Former national security adviser and potential Joe Biden vice presidential president Susan Rice said on Tuesday that she believes President Trump “knew and has decided not to act” on intelligence that Russian officials had paid rewards to militants linked to the Taliban in exchange for the death of US troops in Afghanistan.
“The president does nothing when this information is provided, and I believe it was brought to him both in writing and perhaps by one of my successors, John Bolton,” Rice said in a live interview with the Washington Post.
“I think one way or another the president knew it and decided not to act,” he continued.
But Bolton, who left the national security office in September 2019, said he would have informed Trump of the rewards if he had known at the time.
“He said he would have walked in and showed it to Obama,” Bolton said recently on CBS News’ “The Takeout.” “I would have done the same if … I hope I would have done the same if I had this kind of information.”
NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR SAYS TRUMP CIA PRESIDENT DECIDES NOT TO SHARE INTELLITY WITH RUSSIA
Rice said the intelligence community believes the Russian reward threat is true or that they would not have included it in the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB). It had to be information in which they had a “good degree of confidence,” or it would not have made it to The Wire, the widely circulated CIA World Intelligence Review, she said.
Authorities told the New York Times that the Russian reward threat was included in a May 4 article in The Wire. The New York Times reported that intelligence was included in a February PDB.
“President Trump has done nothing, he left the forces vulnerable and naked,” said the Obama-era adviser. “The message for Vladimir Putin is that he can attack Americans anywhere in the world with impunity.”
The White House repeatedly denied that Trump had prior knowledge of Russia’s rewards before the Times report, and insisted that there was no “consensus” on intelligence.
According to a senior US official, Multiple streams of intelligence threats indicated that Russian intelligence agents offered rewards to Taliban-linked militants for killing US troops, but while the National Security Council recently met to give a series of responses to the report, he did not. brief President Trump.
REP. MCCAUL ADMITS THAT TRUMP ‘DESERVED, PROBABLY’ KNOW ABOUT THE RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE OF THE BOUNTY
National security adviser Robert O’Brien claimed that Trump’s CIA agent made a call not to share intelligence with him at the time because he was not verified.
“The president was not informed because, at the time of these allegations, they were not corroborated,” O’Brien said, noting that the Pentagon also said that intelligence was not corroborated.
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“The intelligence community does not have a consensus,” O’Brien continued. “And as a result, the president’s brief CIA career decided not to inform him because it was unverified intelligence.”
