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NEW: White House Smacks Down CNN’s ‘Fake News’ Report On Iran Strikes

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The White House is pushing back forcefully on a CNN report that key members of Congress were not notified prior to President Donald Trump’s decision to drop a dozen “bunker buster” bombs on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.

The operation, known as “Midnight Hammer,” occurred with advance warning given to U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declared on Sunday. Both Democrats were contacted before the first bombs landed in Iran, where they targeted the three facilities.

CNN reported Sunday that House Majority Leader Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) were briefed on the pending strike, but not their Democratic counterparts.

Leavitt called the report “fake news” in a social media post on Sunday.

“This is Fake News. The White House made bipartisan courtesy calls to Congressional Leadership and spoke to @SenSchumer before the strike. @RepJeffries could not be reached until after, but he was briefed. @CNN please retract,” Leavitt wrote.

CNN also reported that Democratic Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Rep. Jim Hines (D-CT), who are ranking members on intelligence committees in the Senate and House, respectively, were also not consulted.

None of the Democratic leaders mentioned in the CNN report confirmed to Fox News whether they had received a briefing from the White House prior to the strike. In a post on social media, Schumer called on Congress to enforce the War Powers Act and accused President Trump of acting “unilaterally.”

“No president should be allowed to unilaterally march this nation into something as consequential as war with erratic threats and no strategy,” Schumer said.

Appearing on Fox Monday morning, Leavitt credited Trump with doing “what other presidents dreamed about” by taking Iran’s nuclear weapons program off the table.

“This is an operation that presidents of the past have dreamed about, but no president had the guts to actually do it, but President Trump did, not just to the state of Israel, but to the United States and the rest of the world,” she said.

The strike was still fresh on President Trump’s mind Monday when he floated on social media the possibility of “regime change” in Iran, where senior officials near the country’s supreme leader say they are contemplating all options in response to the strike, including removing him.

Leavitt told CBS on Monday that the White House is confident the three Iranian nuclear sites were “completely and totally obliterated.”

“We are confident, yes, that Iran’s nuclear sites were completely and totally obliterated, as the president said in his address to the nation on Saturday night, and we have a high degree of confidence that where those strikes took place is where Iran’s enriched uranium was stored,” she said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urged caution, however, saying it was “too early” to determine if the U.S. arsenal of bunker buster bombs penetrated the Fordow enrichment plant, which is buried beneath 80 meters of concrete deep in a mountainside.