The Pentagon finally issued an on-the-record statement Monday that defended Defense Secretary Chief of Staff Kash Patel against false allegations by NBC News on Friday that he was blocking the Biden transition team at the Pentagon from access to officials and documents.
“The Chief of Staff has not refused a single meeting request, has not edited a single [request for information], nor has he prevented the sharing of a single document with the transition team. He understands the importance of an efficient, effective, and professional transition to our national security and is committed to delivering one,” Chief Pentagon Spokesperson Jonathan Hoffman told Breitbart News in a statement.
The on-the-record statement came after NBC News published a report Friday that claimed that Patel — whom they characterized as a “Trump loyalist” — was blocking civilian career officials from speaking with members of the Biden transition team and having Trump political appointees talk to the team instead. The report also alleged that Patel was editing documents before they were being sent to the Biden team. The report cited four current and former officials on background.
Senior defense officials over the weekend pushed back strongly against these allegations, but they kept their statements “on background” — meaning their comments could only be attributed to “senior defense officials.” On the record denials are generally viewed as more credible than background statements, since they hold the speakers accountable for their comments.
After the NBC News report published, the Pentagon put out a short statement by the Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller that did not specifically address the allegations being made. The Pentagon also put out a more specific statement but attributed it to “DOD Statement” and not an actual person.
Then two senior defense officials held a press conference call where they pushed back against the NBC News report as well as against a similar report by the Washington Post. However, the senior defense officials would only be identified on background as “senior defense officials.”
President Trump himself has criticized the use of unnamed sources.
“Whenever you see the words ‘sources say’ in the fake news media and they don’t mention names,” Trump tweeted in May 2017, “It is very possible that those sources don’t exist but are made up by fake news writers.”
An editor from Task & Purpose on the call questioned why the senior defense officials chose to be on background to refute a report that also used background sources.
The officials said they did the conference call on background in order to “have a frank, open conversation and share the facts,” and not overshadow the generic statement from the acting defense secretary.
However a former defense spokesman for the Pentagon commented that speaking on the record would have better facilitated an “open conversation.”
If the intent was to have an “open conversation and share the facts” then it should have been on-the-record. Period.
— David Lapan (@DaveLapanDC) December 5, 2020
Hoffman is a suspected Never Trumper who came to the Pentagon from the Department of Homeland Security, where he served under then-Secretary John Kelly and with Miles Taylor, the former DHS official who wrote a New York Times op-ed, under the pseudonym “anonymous,” bashing Trump.
Follow Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong on Twitter or on Facebook.
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