National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton pushed back against critics who say President Donald Trump has not spoken out forcefully enough to denounce Russian attempts to influence the 2016 elections. | Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo NSC spokesman: Trump omitted spy attack during Putin call to not tip off expulsions

A spokesman for the National Security Council said Tuesday that President Donald Trump did not discuss the nerve agent attack on an ex-spy in the United Kingdom during his call with Russian President Vladimir Putin because he didn't want to “give them advance notice” of his plans to expel their diplomats.

“The reason he didn’t bring up the poisoning in the conversation with Putin is because this U.S. action was in motion at the time they had the conversation,” NSC spokesman Michael Anton told CNN. “As President Trump often has said, he doesn't telegraph his moves or telegraph his punches when he's about to make a move.”


The Trump administration announced Monday it is expelling 60 Russian diplomats over Moscow's alleged role in the attack on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, in Salisbury earlier this month.

The U.K. and the European Union unveiled their own retaliatory steps toward the Kremlin on Monday. British Prime Minister Theresa May said the U.K. would expel 23 Russian diplomats who had been identified as intelligence officials. On Monday, European Council President Donald Tusk said 14 EU member states would follow suit in ejecting Russian officials. In all, more than 100 Russian officials have been expelled from more than 20 countries, including Canada and Australia.

U.S. and European leaders have implicated the Russian government in the attack on Skripal. Trump concurred with May’s findings that Moscow “probably” directed the illegal use of a banned nerve agent in the attempted murder of the ex-spy.

Despite the Trump administration’s sharp actions against the Kremlin, Trump opted not to discuss the Skripal attack during a phone conversation with Putin last week.

During the discussion, Trump predicted the two leaders would soon meet and congratulated Putin on his recent reelection, a gesture several lawmakers condemned.

Anton on Tuesday also pushed back against critics who say that the president has not spoken out forcefully enough to denounce Russian attempts to influence the 2016 elections.

“Come on, now, they had a 45 minute — out of 2½-hour meeting in Hamburg, 45 to 50 minutes of that was spent on meddling in the elections,” Anton said, citing the two leaders’ face-to-face meeting during a G-20 summit in Germany last year. “The president felt that Putin said all he was going to say, denied it several times, was never going to be move off that denial.”