BREAKING: Donald Trump And Several National Security Officials Debunk Claim About Chinese Spy Balloons Coming To U.S. Under Previous Administration

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Disclaimer:  This article may contain the personal views and opinions of the author.

Following the Chinese spy balloon incident that highlighted Biden’s incompetence and weakness when it comes to dealing with China, Pentagon officials are claiming that three such balloons flew into U.S. territory while Trump was in office. 

Trump denied the claim saying, “This never happened. It would have never happened. And if it did, we would have shot it down immediately.” 

A source from the Biden administration told Fox News that the Chinese balloons were learned of after Trump left office. 

“US intelligence, not the Biden administration,” discovered that “PRC government surveillance balloons transited the continental US briefly at least three times during the prior administration and once that we know of at the beginning of this administration, but never for this duration of time,” the source said. 

“This information was discovered after the [Trump] administration left,” the source said. “They went undetected.”

“Two things can be true at once: This happened, and it wasn’t detected.”

Many of Trump’s top aides back the former president’s claim that it never happened. 

John Bolton, the former national security adviser in the Trump administration and no fan of Trump, told Fox News, “I don’t know of any balloon flights by any power over the United States during my tenure, and I’d never heard of any of that occurring before I joined in 2018.”

He continued, “I haven’t heard of anything that occurred after I left, either.”

Bolton said that the Biden administration should report to Congress any “specific examples” of such incidents under Trump’s watch. 

Robert O’Brien, who filled the role after Bolton left in 2019, said, “Unequivocally, I have never been briefed on the issue.”

Former acting Director of National Intelligence, Ric Grenell, considers the claim preposterous. 

He said, “If a balloon had come up, we would have known. Someone in the intelligence community would have known, and it would have bubbled up to me to brief the president.” 

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Maria Bartiromo, host of Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” “It’s not true — I can refute it.

“The American people can refute it for themselves,” he said. “Do you remember during the Trump administration, when photographers on the ground and commercial airline pilots were talking about a spy balloon over the United States that people could look up and see, even with the naked eye, and that a media that hated Donald Trump wasn’t reporting?”

He brings up a good point. There is no way that the intelligence agencies wouldn’t have leaked the information to the media had something like that occurred. 

Ex-Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CNN, “I don’t ever recall somebody coming into my office or reading anything that the Chinese had a surveillance balloon above the United States. I would remember that for sure.”

The Chinese spy balloon is said to have entered U.S. airspace on January 28th between Russia and Alaska. 

It violated the airspace over the continental U.S. on January 31st and was allowed to continue across the country until it was shot down by fighter jets over the Atlantic Ocean off the Carolina Coast. 

China says that the U.S. reaction was “excessive.” They claim that the balloon was conducting meteorological research and “accidentally” flew into U.S. airspace.