Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that President Donald Trump’s changes to the federal work force have caused “chaos on steroids.”
Partial transcript as follows:
MARGARET BRENNAN: We will watch to see those Republican senators. I want to ask you as well about what’s happening at the FBI and the Justice Department. President Trump- he campaigned on this promise to restructure the government. Seems like he’s implementing that this week. So far between the FBI and Justice Department, we’ve seen at least 20 terminations. Some are calling this a purge. But is it overstating it if we’re seeing 20 people lose their jobs?
WARNER: Well, if you are suddenly taking out the most experienced folks at justice or at the FBI, how does that make us stronger? And what he’s saying is, every FBI agent that somehow touched the January 6 investigation- that was a comprehensive investigation. I’ve been told there were almost half of all the FBI agents at least had some involvement. Remember, this was a case that was taken up against these rioters all across the country. If you’re suddenly going to get rid of all of those- that could be thousands what does that mean for our cyber security? What does it mean for our trafficking and stop against fentanyl and other drugs? What does it mean in terms of, you know, serious crime investigations? This would be devastating.
BRENNAN: Well, that’s- our reporting is that the order was for a list to be drawn up of those 1500 or so people who worked on those cases. We’re going to try to get to the bottom of whether they’re actually going to be fired or not–
WARNER: –But, Margaret. Margaret–
BRENNAN: –That’s not clear.
WARNER: We’ve seen- but we’ve seen you get your name on these lists. It’s like- it’s like, Trump’s potentially illegal offer to buy out all the federal employees, where we have no money in the budget for but we had a great tragedy this week in DC with the air- the crash. We are already short air traffic controllers. If suddenly 2 or 3000 air traffic controllers were to say, hey, I’m going to take this buyout, our airspace couldn’t operate. And yet he’s doing this so recklessly, frankly again, without legal authority–
BRENNAN: –Is it being offered to them?
WARNER: Pardon me?
BRENNAN: Is it being offered to air traffic controllers?
WARNER: All federal employees- my understanding it went out to two million federal employees. This offer- which, again, OPM does not have that authority to start with. That was who it came from, but it is- I can tell you, with lots of federal employees, we got chaos on steroids going on, and we had heard from Trump’s supporters, the OMB director, for example, that he wanted to traumatize federal workers. Well, that is happening, and these workers are the folks that inspect our- our fruit, our milk, our eggs. You know, what happens if they all quit?
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