https://www.axios.com › Politics & Policy
7 hours ago —
Chinese surveillance
balloons transited the
U.S. "at least three times" during
Trump's presidency, the Pentagon
said.
State of play: "It never happened with us under the Trump administration and if it did, we would have shot it down immediately," Trump told Fox News Digital. "It's disinformation."
- Trump went on to call the Biden administration "incompetent" and said it had claimed similar incidents had occurred during his presidency because "they look so bad, as usual."
- A swath of former national security and defense officials from the Trump administration have also disputed the claims.
John Bolton, who served as national security adviser in the Trump administration, told Fox News Digital that he could "say with 100% certainty" that no such balloon flights took place during his tenure.
- Bolton added that he hadn't heard of any such incidents before or after leaving the White House.
- If the Biden administration has "specific examples, they need to tell Congress," he added.
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper told "'
CNN This Morning" on Friday that he was "surprised" by the Pentagon's statement that similar incidents had occurred during 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,” Esper said.
John Ratcliffe, Trump's final director of national intelligence, was asked about the Pentagon's claim regarding the three Chinese surveillance balloons during an appearance on Fox News Channel's “
Sunday Morning Futures."
- "It's not true. I can refute it," he said.
