Trump Faces Bipartisan Scrutiny Over Russia Bounty Claims
Trump Sows Doubt as Russia Denials Diverge From Aides’ Actions
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump is dismissing reports that Russia paid bounties to Afghan militants for killing American troops as a “hoax,” even as his administration has briefed U.S. allies on the threat and weighed possible reprisals.
Trump continues to cast doubt on warnings by U.S. spy agencies about the bounties because some of his own intelligence officials have low confidence in the accuracy of the information, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The president asked one of his briefers, Beth Sanner, a CIA employee with three decades of experience, if she talked to him about the bounty allegations when they surfaced and she said no, one of the people said.
“From what I hear, and I hear it pretty good, the intelligence people, many of them, didn’t believe it happened at all,” Trump said Wednesday on Fox Business Network. “I think it’s a hoax.”
Yet hours earlier, his national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, said the CIA and the Pentagon were looking into the reports and taking steps to protect U.S. forces.
“We had options ready to go and the president was ready to take strong action, as he always is,” O’Brien said in an interview with Fox News, adding that because the allegations were disclosed to news organizations, “we may never know” if the reports were true.
The gap between what the president said and how his own top advisers handled the reports has fueled unusual scrutiny from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Many lawmakers are concerned that Trump remains too quick to dismiss negative information about Russia that comes from U.S. spy agencies.
‘Dereliction of Duty’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told MSNBC that Trump’s response to reports of Russian bounties for killing U.S. soldiers amounts to “dereliction of duty” by the commander-in-chief.
Pelosi and other lawmakers have demanded more information about the allegations and the administration’s handling of the reports.
Central Intelligence Agency Director Gina Haspel and National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone are scheduled to brief a group of congressional leaders known as the Gang of Eight, according to White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. A senior House aide said the briefing would take place at 11:30 a.m. Thursday.
As Trump faced scrutiny over whether he’s taking the allegations seriously, he told Fox Business that “Russia would hear about it” if the reports of bounties proved true. The comments marked the first time he raised the prospect of retaliation against Moscow.
Russian officials have denied the allegations.
Lawmakers’ Concerns
Democrats who received a briefing on Tuesday at the White House said afterward that Trump’s response suggests he has been compromised by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some Republicans have defended the president, but others have said he should have at least been briefed on the intelligence and should respond swiftly moving forward.
“If reports are true that Russia has been paying a bounty to the Taliban to kill American soldiers, this is a serious escalation,” Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said Wednesday on the Senate floor. “It demands a strong response, and I don’t mean a diplomatic response.”
Trump on Wednesday again dismissed the reports, in a tweet calling them a “fake news” that was “started to slander me & the Republican Party.” He said he was not briefed because there was “no corroborating evidence.”
While Trump’s advisers have not gone as far as the president to dismiss the accusations, they have also sought to downplay their veracity and shield Trump from the mounting political pressure.
Continuing Review
“It’s unverified intelligence that’s continually being assessed,” McEnany said when asked about the president’s message to families who fear their relatives serving in the military might have been killed in connection with the alleged plot.
She said the Pentagon does not know of any Americans who have been killed in Afghanistan by people who received Russian bounties.
The intelligence assessments were first reported by the New York Times, which was followed by other news organizations. The Times reported on Tuesday that U.S. officials’ suspicions were bolstered by intercepts of data showing large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency to a Taliban-connected account. The U.S. has had the intelligence about the bounties as far back as 2019, according to The Associated Press.
But there was reportedly no consensus about whether Russia paid bounties for the killing of Americans in Afghanistan. The National Security Agency strongly disputed the finding of other intelligence agencies, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Former national security officials said that it’s not always the case that intelligence must be proved true before it is presented to senior people in the government, including the president. John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, questioned whether it was an attempt to shield Trump from information he did not want to hear.
‘Uninterested in Learning’
“What I’m talking about here is not ‘Does the president read lengthy briefing papers?,’ ‘Does he get it via movies?’ and that sort of thing,” Bolton said in an interview Wednesday on Bloomberg Surveillance on Bloomberg Television and Radio. “The question for Donald Trump is does he get it at all, and I think he’s uninterested in learning. I think that facts that are inconvenient for him often don’t stick, despite repeated tellings.”
Bolton expressed agreement with former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who served in President Barack Obama’s administration and wrote in a New York Times op-ed that she would have “walked straight into the Oval Office to brief the president” if she had “raw” intelligence Russia was offering money to kill U.S. military service members.
“Contrary to the spin-masters in the White House today, I would not have waited until we had absolute certainty,” she wrote.
The Times and other news organizations reported that the information was included in the President’s Daily Brief -- a written intelligence report given to the president -- in late February.
Verbal Briefing
But a former administration official said that if top intelligence officials viewed the information as solid, the president would have received a verbal briefing. Trump is not known to be an avid reader of his briefing materials.
He has long expressed distrust about the intelligence community, especially its findings on Russia.
Trump dismissed the federal investigation into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election as the effort of a “deep state” of career government officials out to get him. He has refused to endorse the intelligence community’s unanimous conclusion that Russia interfered in the election to help his campaign, publicly casting doubt on it during a July 2018 press conference with Putin in Helsinki.
McEnany on Tuesday, without citing evidence, floated the possibility that a group of “rogue intelligence officers” leaked the Russian bounty story to target Trump.
Asked on Wednesday afternoon whether Trump has confidence in the intelligence community’s findings about Russia, McEnany said, “Yes, he does.”
The administration’s response to the story makes the U.S. vulnerable to the Kremlin, regardless of whether it is true, Bolton said.
“What it tells the Russians is that we are in disarray and ripe for this kind of provocation, not just in Afghanistan but in many, many places around the world,” Bolton told Bloomberg Surveillance.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.