It hasn’t even been a week since the story of Russia offering bounties for the death of American soldiers in Afghanistan first broke. That initial story suggested that the information had been known since spring, but was unclear about when Donald Trump had been informed or whether Russia had actually followed through in its proxy war against the United States. However, since then the story has grown daily. It’s now clear that the program has been in place for over a year, and that Trump was personally briefed on the threat by John Bolton in March of 2019. If that wasn’t enough, the program was also featured in subsequent daily briefs, including on February 27 when Trump had a tough schedule that included meeting with the actors behind the play FBI Lovebirds.
As more information has developed, the one fairly consistent claim from the White House has been that the information was “unconfirmed” and didn’t rise to the level of taking action. However, it’s obvious that this is untrue. The information was highly regarded enough to form the basis of changes to tactics on the ground in Afghanistan, and it has proven laughably easy to confirm the transfer of money between Russia and Taliban militants. Now more information is available, showing that Russia made these payments on multiple occasions and that a series of raids and arrests were made in chasing down the middlemen of the Russia scheme. And this wasn’t something that happened in the last week—it happened over six months ago. Continue reading.