Asked on CBS’s Face the Nation if there had been a specific or tangible threat, Esper said: “I didn’t see one with regard to four embassies.”

Trump’s claim on Fox News on Friday prompted fierce criticism from members of Congress who were not briefed before the strike and who say such a threat was not mentioned in a classified briefing on Wednesday.

On Sunday, Esper added: “What I’m saying is I share the president’s view that, probably, my expectation was that they were going to go after our embassies.

“We had information that there was going to be an attack within a matter of days that would be broad in scale, in other words more than one country, and that it would be bigger than previous attacks, likely going to take us into open hostilities with Iran.

“We had every expectation to believe this would happen. That threat has been disrupted.”

Suleimani was killed by a drone strike at Baghdad airport on 2 January. Iran responded with missile strikes on US bases in Iraq. It has also admitted accidentally shooting down a Ukrainian airliner over Tehran, killing 176 people.

Esper later appeared to row back, telling CNN’s State of the Union “what the president said with regard to the four embassies is what I believe as well”.

“There was intelligence that there was an intent to target the US embassy in Baghdad,” he said.

However, Esper’s insistence that such “exquisite intelligence” was shared with the bipartisan Gang of Eight congressional leaders in a briefing was immediately dismissed by Adam Schiff, Democratic chair of the House intelligence committee.

“He’s just plain wrong,” Schiff told CBS. “There was no discussion that, ‘These are the four embassies that are being targeted and we have exquisite intelligence that shows these or those are specific targets.’

“[And] I don’t recall there being a specific discussion about bombing the US embassy in Baghdad. The briefing was more along the lines of what Secretary [of State Mike] Pompeo admitted the other day, that, ‘We don’t know precisely where and we don’t know precisely when.’

“That’s not an intelligence conclusion. That’s Pompeo’s personal opinion.”

Schiff also had harsh words for Trump.

“When you hear the president out there on Fox,” he said, “he’s fudging the intelligence.”

Trump has also mentioned the threat to the Baghdad embassy as a motivation for the strike on Suleimani, but congressional criticism of his attempts to justify precipitating a crisis with Iran remains.

After the classified briefing on Wednesday, Senator Mike Lee of Utah voiced rare Republican criticism of the president.

“I didn’t hear anything about [the four embassies claim],” Lee told CNN on Sunday, appearing to back up Schiff’s assertion. “And several of my colleagues have said the same so that was news to me. It certainly wasn’t something I recall being mentioned at the classified briefing.”

Pompeo has claimed Congress was briefed fully on the rationale for the strike on Suleimani, “the most perilous chapter so far in Trump’s three years in office”, according to a detailed chronology of the crisis published by the New York Times on Saturday.

“I’m sure there was a mention of at least one embassy in that briefing,” Lee said, “because there had been an attack on one of our embassies [in Baghdad, by pro-Iranian militia] leading up to the strike on Suleimani.”

Asked if he agreed with the former Republican now independent congressman Justin Amash, that Trump was guilty of an abuse of his power in ordering the strike without informing Congress, Lee said he did not “doubt there was an imminent attack but it’s frustrating not to get the details of the intelligence behind it”.

The Kentucky senator Rand Paul was more blunt than his fellow Republican on NBC’s Meet the Press, claiming Pompeo had given “contradictory information”.

“We’ve heard from the secretary of state that they don’t know where or when, but it was imminent,” Paul said. “He thinks he can square the circle but to me it seems pretty inconsistent.”

Robert O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser, parroted the “exquisite intelligence” talking point.

“We had exquisite intelligence to show they were looking at US facilities throughout the region and they wanted to inflict casualties on American soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, as well as diplomats,” he told NBC.

“The threat was imminent, I saw the evidence,” O’Brien added, declining to elaborate because he said the information was classified. Pressed on his definition of imminent, he said: “Soon, quickly.”

On ABC’s This Week, Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi accepted Iran had malignant intentions towards the US but questioned the president’s handling of the crisis.

“A lot of bad actors are doing bad things and threatening bad things to us, we know that,” she said, “Iran being one of them and its proxies doing bad things to our interests and the world.

“But how do we deal with that in a way that calms rather than escalates?”

Trump, meanwhile, continued to seek to capitalise on protests in Iran which broke out after the regime admitted shooting down the airliner.

“To the leaders of Iran,” the president tweeted, “DO NOT KILL YOUR PROTESTERS. Thousands have already been killed or imprisoned by you, and the World is watching. More importantly, the USA is watching. Turn your internet back on and let reporters roam free! Stop the killing of your great Iranian people!”

Christopher Berak was convicted last month for first-degree murder and the murder of a police officer, Fox 2 Detroit reported.

