The Biden administration has offered to brief former Donald Trump officials about the Chinese spy balloons they didn’t shoot down during his administration.
Trump denied the Department of Defense’s claims that suspected Chinese surveillance balloons had also transited the U.S. during his administration, telling Fox News Digital on Sunday that it “never happened.”
On Saturday the U.S. shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon off the South Carolina coast, which the Pentagon accused China of using to collect information on U.S. military sites.
The Pentagon revealed on Saturday that three suspected Chinese spy balloons traveled over the continental U.S. during Trump’s time in office.
Since then, Trump has repeatedly denied the U.S. intelligence, branding it “fake disinformation” and claiming Beijing had “too much respect” for him to have carried out surveillance in US airspace.
John Bolton, who served as a national security adviser in the Trump administration, said 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.
Now, a senior Biden administration official has revealed that all three potential surveillance programs were only discovered after Biden took office. The official said that the intelligence community is willing to provide briefings on the matter to some top Trump administration officials.
After the Biden administration disclosed last week that a suspected Chinese spy balloon was hovering over Montana, the Pentagon said that similar balloon incidents had occurred during the Trump administration.
It comes after some republicans criticized the amount of time it took to shoot down the balloon.
The transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, rejected Republican criticism of Biden over the eight-day wait to shoot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon that flew over military sites.
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