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The chair of the House Homeland Security Committee called Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s refusal to testify before his committee next month “unreasonable and unacceptable,” writing in a letter this week that “your attempt to use the President’s recent shutdown as an excuse not to testify before Congress prior to the impending shutdown is outrageous.”
Nielsen’s spokesperson Tyler Q. Houlton, himself a noted liar, claimed that it’s chair Bennie Thompson’s letter that is “misleading,” stating that Nielsen had agreed to come in and testify to a House committee that will finally question her actions, just not on that date. But the committee spokesperson, Adam Comis, said that "there is nothing in the Chairman's letter that is false.”
”The Secretary and her office were officially aware of our intentions to have her come testify before the Committee since January 4th," Comis said. "They indicated she would testify after the shutdown, which is now over. On January 23rd, two weeks before the proposed hearing, we officially invited her to come testify." Nor has Nielsen given “any legitimate reason” why she won’t come in to testify on that date to Congress.
It’s not like she’s busy trying to reunite the children stolen under the policy she signed into place, because months after a federal judge’s reunification deadline, kids are still languishing in custody. Nielsen did visit the border this week, but it wasn’t to conduct a thorough investigation of the facilities where two children were held before they died under federal immigration custody. Instead, she cut a ribbon on the administration’s new, horrific policy forcing asylum seekers back out of the U.S.
With
a recent watchdog report finding that we may never know exactly how many children were stolen from families at the border, Nielsen,
who lied to Congress about the family separation policy, should be out of a job and facing punishment for her crimes and corruption. Enough with the asking: Make her come in.
"I would hope she will accept the invitation," Thompson told CNN. "There's a willingness to work with her on our part, but we won't hesitate if she chooses not to come to issue a subpoena."