HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE CHAIRMAN ADAM SCHIFF:
He wants a hearing on why President Donald Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani.
By killing Soleimani, the United States disrupted an “imminent attack” that would have endangered American lives,
Pompeo said. On Jan. 5, he said that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley “got it right when he said we were culpably negligent had we not gone after Soleimani when we had the opportunity.”
Trump is “the commander in chief, and he did what a responsible, strong—not weak—commander in chief does when faced with the opportunity to take out one of the—if not the—world’s most wanted terrorist.”
The White House sent a notification to Congress on Jan. 4 regarding the strike, as required under the 1973 War Powers Act.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, an Obama appointee, said Trump was right.
“General Soleimani was a lawful military objective and the president, under his Constitutional authority as commander in chief, had ample domestic legal authority to take him out without additional congressional authorization,” Johnson
told MSNBC on Jan. 5.
Soleimani “was a lawful military objective” because he was either “a terrorist or a general in a military force that was engaged in armed attacks against our people,” Johnson said.
