John Ratcliffe and Mike Pompeo disputed Gen. Mark Milley’s recounting of the situation surrounding his controversial call with his Chinese counterpart.
Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with Gen. Li Zuocheng of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in late October and early January to dissuade them of a possible attack. The details of the call, including Milley’s promise to warn Li of an incoming attack, which led to allegations of treason, were revealed by Watergate reporter Bob Woodward and Washington Post reporter Robert Costa in their new book Peril.
GOP LAWMAKER CONFRONTS MILLEY ON CHINA CALL
He testified in front of the House and Senate armed services committees this week, where he faced questions and calls for his resignation about the calls he defended as within his job description.
Milley guaranteed to the House committee on Wednesday that the intelligence that China was concerned about a possible attack was in the president’s daily brief and was provided to the vice president, director of national intelligence, the CIA director, and the secretary of defense.
Both Ratcliffe, then the director of national intelligence, and Pompeo, then the secretary of state, have rebutted that they were in the loop regarding the calls.
“There was no concerning intelligence that merited a call to his Chinese counterpart,” Ratcliffe said in an interview on Fox News, calling the chairman’s testimony “disingenuous and disappointing.”
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“The reason that you know that I’m telling the truth when I saw that this was not an issue of concern is Gen. Milley was the principal military adviser to President Trump,” he continued. “The number of conversations that he had with President Trump about that issue was zero. I was the president’s principal intelligence adviser. The number of conversations I had about that intelligence with President Trump was zero.”
Similarly, Pompeo told SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Show that he has “no recollection of Gen. Miller briefing me in the way he described.”
He also claimed that “it’s certain” he didn’t tell former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows because “Meadows would have called me immediately.”
