In his remarks yesterday announcing the demise of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder and leader of ISIS, Donald Trump thanked Russia before expressing his gratitude toward anyone else. “Russia treated us great,” the American president declared.
He added that he notified Russia in advance that the U.S. was “going over an area where they had a lot of firepower” but not about the purpose of the raid. “We spoke to the Russians. We told them we’re coming in. They said, ‘Thank you for telling us.’ They were very good,” Trump said, adding, “They did not know the mission but they knew we were going over an area where they had a lot of firepower.”
Key Democratic congressional leaders, however, were deliberately kept out of the loop.
President Donald Trump said he did not give many congressional leaders advance notice of the raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Saturday because he was afraid of “leaks,” he told reporters at a Sunday news conference. […]
Trump said the members of Congress he informed ahead of the raid were North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, both Republicans. Burr, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is on what is known as the “Gang of Eight” for intelligence-related matters: Senate and House leaders from both parties and the chairman and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees.
Trump said only “very few people” were made aware of the raid, naming top officials in his administration and later Burr and Graham.
Trump kept Lindsey Graham informed — the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman is not a member of the Gang of Eight, and there was no procedural reason to brief him in advance of highly sensitive intelligence — but he kept House leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff in the dark.
It’s worth emphasizing that this isn’t just a question of discourtesy. In our system of government, a president is not supposed to share intelligence secrets exclusively with members of one party.
By way of an explanation, the president, asked if he’d informed the House Speaker, said, “No, I didn’t. I didn’t do — I didn’t do that. I wanted to make sure this kept secret. I don’t want to have men lost — and women. I don’t want to have people lost.”
Trump added, “Washington leaks like I’ve never seen before. There’s nothing — there’s no country in the world that leaks like we do. And Washington is a leaking machine. And I told my people we will not notify them until the — our great people are out.”
There are a few glaring problems with this.
First, if the White House was determined to limit the number of lawmakers aware of the mission for security reasons, it doesn’t explain why Republican members of Congress — including one GOP lawmaker outside the Gang of Eight — were notified and Democrats weren’t. This was not supposed to be a partisan exercise.









