Sasse blasts Biden admin's 'persistent lie' about number of Americans trapped in Afghanistan

[buh buh biden]

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., released a statement Friday criticizing President
Biden's administration after it "repeatedly lied" about the number of
Americans that remain "trapped behind Taliban lines" in Afghanistan.

"The Biden Administration has shamelessly and repeatedly lied about the
number of Americans trapped behind Taliban lines," Sasse said in a
statement. "For weeks, their official number was ‘about a hundred’ and it
magically never changed — as Americans slowly got out the total number
never went down. Now they say more than 300 Americans are still in
Afghanistan."

He said the new information was "contrary to the administration’s
persistent lie."

"The Biden Administration lied to hide the consequences of the President's
morally indefensible decision to abandon our people in a war zone," said
Sasse, who claimed the "slow-motion hostage crisis and the
administration’s coverup are disgraceful."

"Mr. President, bring our people home," concluded Sasse, who is a member
of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

In a statement provided to Fox News, Sasse communications director James
Wegmann insisted reports from the administration conflict with public
reports regarding departures of Americans from Afghanistan.

"Since the end of August, their ‘around a hundred’ line has stayed the
same despite public reports of Americans leaving," said Wegmann. "It is a
deliberately vague number as they’re not sharing a rolling baseline that
explains either addition of new contacts or subtraction of departures.
There’s a difference between correctly acknowledging that the numbers are
not static and repeating a line that both conflicts with public reports of
departures and gives no visibility into the accounting."

According to sources familiar with the exchange, the State Department told
congressional staff in a call Thursday that nearly 200 of the more than
300 Americans who remain in Afghanistan want to escape the Taliban's
control, according to CNN.

In late August, just before the United States ended its mission in
Afghanistan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed there was just "a
small number of Americans, under 200 and likely closer to 100" who
remained in the country with hopes to leave.

Riddled with problems, the withdrawal of American military assets from
Afghanistan by the Biden administration has led to the president facing
immense scrutiny, even from those within his own party.

Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., said in August that he believes the Biden
administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan was a "f------ disaster" of
"epic proportions."

"The thing that everybody needs to understand, even if you completely
agree with the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw, the way they
have handled this has been a total f------ disaster," Moulton said at the
time, as reported by New York Magazine.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sasse-blasts-biden-admins-persistent-lie-
about-number-of-americans-trapped-in-afghanistan