Rand Paul Grills State Department Nominee About Ex-Trump Official Paul Says Committed 'Treason'

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At Thursday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned Joel Rayburn, Assistant State Department Secretary nominee, about Former Deputy National Security Advisor James Jeffrey.

Transcript

00:00Okay, so next we have Mr. Paul, please.

00:05Mr. Rayburn, you were preceded as U.S. envoy to Syria by James Jeffrey.

00:12What do you think of the job he did as U.S. envoy?

00:16Senator, thanks for that question.

00:19Our objective, and I served as his de facto deputy,

00:24with the title of Special Envoy for Syria.

00:28We were working very hard to bring pressure, in particular on the Assad regime,

00:34to try to come to an end of the conflict.

00:36We didn't succeed in that by the end of the Trump administration,

00:40but I thought we got pretty close to bringing enough pressure to bear on the Assad regime.

00:45Do you share his worldview?

00:47His, excuse me, Senator?

00:50Do you share his worldview?

00:53Senator, I have my own worldview.

00:54Ambassador Jeffrey had...

00:58Do you consider him to be a role model or a mentor or someone that you admired?

01:03He was a very close colleague, Senator.

01:06I worked more closely with Ambassador Jeffrey than with almost anyone else I've worked with in my government career.

01:11This is true.

01:12In your close work with him, when President Trump asked that the troops be removed after the defeat of ISIS,

01:18James Jeffrey has admitted that we were always playing shell games to not make it clear to our leadership how many troops we had there.

01:27Were you aware of that at the time?

01:29Senator, I remember the incident you're talking about.

01:32He gave an interview to the media shortly after he left office,

01:36and he made some comments that were inaccurate, they were not correct, did not characterize...

01:41Were you aware at the time that there was a game being played with the numbers to try to trick Trump into thinking that the troops were 200?

01:52Ambassador Jeffrey would go on and on saying, yeah, he thinks they're 200, but we're playing shell games.

01:57There's really a lot more.

01:59Were you aware at the time that this was going on?

02:01Senator, I think that was a very unfortunate comment by Ambassador Jeffrey,

02:04because, among other things, as a State Department person and me as a State Department person,

02:08we had no role in reporting troop numbers to the president and no role...

02:12Were you aware of any deception on the part of James Jeffries or others

02:18or complicit in that deception as to how many troops there were in Syria?

02:23Absolutely not, Senator. Absolutely not.

02:25Never participated in any such thing.

02:27Never would have participated in any such thing.

02:29I never saw it.

02:31I don't think that...

02:31Were you part of an email exchange discussing obscuring troop levels?

02:37Not to my knowledge, Senator.

02:39Did you have any oral conversation with Jeffries over under-reporting the numbers

02:43in order to try to maintain troop levels against the wishes of Donald Trump?

02:48No, sir.

02:49It bothers me, you know, quite a bit.

02:52I think what James Jeffries did is, you know, tantamount to treason, basically, that this went on.

02:59He, you know, I think this wasn't the first time he had displayed his colors.

03:04He signed a statement saying that Donald Trump was not qualified to be president, would be dangerous,

03:10lacks character values and experience, continues to display an alarming ignorance of international politics,

03:16and lacks the temperament to be president.

03:19It's amazing that he was still there, but also amazing that you still consider him to be a close colleague.

03:25So that does disturb me.

03:27And when he made these comments in 2019, did you make any public comments disavowing what he said

03:35or saying that it was untrue, his comments regarding hiding troop levels from Donald Trump?

03:41Actually, Senator, I had to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee shortly after that,

03:46and I think I told, I received that question, and I believe I responded that it didn't happen.

03:52That in my experience, that what Ambassador Jeffrey unfortunately mischaracterized in a media interview,

03:59absolutely did not happen.

04:01No further questions.

04:02It didn't happen, Senator.

04:03It did not happen.

04:05It did not happen.

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