Show caption Donald Trump and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, during a joint press conference following their summit talks in Helsinki, Finland, on 16 July 2018. Photograph: Anatoly Maltsev/EPA Novichok poisonings Trump wrote off novichok attack of defector as ‘spy games’ – report Trump reportedly wrote off Skripal poisoning as business as usual among spies and was at first reluctant to expel 60 Russians Julian Borger in Washington Tue 16 Apr 2019 18.24 BST Share on Facebook

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Donald Trump was reluctant to expel suspected Russian spies after the novichok chemical weapons attack in Salisbury, viewing the poisoning of a defector as “part of legitimate spy games”, according to a new report.

According to the New York Times, Trump reacted sceptically to a British request in March 2018 for a strong punitive response to the use of the nerve agent against the former spy, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. A local resident, Dawn Sturgess, was killed three months later when she came in contact with the chemical.

It marked the first chemical weapon attack on European soil since the first world war.

Trump is reported to have written off the attack as business as usual among spies – “distasteful but within the bounds of espionage”.

“Some officials said they thought that Mr. Trump, who has frequently criticized ‘rats’ and other turncoats, had some sympathy for the Russian government’s going after someone viewed as a traitor,” the New York Times report said.

The incident is cited as an example of the persuasive skills of the then deputy CIA director (now director), Gina Haspel.

She is said to have presented the expulsion of 60 accredited Russian diplomats – the course eventually taken – as the “strong option”.

She also showed the president pictures of young children who had been hospitalised as a result of other nerve agent attacks.

Of the 60 Russians expelled by the US, 48 were from the Russian embassy in Washington and 12 were based at the United Nations in New York. The US also ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle.

Trump has separately been reported as having been furious when he found out that the US had expelled far more Russians than Germany or France, who each ordered four Russian officials to leave.

According to a report last April in the Washington post, Trump had told his officials that the US would match the European response, but his aides interpreted that to total European expulsions, not individual countries.

“I don’t care about the total!” an administration official cited in the Washington Post report recalled Trump screaming.

“Growing angrier, Trump insisted that his aides had misled him about the magnitude of the expulsions. “There were curse words,” the official said, “a lot of curse words”.

The state department ruled that Russia could replace the expelled diplomats, but it is unclear how many of the 60 vacated posts have been refilled. Inquiries to the state department and Russian embassy have not yet produced a response.

The administration has also failed to impose sanctions on Russia for the Skripal attack, although such sanctions are mandated by a 1991 law on chemical and biological warfare, and the state department declared on 5 November that they would be imposed.



• This article was amended on 6 June 2019. An earlier version referred to information from a New York Times article, which said Gina Haspel showed to President Trump pictures of children who had been hospitalised as a result of the Salisbury attack, and images of ducks that had been killed because of carelessness in handling the nerve agent by the Russian intelligence operatives alleged to have carried out the attack. The New York Times published a correction on 5 June 2019, stating that it had “incorrectly described the photos that Gina Haspel showed to President Trump during a discussion about responding to the nerve agent attack in Britain on a former Russian intelligence officer. Ms. Haspel displayed pictures illustrating the consequences of nerve agent attacks, not images specific to the chemical attack in Britain”. This article has been amended to correctly describe the pictures.