Mike Lee, on Fox News, Doubles Down on Fiery Iran Presser: Officials Wouldn’t Answer Questions on ‘Imminent’ Threat
Senator Mike Lee came out of today’s intel briefing on Iran mad as hell at the inadequate and “insulting” answers they received, and he appeared on Fox News tonight to lay out his complaints.
Lee emphasized to Martha MacCallum that he has supported President Donald Trump and said there may very well have been a legal rationale for the strike that killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, but he did not receive any satisfactory answers.
“What I’m concerned about is that the flippant attitude that they reflected, both with regard to the underlying facts on Friday’s attack and especially as they relate moving forward to any subsequent attack that we might undertake on Iran,” he said. “There was a dismissive attitude, but one that was displayed in such a way that they resulted in them saying ‘We can’t identify what circumstances in which we would need to come back to Congress to get approval or authorization.’ That’s antithetical to the Constitution.”
He said they heard from Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and other top officials.
MacCallum asked Lee about the idea of an imminent attack and what he learned about it. This is what Lee said in response:
“They kept telling us that there would have been an imminent attack had they not taken this strike on Friday which, again, for purposes of this conversation, I’m willing to assume may well have been lawful. But then when we would ask them ‘What was the nature of that attack? When and where would that have been occurred? By whom would it have been carried it out?’, they refused to answer the question, and they deferred the same way they would if we weren’t in a classified environment, saying ‘we can’t talk about that.’ Well, we were in an underground bunker designed for that very purpose!”
Lindsey Graham, meanwhile, has accused Lee and Rand Paul of “overreacting” and accusing them of playing a “game” by backing a War Powers resolution that, as Graham phrased it, is “empowering the enemy.”
Lee said his colleague is “dead wrong” and added, “Mr. Graham, the Constitution of the United States is not a game.”
You can watch above, via Fox News.
