The Lead with Jake Tapper: Rep. Mike Turner, (R-OH), Is Interviewed About Ukraine War

Interview

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Thank you, Jake.

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Yes.

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Well, I think with respect to F-16s, they may be right. But I think the problem here is the continuous debate that the administration has over any pieces of equipment. You know, we began the debate on whether or not we would send them tanks last fall. And now, as you just reported, there are these intense fighting areas in which tanks would be incredibly helpful, they're now moving. They're getting trained on German tanks.

There was previously the Polish effort to get MiGs, former Russian fighters into Ukraine. I think that's still a viable option. They're going to need some firepower in the air. It's just an issue of how do we figure out how to do this.

But I do think we need to shorten the time frame. When the crisis flares up, when it continues to be intense fighting, we should have less debate and more action.

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Absolutely. First off, they have the will to win. They have the will to fight. They're fighting for their country.

This is a Russian aggression. This is not a fight over disputed territory. This is Russia trying to take their country.

With Zelenskyy having rallied really the world to the understanding that this is a fight for democracy. The world has stepped up in providing them weapons and training. We just need to make certain that we give them what they need as quickly as we can so they can hold off the aggression from Russia.

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This would be an incredible miscalculation and an escalation on behalf of China. First off, this is not just a Russia Ukraine conflict. It is certainly Russia making claims even through all of Eastern Europe, putting at risk Poland, NATO countries and the Ukraine.

And what you have here, if China decides to come in on the side of Russia, you'll see Russian use of Chinese weapons on European soil. And certainly China is going to be facing consternation from France, from Germany, from all of our NATO allies that China would step into this conflict and use their weapons to try to shore up Russian efforts.

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Well, certainly sanctions. But I think the consequences are beginning because what this administration has done, which is a shift in U.S. policy, is to make public the fact that these issues are happening. It's not just that they're getting intelligence of these things, they're trying to impact the outcome by letting the intelligence out. Let people begin to have a debate on these issues. Let Europe know that these weapons could be coming.

All of the embassies across Europe are firmly letting China know this would be considered a red line. This is not where China needs to go.

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Well, the first thing I think is that when the Biden administration from the beginning started their 90-day assessment of this and then issued a classified and an unclassified version of their report, we've said this publicly, it's been on our Intelligence Committee website. We believe that the unclassified report released by the administration does not accurately reflect the administration's own statements in their classified report. We've called repeatedly for them to release the classified report.

We think there's no danger of being out there, and it would show what you're now seeing is the beginning of leaks really chips in that armor of the administration's spokesperson is beginning to say, well, there's actually significant evidence that this was a lab leak. And I certainly think that in the end, when you look at all the evidence, it's very hard to conclude otherwise, that it was not a lab leak.

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I think there's certainly enough evidence for us to conclude that. I think there's more evidence that needs to be gathered, but I think the administration discounting it has sort of stymied the efforts of getting to the bottom of this.

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Well, my ranking member, Jim Hines, and I released a bipartisan statement when this report has come out. We certainly have grave concerns of those who have been impacted by these incidences. We do believe that the intelligence community is trying to, you know, dig into this to find out what the source is, to find out what the impacts are on these individuals. But we are approaching their conclusion with a great deal of skepticism having both reviewed the intelligence and met the individuals who have had these impacts.

We think there's still more work to be done. And we have a commitment from both Director Haines of ODNI and Director Burns of the CIA that those efforts will continue regardless of this interim conclusion.

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No, and it was very disappointing. But in addition, the fact that the Department of Justice is trying to thwart Congress's efforts to have access to these documents so that we can assess them ourselves is a problem. And it's certainly part of the continuing and ongoing debate. Even during the Mueller investigation, we had access to the root documents and the classified documents that were being utilized by that investigation.

In this, I think there's going to be bicameral effort to make certain the Department of Justice cough up these documents, let them be available to us. We need to be able to review them to get to the bottom of, you know, what is the problem here that we have the two vice presidents, a former president and with current President Biden, even as when he was a former senator, continue to misuse classified documents.

We just had in front of our committee today the archivist in front of the Intelligence Committee, and he indicated that we could use this as a non-classified statement and so he released it, that over 80 libraries that have received documents from members of Congress and others have contacted them saying that they received classified documents in the official records of retiring members. And he also said that ever since Reagan, they've had difficulties of these documents being combined and misused. So, we're going to have to do something to straighten this out.

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Thank you.

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