White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre openly refused to offer up and sort of answer when pressed about the apparently false claims issued by President Joe Biden that American officials had been able to stop the Chinese spy balloon from getting any sensitive information at all.
Peter Doocy, the Fox News White House correspondent, put forth the question by asking if the press secretary would take some time to shed light on just why Biden would have made such a claim if he knew that the statement had been wholly false.
WATCH:
Doocy: "The DNI said today that the U.S. does not appear to have provided critical new insights into the People's Republic of China. So, is it they didn't provide any new critical insights or they didn't get anything"
KJP insists "we knew the flightpath & we took precautions" pic.twitter.com/oFiLqWNZWL
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 5, 2023
“On the China spycraft, why did President Biden say about the China spycraft in February, ‘We were able to protect sensitive sites against collection’ if that’s not true?” questioned Doocy.
Jean-Pierre openly refused to even speak on the subject, instead suggesting that there was a possibility that it was the reporting that had been in error rather than President Biden. “I’m not going to go into — dive into any reporting. That’s not something I’m going to do, I’m not going to confirm any reporting …” she claimed.
CNN was just one of a plethora of outlets to issue a report earlier this week that despite the Biden administration’s claim to the contrary, the balloon was able to gather data and “was able to transmit information back to Beijing in real time.” Of additional concern was the idea that they had not yet discovered whether or not the balloons onboard technology suite would have let the data stream delete immediately after transmission — which would potentially mean that China was able to get and then subsequently delete the data without the United States ever knowing exactly what it was.
Doocy pushed on to press Jean-Pierre about the subject, questioning, “The DNI said today that the U.S. does not appear to have provided critical new insights to the People’s Republic of China. So, is it they didn’t provide any new critical insights or they didn’t get anything?”
“We knew the flight path of the balloon before it crossed the United States … we took precautions,” Jean-Pierre answered, just parroting Biden’s claims that the administration had stopped the balloon from getting any form of sensitive data.
