At a press briefing on Wednesday, Secretary Kristi Noem was asked about her purse being stolen.
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00:00The senator mentioned that he was looking at legislation, but is there something that the Forest Service can do already before you even have to have legislation to try to handle disputes like this?
00:14And if I could also have a follow-up for Secretary Noem, how do you feel about your protection from the Secret Service, given what happened with the incident at the restaurant recently in Washington?
00:27I'm Evan Perez for CNN.
00:30Look, here's the deal.
00:32If this was in South Dakota, common sense would just say you sit down and figure out whether or not the fence line is right.
00:38This is not complicated.
00:39So you work your way through it.
00:41Neighbors would do this on a regular basis.
00:43If you thought you were in the wrong spot or you had a survey that had been done 100 years ago and you needed to update it or perhaps a quick change direction or anything along that line at all,
00:54common sense would say you come on in, you sit down, you work your way through it.
00:57I meant that when I said this should not take an act of Congress.
01:01I don't think during this administration, with the approach that President Trump has taken, I don't think you're going to find him out going after farmers and ranchers because of a boundary dispute.
01:12I think what you will find during this administration is when they sit down and they work their way through it, whether it's because of an issue surrounding a waterway or because of a meandering creek or anything along that line at all.
01:28But this is the time in which you fix it so that when future generations have to deal with this kind of thing with a different attitude in an administration,
01:37that they know that there is a process in place that protects their rights.
01:41There's a process in place so you don't have the threat of a criminal prosecution over a land boundary dispute.
01:48It shouldn't take an act of Congress, but in this case, in Washington, D.C., it probably will.
01:56And let me just address very quickly the Forest Service.
01:58We are under a significant reform analysis and reorganization, and so news will be coming out on that soon.
02:06But let me just say quickly, and then I'll turn it over to Secretary Noem, that the leadership of the Forest Service, in fact, many of the careers, all of the careers that I've met with are firefighters, are wildfire, firefighters on the front line.
02:20We have tens of thousands of Forest Service employees here at USDA.
02:25And to a person, the ones that I have met have been hardworking and patriotic, and I'm so proud of that team that works to keep our countries and our forests safe.
02:35But, as we have learned here in Washington, certainly under Trump 1, again under Trump 2, is that there are a lot of rogue bureaucrats, and the administrative state is ruling way too much of America right now.
02:50And that is what President Trump has tasked us to fix, and that is what we will fix.
02:58You know what I would say about the Forest Service and the Biden administration is they did not have to take this action.
03:02They chose to take this aggressive persecution of this family to the extent that they did.
03:08There are already provisions in law that allow the Forest Service to resolve this and could have given the Maud family the land that their family has been on for generations without a fight like this, without a persecution like this.
03:21So this was a purposeful attack on their family and their freedom and their livelihood that, thank goodness, because of a new administration, we don't have any more today.
03:30As in regards to your question, we have Sean Curran, who's the new director of Secret Service, who I have full faith and trust in.
03:38And I would also say that my experience was just a little bit of what the American people have been living with for years.
03:43The American people have been living in communities where they've been victimized by illegal criminal aliens,
03:49and the perpetrators of the crime against me had done this dozens of times to people across this country over and over and over again from city to city.
03:58I'm thankful they're off the streets.
04:00I'm thankful that they're now going to face the punishment for their crimes,
04:04and it gives me new motivation and the president new motivation every day to continue to do the work that we're doing,
04:10and that is cleaning up America and making sure that we're getting it safe again for the families who live here.
04:14One quick thing, I hope it isn't lost on the press, especially, that while we're standing here with a fifth-generation rancher
04:23with their two young children who are great Americans, who've never done anything wrong,
04:28that the Biden administration was actively working to put in prison, while at the same time,
04:36many of those same elected officials on the other side are actively working to get out of prison gang members,
04:46illegal aliens, et cetera.
04:47We are not the same, and I think that's an important point to make today.