House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) slammed Donal Trump on Monday while appearing on CNN. He called out Trump for continuing to ask for favors for Russia even as intelligence agencies warned the country had a bounty on U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
“We want to look into this issue of whether the president was briefed on this, and if he was not briefed, why that was,” said Schiff. “Is this again a concern with speaking truth to power, that Donald Trump doesn’t want to hear anything negative about Vladimir Putin, because after all, the president was inviting Russia back into the G8, and it’s kind of unfathomable that he would do that if he was knowing of the fact that his friend, Vladimir Putin, and the Kremlin or Russian intelligence services, if these public reports are accurate, were offering a bounty on the heads of American troops.”
“The White House says the president was not briefed on this as you were just saying, but Mr. Trump’s tweet — he tweeted about this last night, saying he had spoken to the intel community about what was going on in Afghanistan when it came to the Russian bounties,” said reporter Jim Acosta. “His tweet seems to suggest otherwise. Does that add up to you?”
“You know, the fact of the matter is, Jim, we can’t rely on anything the president says or anything the president’s people say about him, certainly can’t rely on the press secretary to give the honest truth about something,” said Schiff. “But it is really, I think, a problem either way, and that is, the agencies either told him and he is denying it or they didn’t tell him and we’d like to find out why.”
Take a look at the discussion in the video clip below: