Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who serves on House Foreign Affairs Committee, was, to say the least, unimpressed by the Biden administration’s classified briefing on the China spy balloon and blasted the briefing as “unspecific, insufficient, and backward-looking.”
Senior administration officials conducted the briefing in a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF). Not only did the briefing fail to provide adequate information on the spy balloon that was shot down, but no evidence of Chinese spy balloons taking place during the Trump administration was presented.
“What I took away from this briefing confirmed that this administration and not the previous one had plenty of advance warning of an escalating Chinese espionage program, failed to act, and has now humiliated this country on the world stage,” Issa told Fox News Digital.
The Biden administration claimed on Saturday after the balloon was shot down that similar incidents had happened under “the previous administration,” though after several Trump officials disputed this claim, the story evolved to say that the incidents were only discovered after Trump left office. It’s a dubious story, and a classified briefing would have been an appropriate time to reveal the evidence that this actually happened — if this evidence even exists. That it didn’t cast even more doubt on the Biden administration’s story.
So, while the briefing failed to provide any evidence that spy balloons entered U.S. airspace under Trump, it did confirm that the Biden administration had not taken the opportunity to shoot it down over the water.
“U.S. officials have acknowledged they were monitoring this balloon since it flew over the Aleutian Islands – where it could have easily been shot down over water,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said in a statement. “This balloon should have never been allowed to enter U.S. airspace.”
via pjmedia