On Sunday, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” with host Jake Tapper to discuss his previous statement regarding his dissatisfaction with the briefing senators were given on the Soleimani strike.
Tapper first asked about the nature of the briefing.
Lee replied:
In that briefing, we didn’t receive very much information that wasn’t already available through public media sources.
This is one of the things that’s very frustrating. When something like this happens, when events are unfolding quickly, events that will have a profound impact on national security and military strategy, Congress does need to know about it, in part so we can evaluate the scope of our authority to act or choose not to act. We didn’t get that. And that was disappointing.
Lee later made clear that the American people are safer without Soleimani alive:
I want to make very clear, I issued a statement within a few hours of the attack on General Soleimani announcing that this was a good development from the standpoint of the security of the American people. We are, in fact, safer as a result of the fact that he’s dead.
If you see a wounded veteran anywhere in America, and they’re missing a limb or they’re badly disfigured, odds are pretty good that veteran may have been wounded by an IED that was developed and deployed under General Soleimani’s leadership and at his direction. And so this development is good for the security of the American people.
Lee added: “But it does matter that we give the details to members of Congress, and it does matter to figure out where we go from here, and to make sure that any further action is authorized by Congress.”
Tapper referenced Republican-turned-Independent Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI) reportedly claiming that he doesn’t believe “an attack was imminent,” and as a result, the Solemani killing was an abuse of power by the president.
Lee stated that he doesn’t have enough information at the moment “to ascertain really specific details as to the imminence of the attack,” but he believes the president and briefers that there was a “basis” for their conclusions.
After an exchange about the potential new war powers resolution, Tapper and Lee engaged in an illuminating exchange:
TAPPER: So, listen, you and I agree Soleimani had the blood of innocents on his hands, and was a bad person. The question is whether or not the intelligence behind his attack was what it is being presented as.
And do you have any concerns? I mean, we have heard mixed messages and conflicting stories about the reason for the attack, whether it’s the existential threat that Soleimani posed versus imminent attacks versus an attack on one embassy versus an attack on four embassies.
You and I have sat through this movie before – conflicting, changing information, intelligence juiced in order to justify certain actions. How worried are you about the integrity of the information we’re being told?
Lee replied, making a salient point:
Well, I’m worried, and as a United States senator and as a voter and citizen, I have learned not to simply take the federal government’s word at face value. I mean, 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 have been lied to about a lot of things.
It’s not to say that the government is always lying or that the people who run it are inherently evil. It’s just that they’re human, and these things do happen. And so that’s important to ask these questions, to make sure that we know the details.
And insofar as we’re dealing with the inherent tension between the Article 2 commander in chief power enjoyed by the president and the Article 1, Section 8, declaration of war power, on the other hand, controlled by Congress, members of Congress do need to be apprised of the information underlying a particular decision.