Republicans are piling on Joe Biden about a prisoner swap with Iran and the release of $6 billion of Iran’s money, but they won’t talk about Trump’s 2017 Oval Office leak.
www.yahoo.com
Less than four months into his term, the coup-attempting former president was bragging to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during their Oval Office visit about the quality of the briefings he was receiving, and as proof offered details about a secret Israeli intelligence operation into Syria.
Israeli intelligence officials were incensed upon learning of the leak because, given Russia’s close ties to Iran and Syria, they had to assume that their local source for the information had been compromised and possibly killed, according to Israeli press accounts at the time.
“If indeed Trump, out of innocence or ignorance, leaked information to the Russians, then there is a real danger to sources that it took years to acquire, and to our working methods,” an Israeli intelligence source told journalist Ronen Bergman.
The May 10, 2017, White House meeting was covered by Russian media, but not American media, and began with Trump telling Lavrov and Kislayak that he had just fired FBI Director James Comey over the agency’s investigation into his contacts with their country ahead of his 2016 election. The Washington Post, which first reported on the incident, quoted an administration official who said that Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”
U.S. intelligence officials just before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 warned their Israeli colleagues that they may want to be careful about what intelligence they chose to share in the coming administration, given Trump’s fondness for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Russia’s ties to Iran and Syria.
Israeli officials reportedly were skeptical about that warning ― until the Oval Office meeting four months later proved it correct.
Republicans try to link President Joe Biden’s release of $6 billion of frozen Iranian money as part of a prisoner swap to the weekend terrorist attack on Israel.
It’s unclear how the agreement to release money to Iran for humanitarian purposes ― not a dollar of which has yet been spent ― less than a month ago could have “funded” Hamas’ attack, which involved thousands of rockets that must have been stockpiled over a period of many months.
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