WASHINGTON — Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., aggressively confronted Biden administration officials Wednesday during a classified briefing on Israel, according to a Democratic lawmaker who was in the room and another source.
Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., and a source familiar with the situation said that Van Orden approached the Biden officials during a question-and-answer portion of the briefing. Chu and the other source said that instead of asking questions, the Wisconsin Republican attacked the administration’s presentation and shouted obscenities at the officials.
The officials conducting the briefing included Victoria Nuland, the acting deputy secretary of state; Sasha Baker, acting undersecretary of defense for policy; and Morgan Muir, deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration.
Politico first reported on Van Orden’s outburst.
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The lawmaker’s eruption prompted Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., who was slated to ask the next question, to apologize for his GOP colleague’s behavior. Crow’s apology drew widespread applause from the crowd of lawmakers inside the room, Chu said.
“He was really quite obnoxious, saying that they had nothing of value to say,” Chu said of Van Orden. “In fact, afterwards, Jason Crow apologized to them and said basically that it was uncalled for and everybody in the audience clapped.”
Van Orden accused the officials of not understanding the situation in Israel, Chu said.
“He said that he had done two tours in the Middle East,” she said. “He was basically implying that he was the expert and they were not.”
Van Orden, who has served in Congress since January, is a retired Navy SEAL who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While Rep. Pramilia Jayapal, D-Wash., did not mention Van Orden by name, she told reporters that she decided to leave the briefing early because the subject matter became too political.
“People want to call out failures of the administration in a time when we really, as a country, need to be united and it makes it very difficult to have bipartisanship when you have one party that is simply focused on dividing at every term,” Jayapal said.
Chu said that despite Van Orden’s comments, she felt that the briefing was useful and that his harsh tone was not appropriate under the current circumstances.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on the incident during the briefing with reporters on Wednesday.
Van Orden’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Over the summer, Van Orden was condemned by Democrats and fellow Republicans after he allegedly yelled at a group of Senate pages. They had been lying on the floor of the Capitol Rotunda, taking photos of the dome’s ceiling 470 feet above them, a Senate page tradition, according to former pages.
Van Orden had been leading a tour at the time and called the pages “jackasses” and “pieces of s—,” according to a transcript issued by a page minutes after the incident and first reported by The Hill newspaper.
Monica Alba and Frank Thorp V contributed.