jupiter said:
to state (what should be) the obvious
Did he break the rules? Jennifer Griffin of Fox reports differently
But Fox News spoke with multiple individuals who were in the room during the two phone calls Milley had with Li. The calls were coordinated with the Defense secretary's office.
"They were not secret," a U.S. official told Fox News about the calls, which took place over video teleconference.
Fox News has learned there were about 15 people present for the calls. Sources told Fox News that there were multiple notetakers present, and said
the calls were both conducted with full knowledge of then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper and then-acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller. A U.S. official familiar said Milley routinely calls his Chinese and Russian counterparts, and
explained that he has been speaking to Li for about five years. The source said this is normal for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to the official, there was full civilian oversight of the phone calls, including a representative of the State Department and Milley's political adviser. Notes of the calls were taken and a summary note was sent to the Defense secretary and the intelligence community, the official said. "This was not done like some sort of conspiratorial thing," another participant who overheard the conversation told Fox News.
According to those familiar, the October phone call had several topics, one of which focused on the election. The Chinese, according to the sources, were concerned about, what they saw as, instability in the U.S. system. Milley, according to a source, reassured his counterpart that the U.S. is a stable democracy.
Another source said the call was in the context of assuring adversaries that the United States were not planning any military action.
Fox News has learned that Milley had up to 20 phone calls with Li and NATO allies in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot in an effort to reassure them that the U.S. government was stable, and to reassure China that the U.S. did not plan a surprise attack all in an effort to lower tensions with China during the interim period between the election and inauguration, and to project stability so that adversaries of the U.S. did not take advantage of the domestic turmoil during that period.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/milley-chinese-counterpart-phone-calls-senate-testimony