A second briefing on the explosive details of a plot to kill Americans in Afghanistan only raised concerns President Donald Trump should have done more to respond.
DEMOCRATIC LAWMAKERS who attended a Tuesday morning White House briefing on reports that Russia paid Taliban militants to kill Americans in Afghanistan said the intelligence yields clear connections to Moscow, despite President Donald Trump’s repeated denials.
“There’s certainly evidence of Russian involvement,” Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the chairman of the influential House Armed Services Committee, told reporters shortly after the briefing ended. “And I think we should do more to pursue that and to hold the Russians accountable for their activity in Afghanistan.”
After The New York Times first documented explosive details of the bounty scheme with ties to the Russian intelligence agency GRU – later confirmed by other news outlets – Trump labeled the reporting as a “hoax.” He later confirmed that intelligence officials were aware of the reports but had not told him about them because they were not considered to be credible. White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany on Monday continued to undermine the reporting, saying the intelligence that supported it has yielded no consensus and reiterated that the president knew nothing about it.
Those assertions conflict with new reporting Tuesday morning, from the Times as well as the Associated Press, that intelligence pointing to the bounty scheme was included in Trump’s written briefings in February and perhaps as early as the beginning of 2019. The AP reported that then-national security adviser John Bolton told colleagues he had briefed Trump about the assessment in March of that year. The Times, citing officials familiar with the matter, said concerns about the bounty program centered in part on a car bomb that killed three Marines in April 2019.
Russia continues to deny the claims. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov referred reporters to Trump’s response and said the American president had never discussed the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Many members of Congress, including senior Republicans, have expressed concerns about the reports – both the Russian involvement as well as the apparent White House failure to respond.
“I want to understand how it’s conceivably possible that the president didn’t know,” GOP Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska said Monday, according to Politico. “Right now, I want to hear their plan for Taliban and GRU agents in body bags.”
Smith on Tuesday said that White House officials at the briefing focused on what Trump did not know about the intelligence – a framing that Smith said he had never experienced before in a classified meeting with a president’s staff.
“It’s troubling that so much of this swirls around what the president did or didn’t know, instead of addressing the issue,” Smith said. “It is disturbing. And I think we should figure out what is happening and put pressure on the Russians to stop.”
In statements late Monday night, the nation’s top intelligence leaders and a Pentagon spokesman appeared to confirm the intelligence assessment but said no clear conclusions about it have yet emerged. CIA Director Gina Haspel said the U.S. generally shares information about force protection with its allies – an apparent reference to reports that British officials knew about the intelligence that Trump claimed he did not.
“Hostile states’ use of proxies in war zones to inflict damage on U.S. interests and troops is a constant, longstanding concern,” Haspel, a career intelligence officer, said. “CIA will continue to pursue every lead; analyze the information we collect with critical, objective eyes; and brief reliable intelligence to protect U.S. forces deployed around the world.”
Newly appointed Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe faulted what he called the “selective leaking” of classified information but said the assessment process had previously proceeded as it should. However, he said it’s possible the public reporting could undermine ever reaching a conclusion about what Russia did or did not do in Afghanistan.
“Unfortunately, unauthorized disclosures now jeopardize our ability to ever find out the full story with respect to these allegations,” said Ratcliffe, the former Republican congressman from Texas and supporter of Trump’s, who took up his current role long after the period documented in the recent news reports. Ratcliffe also faced criticism during his confirmation process for a lack of professional experience in the intelligence community.
Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said the Defense Department continues to evaluate the intelligence.
Democratic leaders in the House are pressing the White House for a full briefing to members of Congress, particularly since Tuesday’s briefing included administration officials, not intelligence officers. Rep. Adam Schiff, California Democrat and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Capitol Hill after the White House briefing that “the right people to give the briefing really were not in the room.”
Smith said Tuesday that Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will appear before his committee on July 9 in response to an earlier request.