Rep. Greene Calls for Probe on Why Trump Was Unaware of Alleged Chinese Balloons

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) participates in a meeting of the House Oversight and Reform Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on January 31, 2023 in Washington, DC. ( Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Monday called for a congressional investigation into why former President Donald Trump apparently wasn’t told about Chinese spy balloons that allegedly crossed over the United States when he was in office.

“If it’s true the Pentagon purposely did NOT tell President Trump of Chinese Spy Balloons during his administration then we had a serious breach in command during the Trump admin,” Greene wrote on Twitter.

“The POTUS is the Commander in Chief. We must investigate and hold accountable those who broke rank,” she also said. “Defense officials now claim that Chinese Spy Balloons briefly flew over the U.S. during the Trump admin, but if true, WHY is this just now being reported?” the lawmaker asked earlier in the day.

U.S. military officials said that Chinese spy balloons were spotted at least three times under the Trump administration, although Trump himself and former top officials denied that such aircraft entered U.S. airspace under his administration. North American Aerospace Defense Command Commander Gen. Glen VanHerck told reporters that spy balloons entered U.S. airspace but “that we did not detect those threats, and that’s a domain awareness gap.”

But during a CNN interview on Monday, former Trump national security adviser John Bolton said he was not aware of any spy balloon incidents while he was in office. Several former Trump-era intelligence officials made similar statements over the past weekend.

“I will say this, if there was any actual knowledge that these balloons were over the United States and higher authority wasn’t told, that’s a serious problem,” he told CNN, also saying, “As far as I know, every Trump administration official who has been asked, has said they didn’t know anything about it.”

Trump told Fox News on Sunday that balloon incidents “never happened. It would have never happened.”

“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.”

Other Questions

Other than Greene, other members of Congress said they had more questions about the incident.

“Allowing a spy balloon from the Communist Party of China to travel across the entire continental United States before contesting its presence is a disastrous projection of weakness by the White House,” Senate Armed Services ranking member Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said in a statement. “It is clear that standard protocol for defense of U.S. airspace was ignored.”

“The administration should have taken care of this before it became a national security threat,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told Fox News. “I hope we will be able to recover the wreckage to help determine what intelligence the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) collected while its spy balloon was over our country for days.”

In this photo provided by Chad Fish, the remnants of a large balloon drift above the Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of South Carolina, with a fighter jet and its contrail seen below it, on Feb. 4, 2023. (Chad Fish via AP)

And Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) wrote on Twitter that the White House has “to explain why” officials allegedly “tried to hide Chinese espionage from Congress and the American people.”

During Monday’s briefing to reporters, VanHerck said the shot-down balloon was 200 feet tall and the payload under it weighed a couple of thousand pounds. He did not provide details on previous balloons, including where over the United States they flew.

“I will tell you that we did not detect those threats, and that’s a domain awareness gap,” VanHerck said.

VanHerck added that U.S. intelligence determined the previous flights after the fact based on “additional means of collection” of intelligence without offering further details on whether that might be cyber espionage, telephone intercepts, or human sources.

VanHerck also did not rule out that there could have been explosives on the balloon, but said he did not have any evidence of it either. That risk, however, was a factor in his planning to shoot down the balloon over open water.

A U.S. Air Force fighter jet shot down the suspected Chinese spy balloon off the South Carolina coast on Saturday, a week after it first entered U.S. airspace and triggered a public viewing saga that worsened Sino-U.S. relations. An F-22 fighter jet shot a single air-to-air missile at the balloon near the coast of the Carolinas on Saturday, Pentagon officials previously confirmed.

Reuters contributed to this report.