Intelligence officials did not brief Trump on Russian bounty story because they deemed it not credible

Washington Examiner:

President Trump said late Sunday night that he had just been briefed by intelligence officials about reports of an alleged Russian plot offering bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers, and "intel" told him they did not assess the intelligence to be "credible."

“Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP,” Trump tweeted, adding that it was “possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News” New York Times "wanting to make Republicans look bad.”

The New York Times reported on Friday that a U.S intelligence assessment concluded that a Russian spy unit paid Taliban-connected militants in Afghanistan to kill U.S. and other coalition troops, even as the Trump administration sought to reach a peace deal involving the Taliban and the Afghan government. The New York Times further reported Trump was briefed about the bounties during an interagency meeting late in March and that officials developed a list of options to respond, but the outlet's sources said the administration had yet to authorize any of the actions.

Prior to Trump’s tweet, a senior Trump administration official had told the Washington Examiner on Sunday evening that Trump had not been briefed on the issue because there was a lack of consensus within the intelligence community about the accuracy of the intelligence. National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot told the Washington Examiner on Sunday night that “the veracity of the underlying allegations continues to be evaluated.”

...
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told ABC she didn’t believe Trump's denial that he was briefed on the alleged bounty plot. The California Democrat said she believes Russia is holding something over Trump and causing him to "ignore" Russia-related intelligence briefings.
...

Pelosi sounds like a paranoid idiot still bitterly clinging to the Russian collusion hoax.  It appears that some in the intel community must be leaking the story to the NY Times because they could not persuade other analysts to agree with them.  There appear to be reasons not to believe the story.  There is no hard evidence and the Taliban vehemently denies the story.

At this point, it looks like another deep state plot against the President by the usual suspects that is aided and abetted by a hostile media.