GOP senators urge Biden to release findings from Chinese spy balloon probe

Republican senators called on President Biden to produce a “public accounting” of his administration’s assessment of the Chinese spy balloon and expressed frustration with the administration’s alleged “failure to confront China’s brazen threats to America’s security and sovereignty.”   

Send. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) — the top Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, respectively — penned a letter to Biden Thursday with 17 fellow Republican senators, including all who sit on their committees.

In the letter, the senators called on Biden to instruct relevant officials to release information about China’s surveillance program and to explain how the “Chinese spy balloon” was able to enter U.S. territory, what it was carrying, and what information the balloon was able to gather. 

The Republican officials further called on the Biden administration to take stronger action against China. 

“The People’s Republic of China, under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, has only increased its brazen threats to our national security,” they wrote in the letter.

“In addition to deploying a spy platform into U.S. territory, the [People’s Republic of China] PRC has conducted dangerous maneuvers against U.S. aircrafts in the South China Sea and U.S. ships navigating international waters, and continues to support Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine, harass American companies operating in China, commit egregious human rights violations, all while threatening a free and democratic Taiwan,” the senators continued.

Their letter comes as Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to depart for his trip to China Friday. The trip was originally scheduled for February, but it was postponed after the incident involving the spy balloon.

In the letter, the senators cited a Financial Times report that alleged that China blocked Blinken’s visit in the past “over concerns that the FBI will release the results of an investigation into the downed suspected Chinese spy balloon.”

“We therefore,” the senators wrote, “call on you to stand up to Beijing’s efforts to coerce the United States into silence on the PRC’s violation of U.S. sovereignty and to release the FBI’s findings on the PRC’s spy balloon immediately.”

They asked Biden to “review all options” to respond to China’s threats to national security and wrote, “Beijing continues to test U.S. resolve and tarnish U.S. credibility—we must respond with strength, or risk further aggression from America’s adversaries.”