People light candles beside a poster of a top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani during a mourning ceremony in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 3, 2020. An attack near Baghdad International Airport on Friday has killed Qasem Soleimani, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhamdis, the deputy top leader of Iraq's paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces. Xinhua / Ahmad Halabisaz / Getty Images

The Trump administration made its case on Capitol Hill for killing a powerful Iranian general, but Democrats said Wednesday's classified briefings were short on details and left them wondering about the president's next steps in the volatile Mideast. Democrats said that by not disclosing many details of the threat that prompted the U.S. to kill Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, President Donald Trump is asking the American public to trust the very intelligence reports he has often disparaged. Top Trump administration officials have repeatedly stressed that the undisclosed intelligence about imminent threats to Americans in the Mideast required action — that the president would have been negligent not to strike Iran. But Democrats want more information about what led Trump to kill Soleimani — a man whose hands were "drenched in both American and Iranian blood," according to Trump.

"Trust us. That's really what it all boils down to," Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said after the classified briefing by top administration officials. "But I'm not sure that 'trust me' is a satisfactory answer for me," Engel said. He added that his committee would hold hearings next week "to try to get to the bottom of this." Democrats also are skeptical of the timing of the strike, which comes in the run-up to a Senate impeachment trial and at the start of a presidential election year. It's the same skepticism that some Republicans expressed in 1998 when they accused President Bill Clinton of using military strikes on Iraq to interrupt and delay a pending impeachment resolution against him. Trump administration officials this week gave the top four leaders in the House and Senate and the chairmen and vice-chairmen of the intelligence committees of both chambers a classified briefing about the intelligence that prompted Trump to order the fatal strike against Soleimani. Other lawmakers, including Engel, received less-detailed, classified briefings Wednesday. A top defender of the president, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said afterward that "there's no question" the killing was justified. Democrats weren't convinced. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., said she learned nothing from the briefing about Trump's strategy in the region. "I heard more historical perspective ... as opposed to being able to give us the evidence of what was the reason for reacting as they did, now." Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., called the briefing "profoundly unconvincing" and said "no case was made" that the Iranian attacks were imminent. "I leave this (briefing) more troubled than I went into it." The White House also has ignored calls to declassify the written notification that Trump sent to Congress after the military operation, as required by the 1973 War Powers Act. Some lawmakers have said it was "vague" and inconsistent with details other administrations have provided Congress about military operations. They wondered why it had to be classified in the first place.