up on something that Congressman Ro Khanna put out, that they'd raise the motion to vacate threshold up if there were certain compromises like a ban on congressional stock trading, term limits to 12 years, ban on political donations from lobbyists.
00:23:46.000Would that be a framework that you would be interested in, in raising the threshold to vacate?
00:24:28.000They're shilling to block a ban on congressional stock trading.
00:24:33.000Shilling to block a vote on term limits.
00:24:37.000Shilling to block a vote on a balanced budget amendment.
00:24:40.000These are substantive policy issues, but you just see in his tone and in his reaction, he's just so personally worked up over his dislike for me that he's unwilling to engage in good faith negotiations to try to change Washington.
00:26:08.000I don't think President Trump really appreciated how negative that reaction would be with just the mention of Carlos Jimenez.
00:26:16.000If Carlos Jimenez had been on that stage in Miami-Dade County, he would have been booed off of it.
00:26:22.000And maybe it's the fact that in 2016 he said that he was voting for Hillary Clinton.
00:26:27.000And maybe in 2018 it was that he voted for Andrew Gillum.
00:26:32.000But maybe it was his most recent attacks against our efforts to try to improve the House of Representatives that were met With a righteous ire in lovely Hialeah in Miami-Dade County.
00:26:45.000Stay strong to Miami-Dade and to our great MAGA friends, and we will continue our work up here to change Washington.
00:26:53.000One person who seems to have changed his view on Ukraine, this next clip, I don't even know how to introduce it to you because when I first saw it, I thought it might have been an AI deepfake.
00:27:03.000This is Senator Lindsey Graham Talking about his perspective on Ukraine.
00:28:02.000I never thought I'd hear those words from Lindsey Graham, the prioritization over our border or Ukraine's or Israel's or any other country.
00:28:12.000This shows that the feedback that people are giving right now to their elected representatives and to their senators is getting through.
00:28:19.000We are moving the Overton window on all of this unpaid-for foreign aid that subjugates our priorities to some sort of secondary status.
00:28:29.000The people will not take that anymore, and we'll see if the things that Senator Graham says on Hannity I hope they are, and I hope that we're able to get that border legislation up, and we should pressure Schumer on it, because they're getting hammered in New York.
00:28:49.000Turns out when you invite all of the third world's problems to New York City, it's no sanctuary.
00:28:56.000It's a hellhole, and the people are living in that hellhole, and they should be contacting Senator Schumer, and maybe he'll make...
00:29:03.000A pivot or a move like we saw from Senator Graham.
00:29:07.000One person who's had to make a move is Kevin McCarthy, former speaker.
00:29:11.000And honestly, I hadn't thought about him in a while, but it seems I'm on his mind.
00:29:15.000We're just getting this report from CNN. They asked McCarthy if I ought to be thrown out of the Republican conference.
00:29:23.000And he said that the GOP would be better off tremendously if I were no longer in the party.
00:29:33.000McCarthy, directly being quoted here, says, He doesn't have a conservative bent in his philosophy, just the nature of what he focuses on.
00:29:41.000Matt's goal was his goal to be the TV congressman.
00:29:46.000I think if you go and line up the number of TV interviews I've had with the number that McCarthy's had, he was sort of the TV speaker in the absence of substance.
00:29:58.000When I want to talk about budgets that balance, term limits, releasing the January 6th tapes, real accountability over the deep state, over the Biden family, they want to just say, oh, it's all personal.
00:30:10.000It's all personal, but they can't address the substance because they would be greeted a lot the way Carlos Jimenez's mention was greeted in Miami-Dade County.
00:30:23.000And here McCarthy again on whether or not he thinks the GOP should expel Gates.
00:31:56.000We've got to seek not just process, but outcomes that advance the American people.
00:32:01.000And I know that's what Mike Johnson wants.
00:32:04.000But if what Kevin McCarthy wants is to make a motion to throw me out of the Republican conference, I guess all I can really say is bring the effing motion.