Washington, D.C. – This morning, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) discussed EgyptAir Flight 804 on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulous.” Below are video and a few key excerpts.

Chairman Royce ABC "This Week" 5-22-16

On what brought down EgyptAir Flight 804:“In my view, [terrorism is] highly likely because of the amount of effort that ISIS and al Qaeda have put, over the last few years, into trying to develop an undetectable bomb.  And this is one of the concerns we’ve had about allowing ISIS to operate in Raqqa with their facilities to try to develop that type of bomb technology.  The same is happening with al Qaeda in the Middle East. 

“The same is also now happening in North Africa, in Libya, where ISIS is training 6,500 fighters.  And ISIS is in Egypt right now fighting in the Sinai.”

On the president’s lack of a strategy to defeat ISIS:“The other problem I think that we should be focusing on…is that to the extent that we don’t have an overarching strategy to take out, now, ISIS with its training camps and its bomb-making equipment – I’m just back from North Africa.  And in Libya right now they’re working on the capability to develop bigger explosives, new ways to attack in Egypt, new ways to attack in Tunisia and across North Africa, just as they’re doing this in the Middle East.  This is going to come into Europe and ultimately it will come here unless we are effective in deploying a strategy to take ISIS out now.”

Video available HERE.

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