White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the New York Times and the Washington Post should return their Pulitzer Prizes after reports about U.S. intelligence officials warning about a Russian spy unit offering bounties to Taliban militants to kill U.S. and other coalition troops in Afghanistan.
“It is inexcusable the failed Russia reporting of the New York Times, and I think it’s time that the New York Times and also the Washington Post hand back their Pulitzers,” McEnany said during a press briefing on Monday.
Both outlets reported on intelligence about the bounties. The New York Times, which last week was the first to report the alleged cash incentives, also claimed President Trump was briefed about the intelligence in March and had declined to take any retaliatory action against Russia.
McEnany, who issued a statement over the weekend denying the briefing took place, echoed Trump’s tweet late Sunday, saying the U.S. intelligence community deemed the bounty allegations to lack credibility.
“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,” McEnany told reporters.
To illustrate her dismay with the New York Times’s reporting, McEnany listed out corrections made by the paper throughout the duration of the Trump administration, including a story about how Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort asked for polling data with a Russian associate. That report was updated to say it misidentified the people to whom Manafort wanted to send the information.
Another story she pointed out reported 17 intelligence agencies agreed Russia interfered in the 2016 election. That piece was later updated to reflect that only four had made that assessment.
McEnany also alluded to a 2017 story about how the Trump campaign had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence officials, which former FBI Director James Comey later disputed, as well as a column written by the former executive editor of the paper asserting the Trump campaign had a deal with the Kremlin to help Trump win the election in return for pro-Russia foreign policy from the United States.
Finally, the press secretary disputed the “Russia hoax” investigation, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry examining ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin during the 2016 election. Mueller’s team was able to identify links between Trump associates and people with ties to the Russian government but did not find sufficient evidence to support criminal conspiracy charges.
