US Defense Secretary Required to Testify on Hospital Visit Concealment

On Thursday, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee requested Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to testify before the committee regarding the failure to timely disclose his recent hospitalization, even to President Joe Biden. Austin had been hospitalized receiving treatment for prostate cancer since the beginning of the year. The delay in informing Biden about his hospitalization drew criticism from lawmakers, and the White House was taken by surprise by the news. He spent two weeks in the hospital due to complications from prostate cancer surgery he underwent on December 22 of last year, with reports of the surgery initially kept quiet. He was discharged from the hospital on Monday to his home in Virginia. Congressman Mike Rogers wrote to Austin on Thursday, “Congress needs to understand what happened and know who made the decisions to prevent the disclosure of the Secretary's whereabouts.”