“I’m sorry for what I did. I hope that they’re all doing OK,” Berak had said before sentencing, per the news outlet.

Berak was accused of leading Lapeer County deputies on a car chase and deliberately hitting the cop at an intersection.

Deputy Eric Overall, 50, a 22-year veteran of the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, was hit outside his car on Thanksgiving 2017 while deploying “stop sticks” to deflate Berak’s tires.

Berak’s car rolled over, and he was arrested.

Berak’s defense said he had no intention of striking the deputy and was reacting to the stop sticks on the road.

Earlier in the day, Berak had told authorities at the Lapeer County jail he was “God” and came to break out one of his “sons.”

“He was a man of honor and integrity. On and off duty, he always strived to do the right thing. … Eric had a big heart and wore it on his sleeve,” Overall’s wife, Sonya, said about her husband at the sentencing this week.

“My father impacted so many lives, like Sonya just said — raised me and my brother up to be the best men we could be,” the cop’s son, Kenneth Overall, said. “My father was a great man, always selfless. That Thanksgiving morning, it will be a day we’ll never forget. Every morning, every day we relive it.”

“We wish we had him back,” he added.

Iran’s foreign minister and the White House both announced that Princeton University graduate student Xiyue Wang was exchanged for scientist Massoud Soleimani.

Brian Hook, the U.S. special representative for Iran, accompanied the Iranian scientist to Switzerland to make the exchange and will return with Wang, a U.S. official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The swap took place in Zurich and Hook and Wang are now en route to Landstuhl in Germany where Wang will be examined by doctors, the official said. Hook is expected to return to the U.S. from Germany alone, as Wang is expected to be evaluated for several days.

“After more than three years of being held a prisoner in Iran, Xiyue Wang is returning to the United States,” President Trump said in a statement released by the White House on Saturday. “The highest priority of the United States is the safety and well-being of its citizens. Freeing Americans held captive is of vital importance to my Administration, and we will continue to work hard to bring home all our citizens wrongfully held captive overseas.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday that Wang was on his way back to the United States, where he will soon be reunited with his wife and son.

“The United States will not rest until we bring every American detained in Iran and around the world back home to their loved ones,” he said in a statement.

Police had reported the children of 36-year-old Lisa Snyder, Conner and Brinley, had been found hanged with a dog leash in the basement of their Albany Township home on Sept. 23. Snyder had suggested to a 911 dispatcher that Conner was suicidal because of bullying and took Brinley with him because he “didn’t want to go alone.”

Snyder’s arrest was announced Monday by Berks County prosecutors. She was arrested at her home.

“This was a horrific, tragic incident,” District Attorney John Adams told a news conference, Fox 32 reported.

Snyder was also charged with child endangerment and having sex with a dog, the Allentown Morning Call reported.

The paper quoted Adams as telling reporters, “Eight-year-olds, generally, that I am aware of, do not commit suicide so of course, we had questions almost immediately.”

He said that Snyder never returned to the basement where paramedics worked to save her children after she called 911 to report finding Conner and Brinley hanging, the paper reported.

“I would agree that we all may think that a mother of children who are found hanging would make every effort possible to save them,” Adams said. “That was not done in this situation.”

The paper, citing court documents, reported that authorities said the children’s deaths happened a day after Snyder searched “hanging yourself” on Google and visited a website detailing an effective way of hanging a person.

The court papers also quoted authorities as saying that Snyder also conducted searches for “how long to die” from carbon monoxide and for “almost got away with it,” a reference to a true crime television series on the cable channel Investigation Discovery, the paper reported.

The paper also cited an arrest affidavit which stated that in the weeks leading up to the hangings, Snyder sent at least three explicit photos of herself engaged in sexual acts with a black and white dog to an individual who was not named.

According to court records Conner and Brinley were “hanging approximately three feet apart from a single wired cable with a plastic coating,” Fox 32 reported.

Investigators said the dog leash was purchased that morning and was wrapped around the main support beam in the basement and two dining room chairs were knocked over next to the children, according to the station.

The station quoted authorities as saying that a person who lived in Snyder’s house rejected the notion that Conner was suicidal or had been bullied.

Additionally, the station reported that officials said they spoke to numerous school officials, family members and classmates and found no evidence of bullying.

After his alleged racial homophobic attack, Fox decided that Jussie Smollett character, Jamal, will no longer be part of the series moving forward and this was due to the fact that the police came out with a statement saying the attack was orchestrated by the actor himself.

Now close sources on the show are saying that cast members including Taraji P. Henson (Cookie) and Terrence Howard (Lucious Lyon) believes that Jussie deserves a second chance and he should be included back into the show full time.

Just last week, Fox made an announcement that Jussie got an extension through season 6 but the network do not plan on bringing his character back to the show.