Several Democratic senators say the administration did not discuss an alleged threat that Iran was planning to “blow up” a U.S. Embassy during a closed-door briefing this week.
President Trump, during a press conference on Thursday, said that Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed last week by a U.S. airstrike, was “looking to blow up our embassy.”
Democrats, however, appeared caught off guard by Trump’s allegation, noting it did not come up during a briefing with top administration officials including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and CIA Director Gina Haspel.
Told about Trump’s remarks, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told reporters “that’s news to me.”
“That’s news to me based on sitting through that hearing. … I sat through that hearing, I listened very carefully, I would have definitely known if anybody said that,” he said.
Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.), during an interview with CNN, said administration officials did not provide evidence of a plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
“It’s striking that that additional specific detail is now being offered up by President Trump. … For that to be released today in a public setting, and not to have been shared with, at least in the setting that I was in yesterday for an hour and a half, with virtually all of the Senate is pretty striking,” he added.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told MSNBC, “No, we did not hear about blowing up the embassy … in that briefing, and I sat through it from beginning to end.”
Trump has repeatedly doubled down on his claim Soleimani was plotting attacks against U.S. embassies.
Trump told a crowd of supporters during a rally in Ohio on Thursday night that “Soleimani was actively planning new attacks and he was looking very seriously at our embassies and not just the embassy in Baghdad.”
He also told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, in an interview set to air on Friday, that Soleimani was planning attacks against four embassies.
Trump’s comments come after Democrats emerged from closed-door briefings on Capitol Hill on Wednesday unconvinced by the administration’s argument that they were preventing an “imminent” threat by killing Soleimani — an act that brought the United States and Iran to the brink of war.
Pompeo backed up the president during a press conference on Friday, telling reporters that Soleimani was planning “large-scale” attacks on embassies, though he acknowledged that U.S. officials did not know the exact time or place of a potential attack.
He also said that they discussed with lawmakers an imminent threat to U.S. embassies, though he declined to go into detail on Friday about the conversation.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is running for president, said in a statement that the administration offered “no evidence” during the closed-door briefing with all senators that backed up their claim that Soleimani was killed to prevent an “imminent” threat.
“Trump justified the assassination of Qassem Soleimani by claiming that it was necessary to prevent ‘imminent’ attacks on U.S. forces, but his administration has offered no evidence to back that claim up, even in a classified setting. Then he claimed that there were plans to attack U.S. embassies, again offering no evidence,” Sanders said.
Asked about Pompeo’s comments, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also told CNN, “I can tell you he wasn’t at the same briefing that I was in.”
