General Milley, when questioned about his controversial call to the Chinese, repeatedly stated that he was directed to make those calls.
He further added that everyone in the food chain had been briefed on the call, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Pompeo is now calling bullsh** on Milley, stating that he cannot recall any such briefing ever having taken place.
Didn’t Happen
The phone calls made by Milley have been framed in two different ways.
If the framing in the book “Peril” is accurate, I can say confidently that Milley violated several articles of the UCMJ.
If, however, the framing is as Milley described it, there really was nothing wrong with the calls, especially if they had the approval of the powers that be.
The problem for Milley is that he seems to be the only one that remembers those briefings.
Of course, transcripts of the calls would clear all this up, but we have yet to see them presented.
Trump’s acting Secretary of Defense and Mike Pompeo, who was Secretary of State at the time, have both already come forward to deny any knowledge of the call.
Pompeo’s memory was not jogged by Milley’s testimony, with Pompeo telling Megyn Kelly on her radio show, “I have no recollection of General Milley briefing me in the way that he described.”
Pompeo would go on to say that does mean Milley is lying, but you have to take the context of the call into consideration.
He explained, “If he [Milley] said, ‘Hey, I spoke with my Chinese counterpart yesterday,’ that wouldn’t have been something particularly memorable … But it’s the substance, Megyn, and this is what you got to.
“If he in fact said, ‘We will not attack you until we warn you,’ that’s just nutty.
“It’s certain that he did not tell [former White House] Chief [of Staff Mark] Meadows or I that because – I don’t know if he told us, he thinks he told us, on the same phone call, but I can promise you that Chief Meadows would have called me immediately and said, ‘Hey, we got a real problem here.’”
Pompeo then added, “I’d be very surprised if that’s precisely how General Milley told the Chinese that.
“I worked with General Milley enough. But if he told Woodward and Costa that he said that, this is something he has to account for, that would be deeply inconsistent with his responsibilities as a senior military advisor … to the president of the United States and it would make no tactical, operational, strategic sense.”
The framing here needs to be cleared up one way or another.
These hearings surely cannot be the last we hear of this and, as stated, the best way to clear up exactly what was said would be to release the transcript of the full conversation.
You can listen to Pompeo’s full interview with Kelly in the video below…
Source: Daily Caller
