Democrats’ comments on Chinese spy balloon did not age well after report of real-time intelligence gathering

Several Democrat lawmakers’ previous comments on the Chinese spy balloon that traveled across the continental United States in February did not appear to age well amid new information on the intelligence it gathered.

According to several current and former U.S. officials in a Monday report, the Biden administration struggled to block the intelligence gathering of the Chinese spy balloon that ultimately fed information to Beijing in real time.

Montana Democrat Senator Jon Tester, a critic of the administration's handling of the balloon, said in a February CNN interview that the balloon "doesn't put our national security at risk."

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After reading the report, the Montana senator tweeted on Monday that China’s spy balloon intended to violate U.S. airspace and that he intends to hold the Biden administration "accountable."

Tester reiterated the tweet in a statement to Fox News Digital, saying we "knew all along that China’s invasion of our airspace was no accident."

"There’s nothing more important than keeping America safe, and I’ll keep holding the Biden Administration accountable to ensure Montanans’ freedom and privacy are protected," Tester said.

Tester's office also pointed to the senator's interview with Fox News' Neil Cavuto where Cavuto read off a statement from Tester saying the "provocation is completely unacceptable, and I am in close contact with Department of Defense and Intelligence officials."

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"We are still waiting for real answers on how this happened and what steps the Administration took to protect our country, and I will hold everyone accountable until I get them." Tester said in the quote. "I will always defend Montana and our national security from hostile adversaries like China."

The Montana Democrat's office also highlighted Tester's bipartisan resolution with GOP Senator Susan Collins of Maine condemning the spy balloon that passed the Senate unanimously.

Additionally, the senator published tweet announcing his meeting with Air Force Secretary "Frank Kendall and our Air Force top brass" and that he was looking "forward to speaking with servicemembers about DOD's investigation into cases of rare cancers, the Chinese spy balloon response, and what's needed to keep this country safe."

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) took aim at Tester in a statement to Fox News Digital for his comments about the spy balloon’s national security risk.

"First, Jon Tester said the Chinese spy balloon wasn’t a national security risk," NRSC spokeswoman Maggie Abboud told Fox News Digital. "Now, he’s saying he knew it was a threat all along."

"He's a phony politician who can't keep his story straight," Abboud said.

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy downplayed the public outcry about the Chinese spy balloon in February, tweeting that he hoped "everyone understands the performative unseriousness of Shoot the Balloon Down twitter" and called it "not real" and "all theater."

"Man, never ceases to amaze me how humorless this site can be," Murphy wrote in response to a now-deleted tweet. "Yes, I think the right wing was way overhyped about this and also had no idea about the complicated security dynamics at play."

"Biden was going to handle this, and the arm chair Balloon Twitter Panic was overwrought," he continued.

Murphy’s office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, called the Chinese spy operation a "great concern" but defended the Biden administration’s decision to shoot down the spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina after it had finished its flight.

Brown said the debris could have fallen into populated areas if shot down over the mainland.

"The Defense Department is on it. Our intelligence people are on it. The Secretary of State canceled his trip to China because of it. The President of the United States is talking to the Chinese directly. We all know that this is absolutely unacceptable," Brown said.

Brown’s office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Arizona Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego, who is running for Senate against independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, said in February he believed the Chinese spy balloon was appropriately handled but slammed the subsequent shots at other unidentified objects flying over U.S. airspace.

"I think the subsequent balloons, I think everyone’s kind of overthinking it and they’re overreacting," he said. "There is a lot of weather balloons out there that are benign, that are done by private companies, that are done by private citizens."

Gallego’s office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

The NBC report points out that China could control the balloon and make multiple passes over sites before transmitting the information back to China in real time, according to the three officials.

The same officials told NBC that China may have gathered more intelligence from military sites had it not been for the Biden administrations attempt to block the electronic signals from the balloon.

Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh was questioned extensively about the Chinese balloon during a press briefing on Monday.

She reiterated comments made early on that the balloon could hover and be maneuvered so it purposely followed along a specific track.

"What we did do is take precautionary steps to limit the intelligence value that it would be able to collect," Singh said, "...we took steps to protect our own military installations from foreign intelligence collection."

She went on to say because of the steps taken, the U.S. was able to prevent the transmission of certain aspects of the sites, but in terms of what was transmitted back to China, she could not answer.

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"We’re still doing an assessment of what exactly the intel was the China was able to gather," Singh said. "But we do know that the steps that we took provided little additive value for what they’ve been able to collect."

The data, she said, is being analyzed in Quantico, Virginia, though when it will be available is unknown.

Fox News Digital's Greg Wehner contributed reporting.