GOP Senator Gives Damning Answer After Being Asked if Trump Officials Lied Under Oath: They Were Just Trying ‘to Get Past’ Hearing
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) gave a telling response to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday when asked if members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet lied under oath about the Signal chat controversy.
The American political landscape spiraled into chaos as a result of a report from The Atlantic explaining how editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to a chat on Signal — an encrypted messaging app. In the chat, multiple members of Trump’s Cabinet discussed an attack on the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Then, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took things a step further when he provided a detailed timeline of the attack. Goldberg initially left the timeline out of the report due to the sensitive nature of the information.
When asked about the chat at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe insisted that the material wasn’t classified information and that they weren’t aware if the timing of attacks and the weaponry were discussed in the chat. The next day, Goldberg published the screenshots to confirm that information was indeed mentioned.
On The Situation Room, Blitzer asked Rounds if Trump’s cabinet lied in the hearing.
“I think they were doing their best to to try to get past the committee hearing,” Rounds said. “Look, these folks made a mistake and they’re having a very difficult time trying to explain how they made the mistake. They made a mistake. I just hope they’ve learned their lesson. I think the president probably took a number of them to the woodshed already. I think he made it clear in his statements that he was not happy with the way this thing turned out, in part because in the middle of a mission that was hugely successful — after literally months of not being able to take the gloves off — to have these young men and women who just literally really executed a great plan very, very well, and without losses — to have that overshadowed because they started talking way too early about what was going on in the Middle East, and doing it on signal where they really should not have done that. So I think the president probably made it clear to a number of them that this is not going to happen again.”
Watch above via CNN
