Senior US Republican lawmaker Eric Cantor defended his role Wednesday in the David Petraeus scandal, saying he had relied on the FBI to keep Congress informed about its probe of the CIA chief.
Cantor, the House Majority Leader, said he had relied on the FBI to inform the White House and Congress, adding that he contacted agency director Robert Mueller because he feared a national security had been breached.
“I received information from an individual that I had not met before and did not know,” Cantor told reporters in his first public comments about the scandal since it broke last week.
“The information that was sent to me sounded as if there was a potential for a national security vulnerability,” he said.
The senior lawmaker reportedly learned from an FBI source on October 27 that an agency investigation of suspicious emails had discovered that Petraeus was having an extramarital affair.
The White House and congressional leaders are said to have only learned of the scandal last week. Petraeus abruptly resigned on Friday.
“I had no way of corroborating the story that I was told, and felt that the best thing to do at the time was not to politicize it, but to put national security first,” Cantor said, without elaborating on what he was told.
“That is why I turned to director Mueller’s office, to ask them to do their job, and assumed that the FBI would comply with its obligations to keep us on the Hill informed once it determined whether an investigation was necessary or a crime had been committed.”
House Judiciary chairman Lamar Smith wrote letters to Mueller and Attorney General Eric Holder expressing concern that Petraeus may have exposed classified information to his mistress, military reservist Paula Broadwell, who wrote a biography of the general.
Smith also asked why it took so long to inform congressional leaders of the investigation, after Holder was reportedly informed of it several months ago.
Cantor mum on why kept Petraeus scandal from Congress
