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.” . .
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