Politico

The U.S. “shouldn’t be surprised” by China’s response to the Biden administration shooting down their spy balloon, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Sunday.

“We shouldn’t be surprised about the Chinese rhetoric coming out of this and the bluster they are known to put out in the information space after a discussion like this,” Kirby said on “Fox News Sunday,” referring to Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s conversation with Wang Yi, director of China’s Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs.

Blinken said he did not receive an apology from Wang regarding the balloon when they met Saturday, while attending the Munich Security Conference.

Wang has heavily criticized the Biden administration shooting down the Chinese spy balloon as a “weak” and “near-hysterical” response that amounted to an “excessive use of force.”

The discussion between the two leaders was “a forthright, very candid exchange” which “laid bare our deep concerns about what they did,” Kirby told Fox host Shannon Bream.

He maintained that the manner in which the Chinese balloon was shot down allowed the U.S. to collect its debris.

“Now we have that debris, and we’re going to exploit that debris. We’re going to learn more about this system,” Kirby said.

The U.S. downed the surveillance balloon off the coast of the Carolinas earlier this month, after it crossed the continent over the course of a week.

“We acted accordingly, and believe me, the message was clearly sent to China this is unacceptable,” Kirby said Sunday.

Since then, the administration has directed three additional objects to be shot down, but those are now believed to have been benign, Kirby said earlier this week. “Nothing right now suggests that they were related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country,” President Joe Biden added on Thursday.

A top political aide is leaving the White House as President Joe Biden appears likely to announce a reelection run in the next few months.

Carla Frank, who is currently the deputy director of the Office of Political Strategy and Outreach and a special assistant to the president, is leaving after working for Biden for almost six years. Her last day is Friday.

Frank plans on doing consulting work after she leaves the administration. A White House official said there was not yet a replacement for her to announce.

Her departure comes at a time of broader, high profile personnel changes inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, with chief of staff Ron Klain and communications director Kate Bedingfield both announcing their own exits in recent weeks. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh became the first cabinet official to willingly depart as well.

At the White House, Frank managed external political relationships with different political stakeholders, including elected officials from both parties and longtime supporters of Biden. She also oversaw all political invitations to White House events, such as receptions and celebrations at the residence — and went on every domestic trip Biden has taken as president.

“Carla has loyally and capably served President Biden for many years,” deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement. “Her smarts, competence, and work ethic have been an enormous asset to all of us from the campaign to the inauguration to now, which is why we’ve relied on her for so much.” White House counselor Steve Ricchetti said that throughout her time working for Biden, Frank “made his allies feel like part of the Biden family.”

Early in her career, Frank worked in finance for the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Starting in 2017, she entered Biden world and was one of two employees at Biden’s American Possibilities PAC where she worked to build a slate of more than 100 endorsements of candidates and designed Biden’s campaign travel schedule. More recently, she was director of ballot access and delegate operations for the Biden campaign and also worked on the inaugural committee.

Frank is a graduate of Georgetown and last November married White House digital director Rob Flaherty with a number of top White House officials in attendance.

WASHINGTON — The FBI searched the University of Delaware in recent weeks for classified documents as part of its investigation into the potential mishandling of sensitive government records by President Joe Biden.

The search, first reported by CNN, was confirmed to The Associated Press by a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The person would not say whether anything was found.

The university is Biden’s alma mater. In 2011, Biden donated his records from his 36 years serving in the U.S. Senate to the school. The documents arrived June 6, 2012, according to the university, which released photos of the numbered boxes being unloaded at the university alongside blue and gold balloons.

Under the terms of Biden’s gift, the records are to remain sealed until two years after he retires from public life.

Biden’s Senate records would not be covered by the presidential records act, though prohibitions on mishandling classified information would still apply.

The White House referred questions to the Justice Department, which declined to comment. A representative at the university did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.

The university is the fourth known entity to be searched by the FBI following inspections of his former office at the Penn Biden Center, where records with classified markings were found in a locked closet by Biden’s personal lawyers in November, and more recently of his Delaware homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach.

Vice President Kamala Harris said the recent U.S. downing of a Chinese surveillance balloon over American waters should not have an impact on diplomatic relations between the two global superpowers.

“I don’t think so, no,” she told POLITICO in an exclusive phone interview Tuesday.

Harris’ remarks come more than a week after the U.S. decided to shoot down the balloon off the South Carolina coast, and they resemble one of the clearest public efforts by the administration to prevent further geopolitical fallout from the incident. Asked to describe the Biden administration’s approach to Beijing, she said: “We seek competition, but not conflict or confrontation.”

