Trump flew into a rage every time US intelligence warned him about Russia, so officials gave up briefing him on it, report says

President Donald Trump would blow up at briefers who tried to tell him about Russia's malign actions toward the US, CNN reported on Wednesday.

Former administration officials told CNN that this created a chilling effect, leading Trump to hear less and less about Russian threats and bolstering his belief that Russian President Vladimir Putin had good intentions.

Top security and intelligence officials denied that Trump resisted receiving intelligence about Russia. The White House did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

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President Donald Trump was briefed less and less with warnings about Russia's behavior toward the US because he would get angry when presented with intelligence about it, CNN reported on Wednesday.

Early in Trump's presidency, officials learned to limit their verbal briefings on the topic and would often see their written materials ignored, former administration officials told CNN's Jim Sciutto.

"The president has created an environment that dissuades, if not prohibits, the mentioning of any intelligence that isn't favorable to Russia," a former senior national security staffer told CNN.

John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, who started in May, and Robert O'Brien, the national security adviser, denied the accounts.

A US soldier on a mission with Afghanistan police on December 20, 2014. Thomson Reuters

The claims have nonetheless have renewed the relevance of a New York Times report, published last week, that said Taliban-linked bounty killings sponsored by Russia targeted US troops.

Three separate Taliban sources corroborated these claims in a report by Mitch Prothero for Business Insider on Wednesday. The Associated Press reported on Monday that intelligence officials knew about them and had briefed the president on them as far back as 2019.

CNN's report on the president's attitude about intelligence briefings on Russia casts the issue in a new light.

Citing multiple former officials, CNN reported that at the start of his presidency, Trump often flew into a rage at briefers who attempted to tell him about hostile Russian activity toward the US, including political interference.

They soon learned not to highlight Russia in their briefings, according to the report.

In many cases, oral briefings on Russia would be avoided altogether and left in the president's lengthy written briefings, which he often did not read, CNN reported.

It left officials with difficult decisions about how to prioritize the most crucial information, CNN said. A former senior intelligence official said their policy became to "save it for when it matters."

This led to what a former senior National Security Council official described as "a self-fulfilling prophecy": The less Trump heard of Russian activity, the less he believed that President Vladimir Putin could mean the US harm.

Ratcliffe told CNN in a statement that this was "totally false." O'Brien told the outlet that the claims were "ridiculous" and that the intelligence had not been reliable enough to pass on to the president.

CNN's report is also in line with Trump's well-documented deference toward Putin despite warnings. As one former US ambassador to Russia put it in a tweet on Wednesday, Trump "always sides with Putin."

The White House did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.