Sen. Adam Schiff says Pete Hegseth should testify on Starlink slowdown in Ukraine

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should testify before the Senate on the Starlink satellite limitations that disrupted Ukrainian military operations.If Democrats retake the Senate, Schiff told “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker, “Defense Secretary Hegseth should be brought in. Anyone who has knowledge of what happened.”Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on “Meet the Press” last week that the Ukrainian government believed the decision to limit Starlink came from the U.S. government. Zelenskyy said at the time that “it was the message from American government to limit this speed, and technically SpaceX did it.”The Wall Street Journal reported last week that President Donald Trump called Musk and asked him to lift his company’s satellite service restrictions.Ukraine said Saturday that Starlink and Starshield, its military network, were working at high speeds again. Last week, the systems were disrupted, and Ukraine said the disruptions made it harder to intercept incoming Russian attacks.“You’ve got the president saying one thing, you’ve got Elon Musk saying another thing, you have them both saying different things at different times,” Schiff said. “Somebody is lying here. Maybe they’re all lying in different ways, but we need to find out.”Ukrainian soldiers walk past a Starlink satellite internet receiver in 2024.Scott Peterson / GettyThe disruptions to Starlink, which is run by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, led to rising tensions with the U.S. amid questions about who may have ordered the slowdown of the satellite services. Overnight, Musk accused Ukraine in posts to X of violating “Starlink terms of service” by using the system for offensive strikes. He said the “loophole was closed” and said that the company “simply enforced our terms of service when they were bypassed.”Musk previously said that limits on “speed or usage” of Starshield are “decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.”Schiff said Sunday that “the world’s richest person shouldn’t be controlling our national security interests.”“That is a spectacular threat to our national security,” he said. “If it is true, we should find out.”Schiff referenced Musk’s overnight posts about Starlink’s policies, saying that “something changed within the last week.”“What was it that changed?” Schiff said. “Why did it change? What impact is it having on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself? Is this in our national security interests? These are the questions we should ask, which frankly Republicans have been unwilling to ask.”On Thursday, Trump said Musk restored Starlink in Ukraine. One day later, though, Ukraine denied that the satellite system was working properly. The Trump administration has denied that it requested changes to Starlink’s operation in Ukraine.“The reporting out there was that somehow the United States government was denying them something they needed in order to defend their country,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week. “That’s not true. That’s not accurate.”