Trump under pressure over Russian bounties
Questions swirl about what was known and why nothing was done
US President Donald Trump came under growing pressure yesterday to respond to allegations that Russia offered bounties for killing American troops in Afghanistan, with Democrats demanding answers and accusing Trump of bowing to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the risk of US soldiers’ lives.
The intelligence community is currently investigating a number of deadly attacks in Afghanistan for links to Russian bounties.
Frustrated House Democrats returning from a briefing at the White House said they learned nothing new about American intelligence assessments that suggested Russia was making overtures to militants as the US and the Taliban held talks to end the conflict in Afghanistan.
The intelligence assessments were first reported by The New York Times, then confirmed to The Associated Press by American intelligence officials and others with knowledge of the matter.
White House press secretary Kayleigh Mcenany said Trump had been briefed on the intelligence, a day after saying he hadn’t because it had not been verified. Mcenany claimed there were still reservations within the intelligence community about the veracity of the allegations.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and a small group of other House Democrats met with White House officials as Trump downplayed the allegations. The Democrats questioned why Trump wouldn’t have been briefed sooner and pushed White House officials to have the president make a strong statement about the matter.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, one of the Democrats who attended the briefing, said it was “inexplicable” why Trump won’t say publicly that he is working to get to the bottom of the issue and why he won’t call out Putin. He said Trump’s defence that he hadn’t been briefed was inexcusable.
“Many of us do not understand his affinity for that autocratic ruler who means our nation ill,” Schiff said.
If the claims are true, Trump and his aides set a high bar for briefing a president since it is not normal practice for intelligence to be confirmed without a shadow of doubt before it is presented to senior government decision-makers.
Mcenany declined to say why a different standard of confidence in the intelligence might apply to briefing lawmakers than for bringing information to the president.
While Russian meddling in Afghanistan isn’t new, officials said Russian operatives became more aggressive in their desire to contract with the Taliban and members of the Haqqani Network, a militant group aligned with the Taliban in Afghanistan and designated a foreign terrorist organisation in 2012.
The intelligence community has been investigating an April 2019 attack on an American convoy that killed three US Marines after a car rigged with explosives detonated near their armoured vehicles as they travelled back to Bagram Airfield, the largest US military installation in Afghanistan, officials told the AP.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. The officials the AP spoke to also said they were looking closely at insider attacks — sometimes called “green-on-blue” attacks — from 2019 to determine if they are also linked to Russian bounties.
One official said the administration discussed several potential responses, but the White House has yet to authorise any.
Intelligence officials told the AP that the White House first became aware of alleged Russian bounties in early 2019 — a year earlier than had been previously reported.
The assessments were included in one of Trump’s written daily briefings at the time, and then-national Security Adviser John Bolton told colleagues he had briefed Trump on the matter.
Trump’s Democratic general election rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, accused the president of a “betrayal” of American troops in favour of “an embarrassing campaign of deferring and debasing himself before Putin”. —AP