Harris noted that she said as much to Chinese President Xi Jinping when they met briefly in November at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bangkok. “Everything that has happened in the last week and a half is, we believe, very consistent with our stated approach,” she said.

The intrusion into U.S. airspace caused immediate anger and outrage throughout Washington, D.C., with members of both parties criticizing the Biden administration for failing to shoot down the balloon earlier. The White House says they waited until the balloon was safely away from civilians, though it has since taken aggressive action to shoot down other objects floating above U.S. territory. At this point, the administration isn’t tying those additional objects to the Chinese government.

Harris conducted the interview roughly 24 hours before she was scheduled to depart Washington to lead the U.S. delegation at the Munich Security Conference. China’s top diplomat will be in attendance but Harris said there was nothing scheduled between her and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Reuters reported Monday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who will also be attending the conference, is considering a meeting with his counterpart.

This will be Harris’ second time attending the confab of global leaders and allies on behalf of the administration and her fourth trip to Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine. Her first visit last year came just days before the war began. In her meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Harris promised full support from the United States and encouraged him to prepare for a full-scale invasion.

Nearly a year later, Harris returns aiming to push the western alliance to sustain its stance against Russia despite the impact the invasion has had on the world economy and energy security in Europe.

“There is an enduring commitment on behalf of the alliance, but it’s not without sacrifice that each country is doing that,” Harris said. “And that’s to be applauded, which is a nation standing in defense of certain foundational principles when the going gets tough.”

A White House official said Harris’ tentative schedule in Munich includes meetings with leaders of the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland and Sweden, and that “more engagements are possible.” Harris also is scheduled to address the conference in a speech Saturday.

The vice president said she will be reassuring both the alliance and Ukraine of the U.S. commitment as the war enters its second year. Her stop in Munich will be followed by a visit from President Joe Biden to nearby Poland.

But there are questions about whether the White House’s hands will be tied back home. Congressional Republicans have demanded that any future aid to Ukraine be accompanied by stringent new layers of oversight, if passed at all.

Harris said she believed the GOP posture was overstated if not bluster.

“One thing is rhetoric at the press conference,” she said. “But the other thing is how they’ve been voting and they’ve been voting to support the assistance that we have been as a nation giving the Ukrainian people.”

A myriad of other international issues will be occurring in the backdrop of the Munich conference. Among the thorniest for the White House is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned overhaul of his country’s judicial system to shift power away from its supreme court.

The move has been criticized by members of the Israeli government, including President Isaac Herzog, who in recent televised remarks said a “powder keg is about to explode” as thousands of Netanyahu’s opponents have taken to the streets in protest.

Harris offered a measured critique of the judicial reform as well, placing it in the context of democratic backsliding.

“As the president has said, an independent judiciary is foundational for a democracy,” she said. “And I think that there is no question that we need to make sure that that is supported in terms of what we talk about [and] in terms of our values.”

In the brief phone interview, Harris also addressed domestic matters, including concerns from members of her own party over the prospect of another Biden-Harris ticket. Biden is expected to announce his decision on a reelection bid in the coming weeks, amid polls that show most Democrats have doubts about the two taking on whomever the Republican nominee will be.

“We were in Philadelphia recently and hundreds of people were shouting their support of the work that our administration has had and the success that our administration has accomplished and their desire to see it keep going,” Harris said. “So I have seen just in terms of, in real life, real people being very supportive of the work that is happening. When I look at the midterms and how people voted, that gives me further objective and empirical evidence of this point.”

Senators left a classified briefing Tuesday with at least one question answered about the three unidentified flying objects that the military shot down over the weekend: They weren’t aliens.

That’s about where the certainty ends.

Members of both parties entered the briefing room with Biden administration officials wanting more information about the origin of the unidentified objects. They left the room reiterating calls for more transparency from the White House.

“This is what I took away: This has been going on for years,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “Number two, except for the China spy balloon, we don’t really know what they are. Number three, we don’t even know if we’ve caught all of them. Number four, what’s different right now is that we’ve shot some down. That’s the good news, I suppose.”

Capitol Hill is swirling with intrigue about the military’s downing of four objects that hovered over U.S. and Canadian airspace in recent days. In the absence of complete information, Senate Republicans nudged President Joe Biden to address the nation directly on the matter. While Democrats aren’t going that far, some indicated that the administration could be doing more.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin summed up the briefing this way: “It answered a lot of questions and raised a lot of questions.”

