This was “probably the worst briefing I’ve seen, at least on a military issue, in the nine years I’ve served in the US Senate,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) told reporters after the Senate session. Lee and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) both said they will now support a war powers resolution led by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) to restrict the president’s ability to go to war with Iran, something many Republican leaders — like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham — have come out against.
Lee even said that one of the briefers’ response to how the administration would request an authorization for the use of military force was, “I’m sure we could think of something.”
“It seemed like they didn’t have a lot of information they could give us,” said a senior Democratic House member who, like four others, spoke to me on the condition of anonymity to describe a classified briefing. “They don’t have any” underlying facts to establish an imminent threat, the lawmaker said. “The information we got was no more detailed or revealing than what we’ve read in the news or seen on the TV.”
“They did give us a window on the ‘imminent’ threat, but the window was so large that it doesn’t necessarily constitute ‘imminent,’” the lawmaker said, adding that the stated time frame around what the administration has described as an imminent threat was “days” rather than “weeks.”
“They gave us no time, place, or method” when describing the Soleimani threat, the Congress member continued. “Instead, we got a historical overview of decades-long malign activities from Iran. It begs the question: Was the attack on Soleimani more in retribution for what he’s done, or what he was planning?”
What’s more, the defense and military officials were asked multiple direct questions about the legal justification for Trump to order a strike on Soleimani. Both Esper and Army Gen. Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs chair, looked uncomfortable, a Democratic aide said, and turned to their legal team because they apparently didn’t have the answers themselves. “There were no justifications,” the Democratic aide said. “It was totally insufficient.”