Rep. Jim Banks rejected criticism by Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to President Trump’s response to Russia’s rewards report, saying the call was made by “career intelligence officers.”
“I don’t know if Speaker Pelosi realizes it or not, but he is not attacking President Trump, he is attacking career intelligence officers who determined that this intelligence did not rise to the level of being respectable enough to inform the President about it. , “Banks, R-Ind., Told” America’s Newsroom “.
Banks said “it must be recognized” that if a president made a decision based on “bad intelligence,” there would be “serious consequences.”
“At the end of the day, we have to allow our intelligence officers to do their jobs, to trust the men and women who serve to protect the United States every day and the intelligence community. They made this call. Political officials not named in the administration.
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Banks’s comments came after Pelosi and top bipartisan congressional leaders, known as the Band of Eight, received a briefing on Thursday on reports of Russian rewards on US troops serving in Afghanistan, which was revealed by first time by the New York Times.
The intelligence assessment came to the White House, the daily written report from the president and the National Security Council, and was even shared with the British government as its troops were also attacked, the newspaper reported. When asked Thursday whether the Band of Eight had also been informed, Pelosi said they should have been.
“I didn’t know that,” Pelosi said at his weekly press conference on Capitol Hill. “But I will say this: It was on a consistent level that the intelligence community should have brought us that way.”
Pelosi also criticized President Trump for not reading his daily presidential report, which according to the Times included information on Russia’s rewards plan in February, and said Trump should also have received a verbal intelligence report.
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“Because the White House was aware of the threat to the security of our men and women in uniform, the President was still flirting with the idea of Russia being part of the G8,” Pelosi said, referring to Trump’s efforts to invite the russian president. Vladimir Putin to the summit of world leaders.
Banks said the Russian reward story is “pulling back” on the Russian-Trump collusion “hoax”. Banks said the left and the New York Times are attacking Trump because “he knew nothing about it.”
“This story is getting really confusing right now. It was published a week ago in the New York Times and at the time, the left in collusion with the New York Times was attacking President Trump because in some way he was making the sight fat these rewards in our troops because it was getting closer to Russia and Putin, “Banks said.
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Banks went on to say, “The fact is that because a leaker went to the New York Times and published this ongoing information on these possible rewards, we may now never be able to know the truth and hold those accountable for those rewards if intelligence check that it was true. “
