Fighting for Public Safety and Taxpayer Accountability

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday Morning with us today is Congresswoman Nicole Mario Takis. She represents all of Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn. Well, Congresswoman, give us an update, what’s going on?

0:15 Speaker 2 Well, John, thanks for having me again. This week, we had the National Night Out against Crime and obviously Staten Island and Southern Brooklyn were big supporters of our NYPD. We also had federal agencies like the Secret Service, US Parks Police and other organizations that support our police present.

0:33 The funny interesting thing I guess would I would say is that Mayor Mondani did come to Staten Island and he was booed right off the stage. Obviously, Staten Island did not vote for Mandani. They do not support his policies.

0:48 They view of a lot of what he’s trying to implement as communism or socialism. But what I will say is that, you know, the interesting thing was that he did actually show up, which I in some ways you got to give him credit for showing up after he was one of the main candidates when he first ran

1:07 for the Assembly, calling to defund the police. So I’m glad he recognizes how important the police are to our community and as a member of Congress. You know, I’ve delivered millions of dollars to support our NYPD, to get them vehicles and forensic equipment and protective gear and the K nine unit counter terrorism funding vehicles, all these things

1:30 that are critical to keeping not only our police officers safe, but giving them the resources and the tools so they can keep our communities safe. And we’re seeing many categories of crime decrease as a result, and a lot of that has to do, by the way, with President Trump deporting many of those criminals who were wreaking havoc in

1:50 our streets. John, I think you remember that I did a freedom of information law request that found that sixteen thousand crimes were committed individuals in the country legally who were residing at those shelters that we were being forced to pay for as taxpayers by the City of New York when our new president o’donald Trump came in.

2:15 Speaker 1 It’s still going on. I just saw a bulletin and I hope you can check into it. If it’s right that they’re just renewed a contract to some hotel for one point eight billion dollars.

2:28 Speaker 2 Well, yeah, and I’m glad you brought that up. So there’s two days. So we actually we saw with a lot of those migrant shelters shut down because those individuals were deported by this current administration. But nonetheless, we see that homelessness is somewhat not changing. They’re not doing enough to get people out of the homeless shelter system, to

2:49 get them employment, to get them job training, education, to help them transition to self sustainability. So what you’re doing is just warehousing people. And so they’re there continuing to enter these shady contracts. And I have to say, John, the Department of Justice, and I’ve called to them to do this, to investigate these contracts because when you do

3:10 the math, it comes out to upwards of ten thousand dollars per room for an individual, which is insane.

3:18 Speaker 1 Somebody, by the way, can’t you trace back and see who owns the hotel and who and how much contributions they’re making.

3:27 Speaker 2 Well, that absolutely can be done. As a matter of fact. In fact, my office wrote a very lengthy letter to the Department of Justice highlighting some of these contracts and how much it comes down to per room. But what I will also say is that we’ve already seen a criminal indictment of individuals and connected to a Brooklyn shelter.

3:49 We’ve seen people under the previous administration also indicted from the city. So the DOJ is actively investigating is and we’re seeing people being prosecuted, which we’re very thankful for, and I just hope that they continue to do that because this is fleecing the taxpayer money. I mean, we know that many like Mandani and his crew are not

4:14 good stewards of tax dollars, but they can’t be that bad. This can’t just be an issue of stupidity. There has to be something else going on here, and that’s why we want the Department of Justice to investigate now.

4:27 Speaker 1 Not only that, I understand there’s an investigation going on in the Northern District of the US Attorney’s Office and the FBI district up there that they’re investigating on how many votes legitimate votes that the mayor really got. I mean, he’s elected already. I’m sure that they can’t do anything about it, but it’s good to have knowledge. Have you

4:52 seen that report.

4:54 Speaker 2 Well, I haven’t seen the report, but we did see what happened in New Jersey right where they saw people who are not citizens of this country being registered to vote, and in cases you’ve seen people who are not citizens of this country voting in elections. And the more we can expose this, the more the American people can see

5:13 why we need something like the Save Act. We need to pass the Save Act, which is what the House has done twice. We still wait for our friends over in the Senate to get the job done. But you know, over eighty percent of the American people want voter ID.

5:29 They want to see proof of citizenship, and that is what we should be doing to safeguard our elections. That’s the most important thing, John, is for people to know that there’s integrity in our election process and that any attempts to commit fraud are going to be prevented. So sadly we see the Democrats in the Senate not wanting

5:52 to help us and give us the votes that we would need to pass on a bipartisan basis. But I think it’s very frustrating for people, particularly after they saw what happened in New Jersey where you had what two hundred and fifty thousand people who are not citizens being enrolled.

6:08 Speaker 1 That’s about I think it gets. I think it gets even worse than some cities and sets well, I think.

6:15 Speaker 2 In New York we have what’s called the green Light Law, which provides driver’s license for people in the country illegally. And what that means is when they go to a register for a driver’s license, they actually have to check a box and opt out saying that they’re not a citizen and they don’t qualify to vote or else their

6:32 application gets automatically forwarded to the Board of Elections. Now the governor wants to claim that there’s safeguards here in New York. I don’t know what safeguards exactly there are when you have an automatic enrollment with only an opt out that the person actually has to check it off, and you have to assume that they understand English well

6:52 and speak English well to understand what the sentence is and that they’re checking it off properly. So there’s a lot of questions, you know, we’re seeing as happening in New Jersey, A lot of questions is it happening in New York. And he’s one of the things that we cautioned just they sent you, I just.

7:05 Speaker 1 Sent you, I just sent you a text, and you better listen to that interview because it’s already at the US Attorney’s office I understand in the Northern District of New York. Call my attackers. Thank you for coming on.

7:20 Thank you for a great job you’re doing. Staten Island. Thank you for a great job you’re doing. Also parts of Brooklyn and God bless you, God bless America.

7:30 Speaker 2 Thank you, John. Have a great day.