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

Sen. Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should testify before the Senate about Starlink satellite limitations that have disrupted Ukrainian military operations.

If Democrats take back the Senate, Schiff told “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker, “Secretary of Defense Hegseth should be brought in. Anyone who has knowledge of what happened.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week on “Meet the Press” 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 of the US government to limit that speed, and technically SpaceX did that.”

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that President Donald Trump called Musk and asked him to lift restrictions on his company’s satellite services.

Ukraine said on Saturday that Starlink and Starshield, its military network, were working at high speed again. Last week, systems were disrupted and Ukraine said the disruptions made it harder to intercept Russian attacks.

“The president says one thing, Elon Musk says another, they both say different things at different times,” Schiff said. “Someone is lying here. Maybe they’re all lying in different ways, but we have to find out.”

Disruptions at Starlink, run by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, have led to growing tensions with the United States, amid questions over who is behind the slowdown in satellite services. Overnight, Musk accused Ukraine in posts on X of violating “Starlink’s terms of service” by using the system for offensive strikes. He said the “loophole had been closed” and the company “simply enforced our terms of service where they were circumvented.”

Musk previously said Starshield’s “speed or usage” limits were “decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.”

Schiff said Sunday that “the richest person in the world should not control our national security interests.”

“This is a spectacular threat to our national security,” he said. “If it’s true, we should find out.”

Schiff referred to Musk’s overnight posts about Starlink’s policies, saying “something has changed over the last week.”

“What’s changed?” Schiff said. “Why has this changed? How does this impact Ukraine’s ability to defend itself? Is it in the interests of our national security? These are the questions we should be asking, which, frankly, the Republicans have been unwilling to ask.”

On Thursday, Trump said Musk had restored Starlink in Ukraine. But a day later, Ukraine denied that the satellite system was working properly. The Trump administration has denied requesting changes to Starlink’s operations in Ukraine.

“According to reports, the United States government was denying them something they needed to defend their country,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week. “That’s not true. That’s not accurate.”