The Trump administration on Wednesday briefed key members of congress on the legal rationale for killing the top Iranian military commander — and lawmakers broke along partisan lines in their reactions to the intel and the attack itself.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said that the Republicans in the House were unanimous in their support of President Trump’s move.
“We are absolutely unified as a conference, unified behind the president, unified with the respect to the importance, the significance and the righteousness of the action the president took to eliminate Qassem Soleimani from the battlefield,” she said before the briefing, flanked by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, of California, GOP whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw.
Cheney also slammed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Twitter for criticizing Trump’s move.
Virginia Democratic Rep. Jerry Connolly, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, ripped the legal justification offered as “sophomoric and utterly unconvincing.”
“Without commenting on content, my reaction to this briefing was it was sophomoric and utterly unconvincing, and I believe more than ever that Congress needs to act to protect the Constitutional provisions about war and peace,” Connolly said, emerging from the briefing.
“I believe there was no rationale that could pass a graduate school thesis test. I was — well, utterly unpersuaded about any evidence about the imminence of a threat that was new or compelling,” he continued.
He said that the administration relied on the 2001 Authorization for the use of Military Force law passed by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, which gave the president the authority to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those who “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the Sept. 11th attacks.
“I think that’s a very thin read on which to now be arguing in favor of potentially an entire new military initiative that ultimately has as its target Iran,” he said
“The legal rationale — the legal rationale absolutely fell in the category of sophomoric. The … AUMF authorization for the use of military force, which of course had nothing to do with Iran. It had to do with what happened after 9/11,” Connolly declared.