Even before the public knew about the three newest unidentified objects, Department of Defense officials were in contact over the weekend with senators from states over which they flew.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) recalled in a brief interview the alarming call she got Sunday afternoon from the Department of Defense, which gave her the mysterious play-by-play as the object hovered over the Mitten. She wasn’t alone in being “kept informed, every step” — both Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) heard from the administration before it publicly disclosed the object.

Yet even as the unidentified craft became the third shot down by the U.S. military in the span of a weekend, senators still have critical questions about what the heck is happening.

“The most troublesome aspect is: What’s going on? Where are they coming from? Who is behind them?” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) asked on Monday. “We get weather balloons, we understand weather balloons. But if it’s not weather balloons, what are they? Who is sending them? That bothers me.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), meanwhile, said after the briefing that the Biden administration is “becoming more transparent, and that’s a good thing, but there’s a need for even more.”

The Tuesday briefing on the unidentified objects comes days after another classified briefing about the Chinese spy balloon. And that’s on top of another previously classified briefing scheduled for Wednesday that will touch broadly on China.

None of the three objects shot down over the weekend have been recovered. Murkowski said brutally cold conditions in Alaska were hindering the search, while Peters said the lake is deep enough to make finding anything extremely complex. Even as the Biden administration ruled out aliens, that’s not slowing down the pace of lawmakers’ questions.

Senate Republicans, who previously castigated the Biden administration for waiting too long to respond to the Chinese spy balloon, had low expectations for the briefing. And Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) suggested after that it was of little use. Instead, he called for Biden to address the public immediately.

“We learned nothing that I didn’t already know as a member of the Intelligence Committee and Armed Services Committee or, for that matter, that one could learn from reading your newspapers,” Cotton said. “That’s why I want to stress again: President Biden owes the American people an explanation.”

Over the past four days, the U.S. military shot down three unidentified objects: the first on Friday near Deadhorse, Alaska, the second over Yukon, Canada, on Saturday and the latest on Sunday over Lake Huron, Mich. That came just days after the military brought down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina.

“I don’t think anybody really understands,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.). “We all knew what the first one was … [The Biden administration] took so much heat after the first one, they weren’t going to make the same mistake,” he added, and let the objects fly untouched.

While it’s not clear whether the unidentified objects are all from China, the latest developments will almost certainly spur calls for the U.S. to get tougher on Beijing. Following Thursday’s briefing on the spy balloon, GOP and Democratic lawmakers emerged requesting additional information.

The speakers for Tuesday’s briefing included Melissa G. Dalton, an assistant secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs, Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Sims II, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, according to a list obtained by POLITICO.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who held a defense spending subpanel hearing Thursday on the Chinese spy balloon, described the latest unidentified objects as “concerning.” But he added that his level of concern will depend “on where they came from.” His subcommittee is expected to hold follow up hearings as the Senate kicks off its annual spending process.

John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, told reporters Monday that enhanced radar capabilities “may at least partly explain the increase in the objects that have been detected.”

And Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) defended the White House’s approach: “I know everybody wants the president to speak on every issue immediately and sometimes it’s smart for presidents to get enough information in order to make a definitive statement.”

In the absence of more information, though, Republicans are having a field day with the incidents.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the floor Monday that the administration has still “not been able to divulge any meaningful information about what was shot down” and asked: “are they benign science projects or something more nefarious that we have been missing all this time?” Meanwhile, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said the administration is “creating a bigger problem for themselves by the lack of transparency.”

Yet despite bipartisan concern about China’s role in the incursions, some senators suggested that the response to Biden’s handling of the unidentified objects may fall along party lines.

“I came to the conclusion the administration handled the first one properly,” said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine.), a member of the Intelligence Committee. “There are some people that if Biden walked out, woke up in the morning and walked across the Potomac River, they’d say, ‘Biden can’t swim.’”

Connor O’Brien contributed to this report.

Michigan’s two senators knew about the unidentified object flying over their state before the news broke. That doesn’t mean they’re any less in the dark than most Americans are.

Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) recalled in a brief interview the alarming call she got Sunday afternoon from the Department of Defense, which gave her the mysterious play-by-play as the object hovered over the Mitten State. She wasn’t alone in being “kept informed, every step” — both Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) heard from the administration before it publicly disclosed the object.

Yet even as the unidentified craft became the third shot down by the U.S. military in the span of a weekend, senators still have critical questions about what the heck is happening as the Biden administration prepares to return to the Hill for another classified briefing on Tuesday.

