John Kirby, President Biden's National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, got stuck in the hot seat on Fox News Sunday this week to answer for the rushed and inconclusive investigation into who brought cocaine into the West Wing and how they were able to get a baggie of the illicit drug into the White House complex. His response, indirectly, to criticism from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was as unsatisfying as the outcome of the investigation.
Noting that the Cocainegate investigation was "'case closed' in less than two weeks," Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream asked if Kirby could "understand that Americans, many of them, first of all, are aghast that there was ever cocaine in the White House" in addition to "reports of marijuana a couple of times found there last year as well."
Repeating a common line from the White House briefing room, Kirby initially responded to questions from FNS host Shannon Bream by saying he "can't really speak to" the U.S. Secret Service's investigation of Cocainegate. He did, however, repeat the White House's latest story of where the cocaine was found — "in a visitor's lobby area just outside the main West Wing," in a "highly trafficked area" — minimizing the fact that the cocaine was, in fact, found inside the West Wing just steps from the Situation Room. If that's not the "main West Wing," it's hard to imagine what is. What's more, "highly trafficked" sounds like Grand Central Station, something the West Wing is not.
Still, Kirby insisted to Bream that Cocainegate investigators "did the best they could to to track down how it got there and who it might have belonged to" the culprit.
WATCH: Part two of our exclusive interview with NSC Communications Coordinator John Kirby on the Secret Service ending its investigation into cocaine found at the White House. Tune in! pic.twitter.com/IjB0hKJYOR
— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) July 16, 2023
But did they?
First, the investigation was apparently sped along — with the initial end-date moved up by a "couple of weeks" — according to reporting during the investigation by NBC News. In total, the investigation lasted just 11 days.
Second, there were reportedly no interviews conducted with White House staff or those who would have presumably been determined to have accessed the West Wing in the days leading up to the discovery of the cocaine.
Third, there were apparently no security cameras with a view of the cubby in which the cocaine was found — but were other cameras nearby not helpful to narrow down a list of people to pursue as potential culprits?
The federal government swept together a tranche of data on individuals who used debit cards or had their cell phones on near the Capitol on January 6, yet the Secret Service doesn't know who was in the White House on a given weekend, where they were in the complex, or what they did while inside?
Despite the fact that the Biden administration said it was "not assisting" with the investigation of Cocainegate, Kirby said on Sunday "of course, look, we take this seriously," adding cocaine being found in the West Wing is "not the kind of thing we want to see happen." What a relief?
"Nobody's happy about this," Kirby said in concluding his comments to Bream. But there's at least one person who's definitely happy about the outcome: whoever brought and forgot cocaine into the West Wing and will, as things stand now, not face any consequences.
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