The White House said the U.S. intelligence community had only “low to moderate confidence” in intelligence suggesting the Russian government had offered bounties to Afghan militants to kill U.S. troops, despite then-candidate Joe Biden repeatedly hammering former President Donald Trump about the issue on the campaign trail.
The controversy began when the New York Times reported in late June that a U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that the Main Directorate of the General Staff, or GRU, a Russian spy unit, paid Taliban-connected militants in Afghanistan to kill U.S. and other coalition troops even as the Trump administration sought to reach a peace deal involving the Taliban and the Afghan government. Democrats and many in the media criticized Trump over his alleged inaction, while Trump administration officials repeatedly stressed the intelligence was unverified.
