Announcement By the Acting Chair

Floor Speech

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Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chair, I rise today in support of my amendment 49, which would require that all documents and correspondence of the Countering Extremism Working Group are provided to the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government and the Committee on Armed Services.

I am offering this amendment to build upon a larger concept and theme within the House NDAA this year, ending the politicization and weaponization of the DOD.

I am proud to stand with my colleagues here in the House and fight for an NDAA which is focused on warfighting, readiness, and lethality and for an NDAA which conducts meaningful oversight into the political issues which have infiltrated the DOD in recent years.

Through our work on the Judiciary Committee and on the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, we have discovered that rampant abuse of power is not confined to one agency or department, nor is it limited to one subject area.

In the wake of a partisan political persecution spurred by the events on January 6, extremism or domestic violence extremism has been misconstrued to include a wider group of individuals to serve as a predicate for State surveillance, invasion of privacy, and in some instances, deprivation of rights.

We first uncovered this within the DOJ with the padding of DVE crime statistics, which was done to support the political statements of policymakers.

In my first 7 months in Congress, I have had the opportunity to uncover some of these abuses. However, there are some legacy issues which date back to before my time in Congress, to a time when true oversight for the purpose of the protection of the rights of Americans took a back seat to the politicization agenda of some influential leaders on the other side of the aisle.

One such issue was other potential abuses of extremism in the government, including in the DOD Countering Extremism Working Group.

My amendment would ensure that both committees receive documentation from the DOD about the work done in the Countering Extremism Working Group so we can provide proper oversight.

I hope there is nothing there. I hope we find that the DOD abused no serviceman or -woman's rights and that this was an exercise in legitimately protecting their own force.

Without confirming this through the evidence, I cannot trust that the Biden administration and the DOD Under Secretary Austin did the right thing simply because they have failed to earn the trust of the American people due to routine exposure of wrongdoing and abuse.

I urge all of my colleagues to support this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Chair, this bill is nothing more than related to transparency and oversight. We have had FBI whistleblowers who have testified before the judiciary and the select committee as to how the FBI is padding its DVE statistics.

We want to ensure that the Countering Extremism Working Group is not just another way in which our government has been weaponized against the American people.

What I cannot understand is why any Democrat would oppose transparency and good government.

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Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Chair, again, this bill is about transparency and oversight. We all support our troops. This isn't about not supporting our troops. This is about ensuring that the Countering Extremism Working Group has not been politicized; nothing more and nothing less.

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Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Chair, I would note for the record that the gentleman on the other side just slandered the men and women in service, in uniform, by making the accusations that he has.

Again, what I am talking about here is simply providing us with the documentation. This isn't about interfering in the work that the working group has done. It is simply to oversee and make sure that that particular working group is not being weaponized against our men and women in service.

As I said, we may not find anything at all. They may have done exactly what they were required to do, but at the same time, there is nothing wrong with this body overseeing and ensuring that these types of groups are operating the way that they should.

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Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Chair, the word of the day is transparency. Any group that is within the Department of Defense we should have oversight of, and that is all that this bill does.

I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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