Former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland Monday said intelligence reports stating that Russia was paying the Taliban to assassinate American troops in Afghanistan should have not reached President Donald Trump's desk if they had not been vetted.
"I was in the president's daily briefing every day when I worked for President Trump," McFarland, who worked under former NSA Michael Flynn, said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "Intelligence that gets to that level is stuff that's been verified. It's been checked. It's been vetted ... but at that stage, intelligence should not go to the president's desk. If he acts on it and it turns out not to be true, what if this is another weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that in the end turned out not to be true."
McFarland said she also questions the logic of Russia paying the Taliban for anything.
"The Russians don't have a lot of extra dollars to put anywhere," said McFarland. "Secondly, the Russians hate the Taliban, and third, why give the Taliban money to kill Americans, to push Americans out when Americans are already leaving Afghanistan to start with?"
But if the reports do turn out to be true, "then we should take even more severe actions against the Russians," said McFarland. "Then we sanction them even further. We start looking at bank accounts. We may want to start looking at which Russians are in the United States, where the Russians, for example, are going to universities in the United States. Then, I think we do sort of ramp it up. If it's true. Let's wait until we find out whether it's true or not."
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Monday Trump plans to brief members of Congress on the reports, after several key Republicans, including Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called for answers on the reports.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.