Marjorie Taylor Greene accuses Pentagon of ‘purposefully’ not telling Trump about spy balloons

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has called for a probe into why former President Donald Trump was allegedly not notified that Chinese spy balloons had entered US airspace during his administration.

“If it’s true the Pentagon purposely did NOT tell President Trump of Chinese Spy Balloons during his administration then we had a serious breach in command during the Trump admin,” Ms Greene said on Twitter. “The POTUS is the Commander in Chief. We must investigate and hold accountable those who broke rank.”

Ms Greene’s comments appear to be based on a misunderstanding of briefings by White House and defence officials regarding the previous incidents. Those officials said the discovered was made after Mr Trump left office, and therefore could not have told him at the time.

Republican lawmakers used the news that a Chinese unmanned aircraft believed to be spying on the US had been floating over the nation for days as a political cudgel to question Joe Biden's leadership.

The White House and defence officials responded by revealing that there had been at least three instances during the Trump administration in which similar balloons had travelled over the country.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the Biden administration was able to retroactively identify the presence of Chinese balloons in US airspace during Trump’s term after the US enhanced its “surveillance of our territorial airspace.”

“We enhanced our capacity to be able to detect things that the Trump administration was unable to detect,” he added.

Mr Sullivan said officials reviewed “historical patterns” to uncover “multiple instances” during the Trump administration in which similar balloons traveled through American airspace.

Earlier balloon incidents were not discovered by military officials until forensic investigations under the current administration, according to Glen David VanHerck, US Air Force general and commander of the United States Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command

“We did not detect those threats. And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out,” he told reporters on 6 February.

Ms Greene also revealed Tuesday that she would bring a large white balloon with her to the State of the Union address to troll the Biden administration over the balloon incident.

She told right-wing media outlet Red State Broadcast News that Mr Biden “let a Chinese spy balloon traverse the US, gather intel from all our military bases, our food factories, our cities, our critical infrastructure, [and] send it back to China.”

There is no evidence available as to what information, if any, the balloon collected during its time in US airspace.

The balloon was shot down over the weekend.

Several former defense officials from the Trump administration said they had no knowledge of the previous incidents.

“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,” Former National Security Advisor John Bolton told Fox News. “I haven’t heard of anything that occurred after I left either.”

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Fox News that the claim was "not true" and that the "media that hated Donald Trump" would have reported on it had it occurred.