In making a point that last week’s suspected Chinese spy balloon floating over the United States was not unprecedented, the Defense Department made a stunning revelation: Other balloons had been detected three times over the continental U.S. during the Trump administration and one time earlier in the Biden administration.

Trump administration officials were quick to deny having any knowledge about the incidents. They defended themselves, as Republicans attacked President Joe Biden for waiting several days before having the balloon shot down.

“[N]ow they are putting out that a Balloon was put up by China during the Trump Administration, in order to take the ‘heat’ off the slow moving Biden fools,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Sunday. “China had too much respect for ‘TRUMP’ for this to have happened, and it NEVER did. JUST FAKE DISINFORMATION!”

Former Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CNN: “I don’t ever recall somebody coming into my office or reading anything that the Chinese had a surveillance balloon above the United States. I would remember that for sure.”

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, former National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe and former national security adviser John Bolton were among other onetime Trump officials to reject the claim or say they were unaware of it.

However, a senior administration official said Sunday that the Trump balloon transits only became known after Trump left office. 

That explanation did not satisfy Bolton, who told CNN on Monday morning: “If it wasn't detected when it happened, how did we detect it more recently? Did the Biden administration invent a time machine?”

On Monday, current White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan offered an explanation. He said improvements ordered by Biden to strengthen defenses against Chinese espionage helped identify last week’s balloon and determine that similar flights were conducted at multiple points during the Trump administration.

The U.S. “enhanced our surveillance of our territorial airspace. We enhanced our capacity to be able to detect things that the Trump administration was unable to detect,” Sullivan said at an event hosted by the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition.

Sullivan did not explain what specifically allowed the U.S. to detect and track the latest balloon where the previous administration might not have. Officials have said, without elaborating, that China has flown similar balloons over parts of five continents in recent years.

None of the previous known U.S. incursions lasted as long as last week’s, which traveled for seven days from Alaska to South Carolina before being shot down Saturday off the shore Myrtle Beach, the Defense Department said.

It’s not clear if Biden was aware of the earlier balloon during his presidency over the continental U.S. There were also reportedly balloons spotted last year near Hawaii and Guam.

Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said Sunday that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s office told him previous balloon activity was detected multiple times over Florida and once over Texas.

Any insinuation that Trump had known about balloons flying over the U.S. and did not act would have undoubtedly watered down Republican criticism of Biden’s handling of last week’s situation.

“It’s not just the balloon,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told CNN. “It’s the message they are trying to send the world: ‘We can do whatever we want and America can’t stop us.’”

“Xi tested the political will to respond and we failed,” Waltz wrote in an op-ed for Fox News.

Austin said Saturday that Biden on Wednesday authorized shooting down the balloon as soon as it could be done without endangering Americans in its path. Military leaders “had determined downing the balloon while over land posed an undue risk to people across a wide area due to the size and altitude of the balloon and its surveillance payload,” Austin said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a news conference Sunday the GOP criticism was “political, and premature” and that the U.S. had “sent a clear message to China that this is not acceptable.”

“President Biden and his team were calm, calculating, and effective,” Schumer concluded,” Schumer added.