He had other priorities. His own:
The White House is not planning an immediate response to intelligence reports of Russian bounties given to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan because President Trump does not believe the reports are true or “actionable,” according to two senior administration officials.
Trump is not convinced he should do anything about the bounty issue, which he decried in a Wednesday morning tweet as “just another made up by Fake News tale that is told only to damage me and the Republican Party.” One administration official said there is an internal White House dispute about how much information to declassify to support the president’s skepticism of the intelligence.
Some of Trump’s own senior intelligence officials viewed the information as credible enough to warn the Pentagon and allies so they could ensure they had measures in place to protect their forces in Afghanistan, and to begin developing options for responding to the Russian operation, national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien said Wednesday.
And though the administration has sought to downplay the veracity of the intelligence, O’Brien said the CIA has asked the Justice Department to open a leak investigation on the matter.
The officials cautioned that Trump’s posture could change as pressure mounts from Congress to respond to the reports of Russian bounties, as intelligence analysts suspect the deaths of three Marines in Afghanistan in 2019 may have resulted from the Russian operation. Like others interviewed, the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
White House communications director Alyssa Farah declined to comment on the intelligence reports except to say they were “uncorroborated,” and to criticize “selectively leaked intelligence.” The president, she said, “always puts the safety and security of U.S. service members above all else.”
O’Brien told reporters Wednesday that CIA Director Gina Haspel distributed the intelligence to coalition forces “to make sure they could have force protection.” He said as soon as the Pentagon received the information, “we made sure we had tactics in place . . . to look after our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in Afghanistan.”
Officials from several NATO allies in Afghanistan, however, said they were not officially informed until last week.
O’Brien said Haspel circulated the “raw intelligence — even though it wasn’t verified.” Former intelligence officials say, however, that officials would not have circulated the intelligence or taken precautionary measures had they not believed the reports were credible.
In a news conference Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appeared to confirm the reported information — if not the intelligence community assessment of it — saying that “the intelligence community handled this incredibly well.”
The administration receives multiple threat reports from throughout the world every day, Pompeo said, “so I can assure you that whatever reporting it is that you’re referring to, that we responded in precisely the correct way, with respect to making sure that our forces are postured appropriately, that they were aware of the level of the threat, the credibility of the threat, and that we were there.”
Responding to lawmakers of both parties who are “suggesting that they are shocked and appalled by this,” Pompeo said, “They saw the same intelligence that we saw, so it would be interesting to ask them what they did when they saw whatever intelligence it is that they are referring to.” He said the information was shared “more broadly” than with just the intelligence committees.
Russian involvement against U.S. interests in Afghanistan is “nothing new,” Pompeo said. Russia has been “selling small arms that have put Americans at risk for 10 years.” Without referring specifically to the bounty report, Pompeo said he brings up Afghanistan “with great frequency” in talks with his Russian counterparts.
His message to them, he said, is “Stop this.”
O’Brien reiterated Wednesday that though officials decided not to present Trump with “uncorroborated” intelligence, they took the situation seriously enough to prepare options for the president. “If this eventually becomes something that’s proven, or something that we believe, we need to have options for the president to deal with the Russians,” O’Brien said during an appearance on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”
But former officials who have taken part in options development say national security officials would not have begun the process had they not felt the information had to be taken seriously. Options including sanctions and diplomatic censure were debated in late March. The administration’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, was said to prefer confronting the Russians directly about the matter.
“They obviously thought it exceeded the threshold for action, which implies that it was more than a stray, uncorroborated report,” said Katrina Mulligan, a former director on the National Security Council staff in Barack Obama’s administration.
They blamed the briefer, of course …
McEnany said it was the decision of the intelligence officer in charge of orally briefing the president not to tell him about the bounty reports, a decision that “O’Brien agreed with.” Intelligence, McEnany said, is normally not “transmitted up to the president” until there is “a strategic decision for the president to make” on what to do about it. “That’s the way intelligence works.”
I don’t know if they told him and he blew it off so the rest of the government just went ahead and warned people anyway or if they didn’t tell him because he blows up when anyone talks about Russia —- so they went ahead and warned people anyway. Either way, this is not how it’s supposed to work.
The point is that while they were warning the allies and the troops about this issue, Trump was out there inviting Putin to the US and insisting that he be allowed t rejoin the G7 because Russia is such an important country. This is the problem. Trump is always working on behalf of himself whether it’s for his bank account or his re-election, not the interest of the country. (He believes that what’s good for Trump is good for the US — Alan Dershowitz even argued that point at this impeachment trial!) In fact, in this case, he was arguing explicitly against the interest of the United States.
I don’t know if we will ever know exactly why he’s so loyal to Putin. It could just be that he always wanted his help in getting re-elected in 2020. Or, it may be something else. Whatever it is, this is an instance in which his bizarre obsession may have cost American lives.
Just add that to Trump’s body count from COVID-19, I guess. It’s quite a pile.