“The most troublesome aspect is: What’s going on? Where are they coming from? Who is behind them?,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) asked on Monday. “We get weather balloons, we understand weather balloons. But if it’s not weather balloons, what are they? Who is sending them? That bothers me.”

While the 118th Congress is off to a slow start, Capitol Hill is swirling with intrigue about the military’s downing of four objects that hovered over U.S. and Canadian airspace in recent days. In the absence of complete information, Senate Republicans on Monday criticized the Biden administration for what they called a lack of transparency about where the objects are coming from and what they are. Even some Democrats indicated that the Biden administration could be doing more to alleviate concerns.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) said Monday night that he’s “not satisfied yet” with the administration’s response but will wait until the Tuesday briefing before making a final judgment. Meanwhile, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said that it’s possible for Biden officials to be more transparent without compromising national security.

The full Senate’s slated briefing Tuesday on the unidentified objects comes days after another classified briefing about the Chinese spy balloon. And that’s on top of another previously classified briefing scheduled for Wednesday that will touch broadly on China.

None of the three objects shot down over the weekend have been recovered. Murkowski said brutally cold conditions in Alaska were hindering the search, while Peters said the lake is deep enough to make finding anything extremely complex. The Biden administration already ruled out aliens on Monday, but that didn’t slow down the pace of lawmakers’ questions.

Summing up what’s on almost everyone’s minds, Peters remarked: “Why do we have these objects now? Is it because we just haven’t been looking for them? Or something else?”

Senate Republicans, who previously castigated the Biden administration for waiting too long to respond to the Chinese spy balloon, are going into Tuesday’s briefing with low expectations. But they argued that any information, at this point, would be helpful to prevent imaginations from running wild.

“It’s just crazy what’s happened the last few days,” observed Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.). “I don’t know if they don’t know what’s going on. And maybe either way, whether they do or don’t, at least tell us what they do know — and try and reassure people of the things that they’ve ruled out.”

Over the past four days, the U.S. military shot down three unidentified objects: the first on Friday near Deadhorse, Alaska, the second over Yukon, Canada on Saturday and the latest on Sunday over Lake Huron, Mich. That came just days after the military brought down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina.

“I don’t think anybody really understands,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.). “We all knew what the first one was … [The Biden administration] took so much heat after the first one, they weren’t going to make the same mistake,” he added, and let the objects fly untouched.

While it’s not clear whether the unidentified objects are all from China, the latest developments will almost certainly spur calls for the U.S. to get tougher on Beijing. Following Thursday’s briefing on the spy balloon, GOP and Democratic lawmakers emerged requesting additional information.

The speakers for Tuesday’s briefing include Melissa G. Dalton, an assistant secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs, Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Sims II, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, according to a list obtained by POLITICO.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who held a defense spending subpanel hearing Thursday on the Chinese spy balloon, described the latest unidentified objects as “concerning.” But he added that his level of concern will depend “on where they came from.” His subcommittee is expected to hold follow up hearings as the Senate kicks off its annual spending process.

John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, told reporters Monday that enhanced radar capabilities “may at least partly explain the increase in the objects that have been detected.”

In the absence of more information, though, Republicans are having a field day with the incidents.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the floor Monday that the administration has still “not been able to divulge any meaningful information about what was shot down” and asked: “are they benign science projects or something more nefarious that we have been missing all this time?” Meanwhile, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said the administration is “creating a bigger problem for themselves by the lack of transparency.”

Yet despite bipartisan concern about China’s role in the incursions, some senators suggested Monday that the response to Biden’s handling of the unidentified objects may fall along party lines.

“I came to the conclusion the administration handled the first one properly,” said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine.), a member of the Intelligence Committee. “There are some people that if Biden walked out, woke up in the morning and walked across the Potomac River, they’d say, ‘Biden can’t swim.’”

The White House has removed the Capitol complex’s top manager from his post following a series of misconduct revelations that prompted calls for his axing by top lawmakers in both parties, according to a White House official.

Architect of the Capitol Brett Blanton will depart seven years before his term is up under pressure from lawmakers across the Capitol. He faced a crescendo of criticism following a heated oversight hearing last week that centered on an internal watchdog report that catalogued his broad misuse of department resources.

The Architect of the Capitol oversees a massive portfolio, including the preservation and upkeep of more than 17.4 million square feet of both historic and modern facilities as well as 580 acres on the Capitol campus and the management of more than 2,000 employees.