https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/russian-bounty-report-seems-like-kind-of-thing-trump-shouldve-known-gop-says
Conservative commentator David Frum noted that the story being reported by the Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal “doesn’t mean it’s certainly true.” What it does mean, Frum wrote
on Twitter, is that “very credible people in [the] U.S. intelligence
service are angry and alarmed. Angry and alarmed enough to provide
evidence to three leading media sources.” In addition to Trump’s denial,
Frum cited former Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell’s claim that he never “heard” of the bounties and that of John Ratcliffe, the office’s current director, who tweeted that he had never “briefed” the president. But, he added,
“it’s also not impossible” for these three officials to be “telling a
version of the truth,” noting the possibility that “the information was
withheld from Trump by briefers who have learned not to upset him”—given
previous reports
of Trump staff keeping Russia-related things from the president so as
not to piss him off—as well as “that Grenell during his tenure at ODNI
was simply not doing the work.” Frum remarked it to be “noteworthy” that
no denials have come from the Pentagon, the C.I.A., or the National
Security Council, all of which the Times said declined to comment.
