As I reported earlier, it looks like we were told a whole bunch of malarkey by Joe Biden and his team when it came to the Chinese spy balloon.
First, we were lied to about when they first found out about the balloon, and that they “didn’t have time” to shoot it down. Yet according to reports, they’d been tracking it for a week before it got near Alaska, so they had ample time to splash it in the water before it crossed into American territory—and certainly ample time before it got to the continental United States.
Then we were told that even though Biden let it float across the country for days, and even over sensitive military installations before shooting it down, everything was all cool because they blocked the Chinese from collecting information. That was something that I didn’t believe at the time. I don’t think most people on the right believed it. But that was confirmed by a report on Monday. So as I wrote, these remarks from Joe Biden were just a straight up lie.
Biden also claimed it wasn’t a “major breach,” and downplayed the spying, yet the new report said it got information from “several” sensitive locations. I’d say that sounds like a “major breach” to me, unless you’re in bed with the Chinese.
But that wasn’t all. There was this moment when Assistant Defense Secretary Melissa Dalton testified before Congress on February 9. I think it’s before the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee because she was scheduled to testify before them that day.
Dalton testifies that “we were able to protect against PRC [People’s Republic of China] intelligence collection, which was straightforward since we knew where the balloon was.”
But if this report on Monday is true, then what Dalton testified isn’t true. They let it do figure eights over sensitive locations without smoking it, and let it send the information back to Beijing in real-time, according to the new report. At the very least, what Dalton tells Congress is misleading because if you listen to that testimony, you would think that the Chinese were stopped from collecting anything. Unless there was some further testimony explaining things further, but then, if there had been, we likely would have heard about it. They weren’t able to “protect” since the PRC did succeed in not only collecting information from sensitive sites but from multiple sensitive locations.
Congress needs to haul the Biden team back in on this and question them over what they knew when, and why they were misleading on this.
Dalton’s testimony also flags another issue that I wrote about back in February — exactly when was Joe Biden apprised of the balloon threatening U.S. airspace?
She says that he was briefed on Jan. 31, when it crossed over into the continental United States at Montana. What about when it entered Alaskan airspace? Why was he not told then? One would think he should have been told when that happened, reportedly on Jan. 28. Why wasn’t he told? Was he not picking up the call? He was away that weekend in Camp David and in Delaware, and didn’t get back to the White House until afternoon on Monday Jan. 30. The Biden administration needs to answer up on this question as well.