'You're Literally Telling Lies To The American People': Brian Mast Ruthlessly Grills Antony Blinken

has expired thank you president now recognize a gentleman from Florida Mr. Mast for five minutes thank you president thank you Mr. Secretary I want to talk about some different areas of spending uh my colleague just mentioned the global engagement center now are we talking about gek or the state officially or from usaid or from the US Agency for Global Media, the fact of the matter is that you guys make grant applications for subg grants to agencies that or entities that get grants, uh NOS, whatever , dollars spread around the world and and this is the statement of what I think should be a bipartisan policy statement, between the Republicans, the Democrats in the House, the Senate, all the way down to the US state, all of those Agencies start to notify us of each of those grants, subg grant applications start to notify us.

We shouldn't give them a dollar more from each of them and I think the proof of why that is is that in too many circumstances you really have no idea where the money is going and I'm not saying that it's easy to find out where it's going in each case. circumstance, but that can't be the situation and I'm going to reference a few different places. You have Naz sitting behind you here. We had an audience for a couple of hours here on this one. In the same room where we discussed a half a million and half a million dollar grant to expand atheism in Nepal, it was denied for a couple of hours until we delayed applying for the grant and then of course it was acknowledged that it actually took place and then we got a call a couple of weeks later saying, Oh, and by the way, the agency we gave it to didn't even give us all the information on the slides.

It's just an example. I'm not going to analyze everything. but it is an example that all of you did not know where the money you sent from the American taxpayer was going. I've been reading for the last 24 hours the Afghanistan Reconstruction Inquiry special report, the Seagar report, and looking at the numbers. the money that has gone directly to the Taliban is not a mystery it is not something to argue about it is a fact the money goes directly to the Taliban that has gone out through all these agencies that the state works with and is specifically referred to to 144 partners in This Seagar report and when he talks about it he talks about the 144 partners and the questions they were asked, but of those partners only 65 of them chose to respond to the inspector general about where the dollars were going, the other 79 did not .

I even feel like they had to answer questions about where American taxpayer dollars were being spent. We saw it from the Pentagon just the last day on this huge pier that was built that all of you worked on and that no one helped. it has still reached the

people

of Gaza, but it is stored in warehouses and other places and, again, it is getting to the point where there is not enough accountability and we should receive every grant, every subsidy, every concession, every application that should be sent. Through this body for review, whether in a classified or unclassified environment, now I have a couple of questions that I talked about about the 79 greats in part that did not respond to the Seagar report and I have a question about them, uh , since then.

Have you frozen any of the bank accounts of those 79 entities? um, congressman, we have looked very carefully at the Seagar report. I think it's important to note that the money is not going directly to the Taliban, but to the United Nations that we have dedicated. $2 billion, so the

people

in Afghanistan are now

literally

telling

lies

to the American people, these state dollars went directly to those who were asked to do it, these implementing partners, as they are called, and they paid money directly to the Taliban sometimes they labeled it as taxes, sometimes they labeled it as value added tax, sometimes they labeled it as a number of different things, but I won't pretend that the money didn't go directly to the Taliban, it didn't go directly , like Alan, let me again, if you will.

An opportunity to put this out there very quickly. All went well. I mean, I'll answer questions. Anyone can go out and read the Seagar report. I invite you to do that. 2 billion dedicated to helping the Afghan people. 10 million without looking. so you can be Fil A Buster, time for this. I have a few more questions. Have you frozen any of the bank accounts of the 79 entities that simply chose to say "get mad at America"? We don't feel like answering your questions about where we just got to. the report will work on whatever consequences should follow from it so no but that's the answer nothing frozen yet uh some office closed or deregistration of reporting lists was filed just a few days ago we were obviously working , looking at it, working on it. and we will see what steps need to be taken to address it.

Look at that and work on that other question here and I'll read a statement here from Seagar. They asked this question to affirm the accuracy and integrity of the answers provided that they requested that the state test the ATT to the questionnaire that was distributed to all implementing partners that the answers were not altered and that no attempt was made to influence the implementing partners and the state He refused to answer if that was the case. Could you answer that I certainly don't know? I'll be happy to look into it. Thank you. The time has expired.

The chair now.