Republican Senator Ben Sasse (Nebraska) told reporters on Monday that he’s been hearing from military families in Nebraska constantly for the last 36 hours, and “they’re livid” over the New York Times’ explosive report that Russia paid bounties to Taliban militants to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and want Congress to get to the bottom of what President Donald Trump knew about it, and when.
Sasse, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that the report on Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, offering bounties on U.S. service members should be investigated by Congress and that the effort should transcend the “short-term politics” that usually dominate Washington,
“I’ve been hearing from military families in Nebraska constantly for the last 36 hours, and they’re livid,” he said. “This is a story about the targeting of American men and women in uniform. This is about putting crosshairs on the backs of people who are fighting for our freedom. This is not about short-term politics,” he added, according to The Hill.
Sasse said Congress “is broken” and needs to pull together to “get to the bottom of two questions.”
Don't Miss
“Who knew what when inside the administration? Did the commander in chief know? If not, why the heck not? What’s going on in that process?” he said. “The second question is “What is our plan to impose proportional response on our enemies in this battle?”
He said such a response “would mean Taliban and GRU agents in body bags.”
The Nebraska senator also called on colleagues to put aside their partisan differences and investigate the intelligence claims.
“This institution needs to be really serious about the oversight we do,” he warned, The Hill writes.
