Biden Criticizes Trump Over Intelligence on Russian Bounties on U.S. Troops

Another said it was included in the President’s Daily Brief, a written document which draws from spywork to make analytic predictions about longstanding adversaries, unfolding plots and emerging crises around the world. The briefing document is given to the president to read and they serve as the basis for oral briefings to him several times a week.

Asked on Saturday evening how the president could not have known about the report if it had been in his daily brief, a National Security Council spokesman did not immediately respond.

Ms. McEnany notably did not question the substance of the intelligence assessment, saying only that her statement “did not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence.” She also did not challenge the Times’s reporting that the National Security Council had convened an interagency meeting about what to do about the report in late March.

Ms. McEnany did not explain why such an important report would have been withheld from Mr. Trump. Nor did she indicate whether Mr. Trump was upset at his subordinates for purportedly withholding the information from him.

American officials reached on Saturday said it strained credulity to think that White House national-security officials would be discussing such an important matter for months and even brief British officials about it and never provide the information to Mr. Trump.

The Times article did not say whether Vice President Mike Pence had been briefed.

Ms. McEnany also said in her statement that “the United States receives thousands of intelligence reports a day and they are subject to strict scrutiny.” It was not clear why she portrayed the report as if it were a tip merely received by the government from an outside source, when it was instead an intelligence assessment developed by the American government itself, based on analyzing intelligence.

Mr. Trump is particularly difficult to brief on critical national security matters, according to a recent examination by The Times that drew on interviews with 10 current and former intelligence officials familiar with his intelligence briefings.