Fox News national security correspondent debunks claim that Biden knew about Kabul bomber and refused to act

A Fox News reporter is pushing back against claims that President Joe Biden had refused to order a drone strike on a suicide bomber who killed 13 U.S. service members in Afghanistan.

During a recent interview with the Spanish-language news outlet Univision, former Army Green Beret and Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roger Pardo-Maurer, claimed that the Department of Defense had prior knowledge of the suicide bomber who carried out the attack at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, and scrambled a Predator drone only to order it to stand down as it locked on its target.

"What is being said by people who were involved is that the Department of Defense already knew who the bomber was, and when [the Kabul attack would happen], and that a Predator drone had a lock on him, and that they refused to grant permission to fire upon that bomber. [Permission] was requested, and was denied. Why? Because we are in this process of negotiating with the Taliban, who aren't even in control of their own government or their own people," Pardo-Maurer said, as reported by the conservative outlet Newsbusters.

Newsbusters' Jorge Bonilla tweeted out the article he authored promoting Pardo-Maurer's claim, asking, "For how long in advance did we have eyes on the Kabul bomber *prior* to his arrival at [Hamid Karzai International Airport], and who issued the stand down order to the Predator drone operator that had a lock on the Kabul bomber?" The conservative website RedState also picked up the story, which was promoted by RealClearPolitics co-founder and president Tom Bevan.

"If this report is true - and it remains a big 'if' - it would be catastrophic for the Biden administration," Bevan tweeted.

That's when Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin chimed in, putting a damper on right-wing media's latest "bombshell" report.

"The problem is this report is NOT true," Griffin wrote while retweeting Bevan. "Spoke to multiple senior leaders today in chain of command and I am told on authority this DID NOT happen. On the record from Gen McKenzie Spox: Capt Bill Urban, 'This is NOT true. It never happened.'"