White House tries to rewrite rules of intelligence – and other Russia bounty scandal takeaways

A new week, a new scandal has driven Donald Trump out of public view.

The president is scheduled to remain out of sight from reporters on the fourth full day of his administration's attempts to explain whether he was briefed about US intelligence reports that Russian spy units paid bounties to Taliban-linked militias to kill American and coalition troops inside Afghanistan.

Mr Trump in recent weeks has typically spoken publicly at least once a day during the workweek, as his White House has attempted to cast him as overseeing a reviving economy and as a "law-and-order" president standing up to "anarchists" who have hijacked protests over racial inequities.

Amid a raft of questions about what he knew and when, he again has no public events on Tuesday, and has not been seen since being photographed following a round of golf at his Northern Virginia club on Sunday.

The White House contends US intelligence and national security officials never took the bounty allegations to him; but some intel officials say it was included in his Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB), in written form, in late February. That begs two questions: Does Mr Trump read the report each day; and if he did read it, why did he opt to take no action against Moscow? Mr Trump – already dealing with a flailing re-election campaign that lacks a coherent message, a resurgence in coronavirus cases and hospitalisations, and the racial inequities protests – appeared to comment on his bunker mentality, tweeting on Tuesday morning: "THE LONE WARRIOR!"

Here are four takeaways from the Trump White House's latest scandal.

Intelligence is imperfect

The Trump White House is selling a narrative, disputed by some US intelligence officials, that Mr Trump was never briefed on the Russian bounty operation. Two officials told the New York Times it was in the PDB months ago, but senior White House officials are sticking to their story.

"While we do not normally discuss such matters, we constantly evaluate intelligence reports and brief the president as necessary," national security adviser Robert O'Brien said in a statement late on Monday night. "Because the allegations in recent press articles have not been verified or substantiated by the intelligence community, President Trump had not been briefed on the items."

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany made the same claim earlier on Monday.

The White House, however, is pushing the bounds of reality about intelligence reports and presidents. That's because intelligence is, according to countless current and former intel community officials, almost always imperfect in some way.

This is what former Defence Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Intelligence Committee in October 1991 during his confirmation hearing to become director of central intelligence: "That is what we get paid for. Decisions almost always are made on imperfect information. There is never enough data."

What's more, the intelligence information that former Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden likely was hiding in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, had not been 100 per cent verified when senior intel officials took it to then-President Barack Obama. Even when he green-lighted the raid that eventually killed Mr bin Laden, the sitting commander in chief was not sure the Al-Qaeda leader was there.

"We knew it was going to cause some significant blowback within Pakistan and if it wasn't bin Laden, the costs would outweigh the benefits. Having weighed all that, I thought about the 9/11 families and their continuing pain and sense that it was important for us to bring him to justice," he told CNN in a May 2016 interview.

"You're always working with probabilities, and you make a decision, not based on 100 per cent certainty, but with the best information that you've got," Mr Obama said, describing making such a decision based on unverified intelligence data as "emblematic of presidential decision-making."

What Russia wants

This one is not complicated. Mr Putin wants to sow instability anywhere he sees it boosting his country's strategist interests, while expanding his sphere of influence.

"What we do know is, the Russians want us out of Afghanistan. They want us out of Syria. They want us out of Iraq. They want us out of a lot of places," John Bolton, Mr Trump's third national security adviser and author of a scathing book that paints the president as selfish and ill-suited for his office, told CNN on Sunday.

The Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank, in a recent report declared trying to "weaken cohesion among democratic allies and partners" and attempting to "reduce US global influence" as two of Mr Putin's top goals.

The Trump administration's handling of the intelligence reports and questions about the president's actions appear to further both.

What Trump wants

Over three years into his term, it remains murky just what Mr Trump wants from US relations with Moscow. Earlier this month, he reiterated his desire that the two former Cold War rivals "get along."

Besieged by crises just over four months until an election that prognosticators from both parties say he is on track to lose, he appears to mostly want the Russia bounty plot scandal to, as he has said about the coronavirus, "go away."

Politically, the matter seems to have little upside for the president – except to further his daily battle with the media, whom he calls the "enemy of the people."

"The president is briefed on verified intelligence. And again, I would just point you back to the absolutely irresponsible decision of the New York Times to falsely report that he was briefed on something that he, in fact, was not briefed on," Ms McEnany said during an animated ending to her Monday press briefing.

"And I really think that it's time for the New York Times to step back and ask themselves why they've been wrong – so wrong, so often," she said as he closed her notebook and left the briefing room.

No Russia rebuke

Mr Trump has had four days to address the situation, either on camera or by giving an interview to a print media reporter. He just did a number of such interviews on a range of topics.

The president could have ordered Ms McEnany or Mr O'Brien or another administration official to find a camera or reporter and deliver a stern message to Russia about the alleged bounty operation.

Instead, he chose to criticise the intel reports in a tweet and have his staff deny he was ever told about it. All while ducking reporters' questions.

"And if it is true ... that they are paying surrogates to kill Americans, this is one of the most serious matters, I think, that has arisen in the Trump administration," Mr Bolton said on Sunday. "Now, so I asked myself this morning, I have been puzzled over the tweet of the president saying, 'I don't know anything about this'."

"What would motivate the president to do that? Because it looks bad if Russians are paying to kill Americans, and we're not doing anything about it," he added. "So, what is the presidential reaction? [It] is to say, 'It's not my responsibility, nobody told me about it', and, therefore, to duck any complaints that he hasn't acted effectively."

So far, Ms McEnany and other Trump aides have focused on media reports that have been further damaging to their boss. She called the Times reporting that the president was told of the bounties "inexcusable."

Yet, no administration official has yet to use that word about a covert Russian unit delivering payments in exchange for dead US troopers.

Instead, Mr Trump's meatiest tweet about the matter called it another "fabricated Russia Hoax" intended to "make Republicans look bad."