Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slapped down presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden over the reports that Russian military intelligence was putting bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan.
“He[Trump] either reads, and, or gets briefed on important issues, and he forgets it, or he doesn’t think it’s necessary that he need to know it,” Biden said at a press conference this week. “He should, at a minimum, have picked up the phone and said, Vladimir, old buddy, if any of this is true and it doesn’t cease immediately, you’ve got a big problem.”
Pompeo swung back hard and said, “I only wish former Vice President Biden had held the Russians accountable,” Pompeo said. “We’d have been cleaning up a lot less of a mess. I wish he’d provided arms to the Ukrainians. I wish he had gotten out of the INF treaty. I wish he hadn’t allowed and invited the Syrians – the Russians into Syria.”
“I could go on, but you’ve got a short show. The failures of the previous administration allowed the Russians a lot of space to move,” Pompeo continued. “We’ve pushed back. We’ve sanctioned more Russians than any other administration in history. I’ll take a backseat to no one with respect to what our administration and President Trump has done to hold Vladimir Putin accountable when he’s engaged in malign activity.”
That’s the kinda slap that leaves a really big red mark on your face.
It just so happens that The Federalist is reporting that Rep. Adam Schiff has known about this intelligence since February. Mollie Hemingway reports:
Top committee staff for Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, were briefed in February on intelligence about Russia offering the Taliban bounties in Afghanistan, but he took no action in response to the briefing, multiple intelligence sources familiar with the briefing told The Federalist. The intelligence was briefed to Schiff’s staff during a congressional delegation, or CODEL, trip to Afghanistan in February.
Schiff, who has acknowledged President Donald Trump was never briefed on the so-called intelligence, has thus far refused to disclose that his staff was personally briefed. The revelation raises serious questions that Schiff is once again politicizing, and perhaps even deliberately misrepresenting, key data for partisan gain.
