Washington. September 15. INTERFAX-US President Joe Biden sees no reason not to trust the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces, Mark Milley, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Wednesday.
"The president has been working with Chairman Milli for almost eight months. He sees that Milli is a patriot, loyal to the constitution. The president is confident in the general's ability to perform the functions of a leader, " she said at a briefing.
For his part, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby noted that his department is not going to declassify the transcript of Millie's telephone conversation with his Chinese counterpart. It was this conversation, which took place during the presidency of Donald Trump, that caused the scandal.
A representative of Milli, Dave Butler, assured that " telephone conversations with China and other countries in October and January were held in order to calm the interlocutors and maintain strategic stability."
"All telephone conversations of the chairman with his foreign counterparts, including those that have become known to the media, are coordinated. They are reported to the Pentagon and other agencies, " Butler added.
Earlier it was reported that former US President Donald Trump rejected reports about possible plans to strike China, which appeared in a number of American media outlets that received copies of the book "The Threat" by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
Trump, quoted by The Hill, said that the book was " concocted by a weak and ineffective general together with two authors whom I refused to give interviews because they write fiction, not facts."
According to him, he "never even thought about attacking China - and China knows this."
"The people who fabricated this story are sick and insane, and the people who print it are the same ..." the former US president added.
Trump also noted that if the reports about Millie's behavior are true, then this is a "betrayal".
He also criticized the general for the disorderly withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
"If the story of the "stupid" General Mark Milley, the same failed leader who organized the worst withdrawal of troops from the country, Afghanistan, in the history of the United States, leaving behind many dead and wounded soldiers, many American citizens and the latest and most advanced military equipment in the world worth $85 billion, as well as the reputation of our country, is true, then I assume that he should be tried for treason, because he dealt with his Chinese counterpart behind the president's back and told China that he would notify them "about the attack"," Trump said.
The ex-president's comments came after a number of American media outlets that received copies of the book" The Threat " reported that Milli called his Chinese counterpart Li Zocheng on October 30, 2020 - four days before the election, and also after Trump lost the election - on January 8 to assure him that Trump has no plans to attack China.
As The New York Times reported, according to the book, US intelligence a few days before the 2020 election showed that the Chinese believed that Trump was preparing to launch a military strike to provoke an international crisis.
