Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., on Tuesday accused Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin of withholding information from Congress about a military incident in Syria in order to avoid influencing a vote to end two congressional authorization for use of military force overseas.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Cotton confronted Austin about claims that the Biden administration failed to inform lawmakers of last week's Iranian-linked drone attack that killed one American and wounded five members of the U.S. military in Syria until more than 12 hours after it occurred.
Cotton claimed the delay was a "conscious decision" to influence the Senate as it was voting on repealing the 1991 and 2002 authorizations for use of military force (AUMFs) in Iraq. Cotton implied that because the Biden administration wants to revoke the AUMFs, it wanted to delay news that might give lawmakers a reason to maintain them.
Cotton noted that on the day of the drone strike, senators were considering language that could have kept the AUMFs active if attacks from Iran were still active.
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"I believe that your office specifically withheld notification of this deadly strike against Americans," Cotton said. "Because the [Sen. Marco] Rubio amendment, on which we voted midday, directly touched on exactly this scenario – not repealing these use of force resolutions if the president couldn't certify that Iran was no longer attacking us in Iraq and Syria."
"That's what I believe, nothing you can say is gonna change my belief about that," the senator added.
Austin countered that his claim was "absolutely not true."
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"Maybe you didn’t personally do it," Cotton persisted. "But I believe entirely that people in your office did that."
He again cited Senate debate on Sen. Marco Rubio’s amendment to the AUMF repeal as a likely reason why the Pentagon may have delayed providing news of the drone strike to Congress.
"I believe there was a conscious decision made not to inform Congress because you fear that it might lead to the passage of the Rubio amendment, which would kill the entire bill," Cotton said.
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Austin said earlier that there was "no connection" between the vote and the timing of its notification to Congress. He noted that he and Milley had been on Capitol Hill themselves that morning, testifying before a House committee on the Defense budget.
"So as soon as we came out of testimony, we began working on crafting response options," Austin claimed.
The Senate is still working on repeal of the two AUMFs this week, and is looking at additional amendments to the legislation.
