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.
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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.