Besides Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), most all members of the Senate Armed Services Committee aren’t interested — publicly at least — in UFO whistleblower David Grusch, even as the inspector general of the intelligence community deemed his allegations “an urgent and credible threat,” according to Intelligence Committee Vice-Chair Marco Rubio.
Ask a Pol has interviewed all 25 members of the Armed Services Committee specifically on David Grusch (along with every other United States senator — this is part of our raw interview dump! Which style you like: 2 or more lawmakers posted in a theme? One senator at a time? Or, as we been doing, mix it up according to audio elements?).
We’ll be releasing ALL 100 of those interviews this month, but, for this eve (or am…), we want to focus on the rare six senators who serve on both the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, hence tonight we’re releasing our brief one-on-ones with Sens. Angus King (I-ME) and Tom Cotton (R-AR).
WARNING: They’re both remarkably unremarkable, though combined with our other four Armed Services-Intelligence-overlap exclusives, we see a picture emerging.
What do you see? Always learning…
NEW: Matt Laslo asks Sen. King about David Grusch (7-13-2023)
“No,” Sen. King replies when asked if he’d “looked into” the whistleblower.
AUDIO: Sen. Cotton pushed on Grusch by Ask a Pol (7-18-2023)
“No comment,” Sen. Cotton says, giving us his standard (cold shoulder of a) response to congressional reporter’s questions.
We have a request out to Cotton’s office. For now, all we know is his eyes weren’t interested and he seemed to smirk.
Couple those two with what we dropped last eve: Exclusives with Armed Services Committee Chair Jack Reed (D-RI) and Ranking Member Roger Wicker (R-MS). Both ex officio members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, along with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell whose responses we posted last week.
From their seemingly all-seeing perches: Barely a cricket.
Ranking Member Wicker (who knows me in a past life as the DC correspondent for Mississippi Public Broadcasting) seems apologetic for not being “able to comment” on an issue he’s not up on.
That leaves Sens. Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) as the last two direct conduits between the two powerful committees that oversee all things war, peace, secret wars, Space Force and war.
While Gillibrand has been the most vocal, active and persistent US senator when it comes to investigating Grusch, Rounds is a curious case. He’s curious. At least when it comes to UAPs, especially after Rubio recently told us UAPs are “bifurcated” from Grusch, at least in the Senate.
In our exclusive with Rounds on July 13, he told us he’s aware of Grusch, even as he didn’t recognize — “who?” — his name.
But Rounds turned our head — and many others — when he teamed up with Majority Leader Schumer (Gillibrand & others) on the broadly bipartisan UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Many of those heads almost spun off on July 20th after Rounds told Ask a Pol their UAP measure’s use of “non-human intelligence” (20. Times.) “was not by accident.”
The day before, July 19th, Gillibrand had a meeting with Rounds and planned to mention Grusch to him.
“Sen. Rounds may not know his name, but I’ve spoken to Sen. Rounds about it,” Gillibrand told us. “I have a meeting with Sen. Rounds today, so I’ll be able to talk about that specifically.”
This week, we learned Rounds had a classified meeting with AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick last week of July.
We’re waiting for an official response from Rounds’ team, which you’ll get when we get it.
But this week, we’ve specifically been left wondering if Rounds is now the second openly UFO curious member of the Senate Armed Services Committee? Or whether his AARO meeting was more focused on AI, like their UAP amendment seems to have been.
Matt Laslo is a veteran congressional correspondent and founder of Ask a Pol—a people-powered press corps. Find him on most social media @MattLaslo.
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