On Sunday morning, Sen. Mike Lee joined CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” to talk about his outburst earlier in the week against the Trump Administration because he was unsatisfied with the intelligence he was given in a confidential briefing.
He specifically took aim at briefers Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, CIA Director Gina Haspel, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, who he claimed had a “flippant” attitude. He also claimed the briefing was “the worst” he’d seen on military issues in his nine years in the U.S. Senate, implying President Obama’s intelligence briefings were better.
While speaking with Tapper, he was asked about the senator’s public media fit, to which Lee he claimed he “didn’t receive very much information that wasn’t already available through public media sources.”
Tapper brought up a point that Secretary of State Pompeo did tell members of Congress about the U.S. embassies targeted by Soleimani. Lee seemed to be flustered in his answer, saying, “Uh, well, look — I’m not exactly sure what he’s trying t say there. I don’t recall being told, ‘look, there were four embassies.’ I’m sure there was a mention of at least one embassy in that briefing because there had been an attack on one of our embassies in the days leading up to General Soleimani’s killing.”
When pressed about the integrity of the intelligence he received, Lee said, “Well, I’m worried. As the United States senator, and as a voter and citizen. I have learned not to simply take the federal government’s word at face value.” He continued, “Look, we were lied to about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we were lied to for a couple of decades about what was happening in Afghanistan, we’ve been lied to about a lot of things.”