Tom Cotton: Intel on Russia bounties 'selectively leaked' to media to help Biden campaign

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Sen. Tom Cotton: Biden owes Trump apology for Russia bounty story

Senator Tom Cotton, R-Ark., reacts on ‘The Faulkner Focus’ to the Democrats using the Russia bounties report against Trump.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., told "The Faulkner Focus" Friday that intelligence about Russia placing bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan was "selectively leaked" to the media last year to help the Biden campaign. A senior Biden administration official said Thursday that the intelligence community only had "low to moderate" confidence in the story.

US INTEL BACKPEDALS ON RUSSIAN BOUNTY STORY THAT TRUMP CALLED A 'HOAX'

TOM COTTON: Joe Biden owes President Trump an apology. Joe Biden used that line of attack multiple times in the campaign to include in the presidential debate. I remember when it first surfaced last summer, I was open-minded to it, it sounds like something that Vladimir Putin and the Russians would do. But I sit on the Intelligence Committee. I reviewed it carefully, and again, I could not see where these reports in the media were coming from.

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We now have the Biden administration itself confirming that they only have low to moderate confidence, which is pretty low in terms of the intelligence community's assessments. So Joe Biden really owes Donald Trump an apology, as does Kamala Harris and every other Democrat that attacked him on the basis of unsubstantiated media reports.

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How did it get out there? Unfortunately, there are probably some people in the government who didn't like Donald Trump, wanted to help Joe Biden get elected, and they selectively leaked it without providing the proper context to it.

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No one should ever leak classified information. That's a very dangerous thing to get into, and the government needs to take more steps to try to ensure that, on the one hand, people who leak classified information are being punished, but also that classified information truly is classified. We have an over-classification problem. In some cases, we shouldn't have so much information that is under classification standards. But when the stuff is really classified or when it is truly sensitive, there need to be consequences for leaking it. 

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