WASHINGTON – Today in the Senate Judiciary Committee, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) discussed with Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel the Trump administration’s multi-agency approach to defeating transnational criminal organizations that are responsible for trafficking illicit drugs into the U.S. and killing innocent Americans, including the recent strike on a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela. Excerpts are below, and video can be found here.

CORNYN: “This issue of the narcotrafficking and what President Trump has ordered the Defense Department to do, in terms of, to take out some of these transnational criminal organizations that are importing poison into the United States and responsible for killing tens of thousands of Americans, maybe hundreds of thousands of Americans over time. Do you think a law enforcement model for dealing with these narcotraffickers is adequate to deal with the threat, or do you think we need to start thinking about this in maybe new and different ways?” 

PATEL: “I’m thankful that the Trump administration has designated these cartels and narcotraffickers as Foreign Terrorist Organizations because we must treat them like the Foreign Terrorist Organizations – post-911, we must treat them like the Al Qaeda’s of the world because that’s how we’re operating, and just treating them with law enforcement capabilities alone was wholly insufficient to wipe out the targets in their entirety.”

“In order to eliminate – and that’s the key – eliminate the drug trade and eliminate the pouring into this country of narcotics, we have to use authorities at the Department of War and the Intelligence Community to go after the threat like we did terrorists, when we were manhunting them.”

“Now we have that ability, and we’re seeing that in live time – whether it’s on the strike on the boat or going down into Mexico and working with our Mexican authorities with these intelligence assets to say we’ve located not just the person in charge, the cadre in charge, but the entire network, and we are now able to dismantle that entire network.” 

“This is going to be a years-long mission.”