House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said in a Sunday interview that he still has “a lot of questions” after the classified briefing on Friday about the Trump administration’s strikes on Iran last weekend.
In an interview on ABC News’s “This Week,” Jeffries said he has not seen evidence suggesting the strikes “totally obliterated” the nuclear sites, as President Trump has claimed, and is still waiting for more of an explanation as to why the U.S. needed to strike without first seeking congressional authorization.
“There are a lot of questions that remain unanswered, in my view, as it relates to the actions that the Trump administration took relative to Iran,” Jeffries said. “Why did they not seek the congressional authorization required by the Constitution for this type of preemptive strike?”
“I still haven’t seen facts presented to us as a Congress to justify that step, and I certainly haven’t seen facts to justify the statement that Donald Trump made that Iran’s nuclear program has been completely and totally obliterated,” Jeffries added.
Jeffries said the administration needs to make the case to the American people about how best to prevent Iran from becoming nuclear-capable.
“Why did they abandon the aggressive diplomacy that was successful under the Obama administration? And what is their plan to stop us from getting into another failed Middle Eastern war?” Jeffries added.
“A lot of questions that need to be answered,” Jeffries said. “And those answers haven’t been compelling to date.”
House Democrats on Friday left a closed-door briefing with Trump administration officials, saying they did not get satisfactory answers to either of their primary questions: Did Iran pose an imminent threat to Americans, thereby justifying Trump’s move to launch the strikes without congressional approval? And did the attacks “obliterate” Iran’s capacity to make nuclear weapons, as Trump has claimed?
