A visibly angry Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, told reporters after the 75-minute briefing from administration officials that he was now supporting a war powers resolution introduced last Friday by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.
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“I walked into that briefing undecided,” Lee said in the basement of the Capitol, near the high-security briefing room used to discuss classified information. “I walked out decided.”
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“That briefing is what brought me onboard,” Lee said. He described the Trump administration officials — including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper — as treating the assembled lawmakers like “little boys and girls” by asking them not to support the Kaine proposal, which would require a debate over the president’s order on Jan. 3 to kill Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
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“To come in and tell us that we can’t debate and discuss the appropriateness of military intervention against Iran, it’s un-American,” Lee said. “It’s wrong. … That was insulting.”
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Citing the classified nature of the briefing, Lee declined to name which Trump officials in particular said what. But he said he wanted to tell the president about how unsatisfactory the meeting was. “This administration was ill-served by this briefing today,” Lee said.
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He called it “probably the worst briefing I’ve seen, at least on a military issue, in the nine years I’ve served in the United States Senate.”
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