Dem Rep. Garamendi: Air Force ‘Didn’t Pay Too Much Attention’ to Mysterious Purchases Around Key Base

On Monday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “On Balance,” Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) discussed purchases of land surrounding Travis Air Force Base in California by Flannery Associates and stated that Flannery’s finances are unclear and that the air base “didn’t pay much attention” to the purchases at first.

Garamendi said, “It’s clear that serious investigations are underway, and they should be. This just doesn’t make any financial sense. … They have surrounded one of the most important air bases on the west coast. And this is the way we get to the Pacific. [If] anything happened in the Pacific with China, this space would be the way in which the U.S. Air Force and military would transit across the Pacific.”

He added, “The purchases started slow, and the county didn’t pay too much attention, the Air Force base didn’t pay much attention.”

Garamendi concluded, “We don’t know where the money’s coming from. The associates — the LLC says, well, they’re all American. Well, that’s fine, but show me the money. … Clearly, by being — by owning the land on three sides of this base, right up to the fence, they are positioned…to do some nasty stuff at that base…listening, disrupting in multiple ways, all of that is possible.”

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