Former President Donald Trump in recent weeks has received at least partial vindication for several controversial political claims he made last year, claims which were ridiculed in the press but which the Biden administration is echoing in new assessments recently advanced by administration officials.
The Biden administration revealed this week that its intelligence had “low to moderate confidence” that the Russian government had placed bounties on the lives of U.S. soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, an allegation which which caused political shockwaves when it was leaked last summer.
Then-candidate Joe Biden used it as a cudgel against Trump during the presidential race, claiming that Trump’s alleged failure to act on the intelligence showed that his presidency had “been a gift to Putin.”
“It’s betrayal of the most sacred duty we bear as a nation to protect and equip our troops when we send them into harm’s way,” Biden said at the time. “It’s a betrayal of every single American family with a loved one serving in Afghanistan or anywhere overseas.”
Trump claimed to have never been briefed on the matter, arguing that the intelligence behind it was not credible and that the allegations themselves were “fake news.” The Washington Post subsequently awarded Trump a “Four Pinocchio” fact-check rating, claiming that while the assessment of the allegation’s reliability was “mixed,” that “[didn’t] make it ‘fake news.'”