By Jack Phillips
February 5, 2023 Updated: February 6, 2023
Former President Donald Trump responded to claims that Chinese
regime spy balloons entered U.S. airspace during his administration, saying
such alleged events “never happened.”
An anonymous U.S. Defense
Department official said over the weekend that spy balloons transited over U.S.
territory under the Trump administration. But Trump, in a Fox
News interview on
Sunday, pushed back.
“This never happened. It
would have never happened,” Trump told the outlet, adding that the Chinese
regime “respected us greatly” under his leadership. “It never
happened with us under the Trump administration and if it did, we would have
shot it down immediately,” added Trump. “It’s disinformation.”
Before the balloon was
shot down, Trump on his social media platform Truth Social had called for the
U.S. military to shoot down the balloon last week after it was spotted near
Billings, Montana.
“Now they are putting out
that a Balloon was put up by China during the Trump Administration, in order to
take the ‘heat’ off” the Biden administration, Trump wrote Sunday. “China had too much respect
for ‘TRUMP’ for this to have happened, and it NEVER did.”
Other Officials Respond
Mark Esper, who served
under Trump as secretary of defense, refuted claims about balloons flying over
the United States under the previous administration.
“I don’t ever recall
somebody coming into my office or reading anything that the Chinese had a
surveillance balloon above the United States,” he told CNN. “I would remember that for sure.”
John Bolton, a former
U.S. national security adviser under Trump, said that he never heard of any spy
balloons entering U.S. airspace or hovering over U.S. territory while Trump was
in office. Bolton, also a Bush administration official when he was in office,
also said that he never heard of anything like this happening before he joined
the Trump administration in 2018.
“I don’t know of any
balloon flights by any power over the United States during my tenure, and I’d
never heard of any of that occurring before I joined in 2018,” Bolton
told Fox
News on
Sunday. “I haven’t heard of anything that occurred after I left either.”
Responding to claims made
over the weekend, Bolton said that the current administration needs to “tell
Congress” about any “specific examples.” He added that “I can say with 100
percent certainty not during my tenure.”
“Unequivocally, I have
never been briefed on the issue,” added Robert O’Brien, who served as
White House national security adviser under Trump. “It never came up,” he
said. “If a balloon had come up, we would have known. Someone in the
intelligence community would have known, and it would have bubbled up to me to
brief the president,” former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric
Grenell told Fox.
“It’s not true. I can
refute it,” former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe also said.
“The American people can refute it for themselves. Do you remember during the
Trump administration, when photographers on the ground and commercial airline
pilots were talking about a spy balloon over the United States that people
could look up and see, even with the naked eye, and that a media that hated
Donald Trump wasn’t reporting?”
What Was Claimed
A top Defense official,
who was not identified, said Saturday that the Chinese regime’s “surveillance
balloons transited the continental United States briefly at least three times
during the prior administration and once that we know of at the beginning of
this administration, but never for this duration of time,” according to a transcript
released by
the Pentagon.
“We spoke directly with
Chinese officials through multiple channels, but rather than address their
intrusion into our airspace, the [Chinese regime] put out an explanation that
lacked any credibility,” the official said.
On Saturday, officials
said President Joe
Biden issued
the order but had wanted the balloon downed even earlier on Wednesday. He was
advised that the best time for the operation would be when it was over water,
U.S. officials said. Military officials determined that bringing it down over
land from an altitude of 60,000 feet would pose an undue risk to people on the
ground.
The giant white orb was
spotted Saturday morning over the Carolinas as it approached the Atlantic
coast. At about 2:39 p.m. EST, an F-22 fighter jet fired a missile at the
balloon, puncturing it while it was about 6 nautical miles off the coast near
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, senior defense officials said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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