House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she did not know that US intelligence officials believed that Russia was paying rewards to Afghan fighters for killing US soldiers, and said she should have been informed of that “consistent” information. .
Pelosi and top Congressional leaders, known as the Band of Eight, received a classified briefing on Russian rewards reports on US troops serving in Afghanistan on Thursday, which was revealed for the first time by reporting in 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.
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“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.
“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.
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Pelosi suggested additional sanctions on Russia.
The White House said Trump did not know about the alleged Russian plot and said it did not reach its level because the intelligence community did not completely agree with the rewards reports.
Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien told “Fox and Friends” on Wednesday that the CIA officer reporting to the president decided not to tell the commander-in-chief that Russia was allegedly paying rewards for killing the troops. Americans. For his part, Trump dismissed the reports as a “hoax.”
But after the Band of Eight classified the intelligence briefing on Thursday, Pelosi expressed belief in Russia’s effort to harm Americans and criticized the White House effort to minimize intelligence as a “scam.”
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“You have the scam,” Pelosi said. “The White House made a scam that if you don’t have a 100 percent consensus on intelligence, it shouldn’t rise to a certain level. Well, we would practically not be investigating anything if you had to start at 100 percent, then don’t buy into that. “
Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., issued a joint statement after the intelligence briefing saying that Trump must be relentless in protecting American troops.
“Our Armed Forces would be better served if President Trump spent more time reading his daily report and less time planning military parades and defending relics of the Confederacy,” Pelosi and Schumer said.
