WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today participated in a rare, unclassified Senate Intelligence Committee hearing to discuss worldwide threats. The panel of national security leaders at today’s hearing included Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Director William J. Burns, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Director Lieutenant General Scott D. Berrier, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Director General Paul Nakasone, National Security Agency (NSA), and Director Christopher Wray, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Lankford focused his questions on his conversations during his recent travels to the Middle East about the failure of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that has not prevented a nuclear Iran, whether Iran’s ability to create surrogate terrorist networks is growing in the US, the FBI’s leaked memo targeting Catholics, and how our very open southwest border is facilitating dangerous criminal activity, including allowing open access to the Mexican cartels and to Chinese nationals who may seek to do us harm. While on a night tour of the southern border with Border Patrol, Lankford encountered two Chinese nationals attempting to cross into our country.
Lankford on the Leaked FBI Memo Targeting Catholics
For the first time a couple of years ago, I had parents come up to me in the state and said, ‘I went to a parent meeting at my school. Am I going to be monitored now?’ And after this came out, I had people that would catch me and say, ‘I’m Catholic. Am I about to be monitored now?’ This sends all the wrong message on it. I do have to tell you—we’ve talked about this before—when I saw the memo and looked through it, I was not surprised to be able to see the source document that they came back through was the Southern Poverty Law Center, which we’ve talked about before is not the FBI. But for whatever reason, the FBI continues to be able to count on them for who’s a the listing of a hate group. They have a long history of having an anti-Christian bias. And there’s multiple different entities that they’ve tried to go after on that as a hate group, but for whatever reason the FBI continues to be able to count them as a source.