A source told CNN that the intelligence on Russia’s plan to pay Afghan militants bounties to kill US troops was included in Donald Trump’s daily briefings ‘on intelligence matters sometime in the spring.’
That assessment, the source said, was backed up by “several pieces of information” that supported the view that there was an effort by the Russian intelligence unit — the GRU — to pay bounties to kill US soldiers, including interrogation of Taliban detainees and electronic eavesdropping. The source said there was some other information that did not corroborate this view but said, nonetheless, ‘”This was a big deal. When it’s about US troops you go after it 100%, with everything you got,” CNN reports.
Russian bounties offered to Taliban militants in Afghanistan to kill US troops there are believed to have resulted in the deaths of multiple US troops, according to the Washington Post.
During Monday’s briefing at the White House, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany repeatedly denied that Trump was briefed on the intel, telling reporters: “There was not a consensus among the intelligence community. In fact, there were dissenting opinions within the intelligence community, and it would not be elevated to the president until it was verified”….”This was not briefed up to the president because it was not, in fact, verified.”
According to the New York Times, Trump ‘rarely if ever’ read his daily briefings but, he looks at the graphs, charts, and tables. He often struggles to focus during his intelligence briefings and frequently ignores information he disagrees with.
In April, the Washington Post reports that Trump was warned about the dangers of the coronavirus in more than a dozen daily briefings throughout January and February. He ignored them all. As a result of his failure to do his job over 120,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus and that number keeps rising every day.
