Russia denies giving Iran intelligence on US troops in Middle East, Witkoff says
U.S. Sailors prepare ordnance on the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in support of Operation Epic Fury, Mar. 4, 2026. (US Navy)
(WASHINGTON) — Russian officials denied in a phone call with President Donald Trump that they are sharing intelligence on U.S. military assets with Iran, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff said Tuesday.
“We can take them at their word,” Witkoff said during an interview with CNBC. “That’s a better question for the intel people, but let’s hope that they’re not sharing.”
Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin Monday for about an hour.
“Yesterday on the call with the president, the Russians said that they have not been sharing. That’s what they said,” Witkoff said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday that Trump and Witkoff sent a message to Russia that “if that was taking place. It’s not something they would be happy with, and they hope that it is not taking place.”
“As for further details about the discussions between these two leaders, I’ll leave it to the president to divulge any more of that conversation,” Leavitt said.
ABC News reported on Friday that the U.S. believes that Russia has been providing Iran the locations of American troops in the Middle East, including aircraft and ships, according to two people familiar with the intelligence.
An intelligence official confirmed to ABC News the U.S. belief that Russia is providing intelligence to Iran but did not say exactly what type of information was being shared.
The intelligence sharing could enable the Iranians to target specific locations with ballistic missiles and drones, putting U.S. service members at risk.
Trump himself downplayed Russia’s involvement during a news conference Monday in Florida.
“… he wants to be helpful,” Trump said of Putin and his involvement with Iran.
Putin has been a firm supporter of Iran as the conflict has unfolded. Putin congratulated the country’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and said in a statement that he reaffirmed Russia’s “unwavering support for Tehran and our solidarity with Iranian friends” in a letter put out by the Kremlin.
Trump said that Putin was “very impressed” with Operation Epic Fury.
“We talked about that with President Putin. He was very impressed with what he saw because nobody’s ever seen anything quite like it,” Trump later added in the news conference.
Over the weekend, Trump said any intelligence sharing between Russia and Iran was inconsequential.
“If you take a look at what’s happened to Iran in the last week, if they’re getting information, it’s not helping them much,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he flew to Miami.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi delivers remarks on an arrest connected to the 2012 U.S. Embassy attack in Benghazi, at the Department of Justice on February 6, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Attorney General Pam Bondi is facing a grilling Wednesday as she testifies before the House Judiciary Committee amid multiple controversies.
She will likely be questioned about her handling of the Epstein files, the Justice Department’s targeting of President Donald Trump’s political foes, and the FBI raid seizing 2020 ballots in Georgia amid the president’s baseless claims of election fraud.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been sharply critical of the Department’s incomplete release of the Epstein files and extensive DOJ redactions after some viewed unredacted files at the agency beginning Monday.
Tensions are expected to be strong as a group of Epstein survivors are seated behind Bondi. The group spoke out about the federal investigation into the convicted sex offender earlier Wednesday.
She could also be grilled about her efforts to revive cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York’s Democratic Attorney General Tish James after indictments against them were tossed.
Bondi is also set to face questions about the raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro — something administration officials have said was a law enforcement operation. Given that, questions have been raised about why the attorney general was not present to discuss the matter at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago news conference announcing the raid.
The attorney general has testified on Capitol Hill only a handful of times.
In her most recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she appeared to use prepared lines of attack against Democratic lawmakers who demanded she answer their tough questions.
Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, testifies during the House Homeland Security Committee hearing titled “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland,” in Cannon building on Wednesday, December 11, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration’s top counterterrorism official Joe Kent announced his resignation Tuesday over opposition to the Iran war, becoming the highest-profile administration official to step down publicly over the conflict.
In a resignation letter posted publicly on social media, Kent said he could not “in good conscience” support the war, which is now in its third week.
“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent, who served as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, wrote in his resignation letter.
The National Counterterrorism Center is housed within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. ABC News has reached out to ODNI for comment.
ODNI says Kent oversaw the U.S. counterterrorism and counternarcotics enterprise and, according to his biography, he served as the principal counterterrorism adviser to the president.
ABC News has reached out to the White House for comment.
Kent is a combat veteran who served more than 20 years in the U.S. Army and completed 11 combat deployments in the Middle East.
Kent also invoked a deeply personal loss in explaining his decision to step down: he is a Gold Star husband whose late wife, Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, was killed in action during a suicide bombing while serving in Syria in 2019.
In his resignation letter, Kent wrote, “As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the South Lawn before boarding Marine One at the White House on January 16, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Tom Brenner/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — From the campaign trail to Capitol Hill, a growing number of Democrats have said they believe President Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses in his first year back in office.
But with their focus on the midterms, fewer elected Democrats are willing to commit to impeaching Trump if they win back control of the House, given likely Republican control of the Senate and potential for backlash from voters.
Trump has predicted that Democrats will impeach him if they retake the House, and Republicans plan to make that threat a key piece of their midterm messaging.
“They will do anything to stop the Trump agenda,” Rep. Dan Meuser, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said of Democrats. “People, if they don’t want a two-year president, who they voted for pretty overwhelmingly in 2024, can’t allow the House to flip.”
Instead, many Democrats said they are focusing on the cost of living and the state of the economy.
“There’s a lot for me to be concerned about,” said Rep. Eugene Vindman, a Democrat from Virginia.
Vindman is an Army veteran and former national security official who played a role in raising concerns about Trump’s 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the center of his first impeachment.
“The American people are concerned about costs, and meanwhile, the president is pursuing foreign adventures,” Vindman told ABC News.
Impeachment calls have picked up in 2026 amid the U.S. attack on Venezuela and the Justice Department’s investigations into Trump’s perceived opponents. A number of progressive Democrats from liberal districts and candidates in crowded blue-seat primaries have called for the impeachment of Trump and key cabinet officials.
Democrats are also setting their sights on Cabinet officials: More than 80 Democrats have cosponsored Illinois Democrat Rep. Robin Kelly’s articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem following the deployment of federal agents to Minnesota and the killing of a Minneapolis woman by a federal agent.
Still, Democratic leaders are moving cautiously ahead of the midterms, when they will need to gain at least three seats to win control of Congress.
“If candidates and members of Congress are not relentlessly focusing on people’s everyday lives, they are making a mistake,” former Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos, who led the House Democrats’ campaign committee, told ABC News.
“There’s so much of what President Trump has done, is doing, will do that can be labeled ‘impeachable offenses,’ but in the end what good is it going to do? Even if the House has the votes, the Senate will not go along with it,” she said.
The House has already rejected two impeachment pushes from Rep. Al Green, a Democrat from Texas. In June, 128 Democrats voted with Republicans to block his charges over the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities without approval from Congress.
In December, just 23 Democrats voted with Republicans to kill a second effort focused on Trump’s comments about Democrats who posted a social media video urging service members to refuse illegal orders, while another 47 voted present.
In a statement after that vote, House Democratic leaders called impeachment a “sacred constitutional vehicle” requiring a “comprehensive investigative process” that had not taken place.
“None of that serious work has been done, with the Republican majority focused solely on rubber stamping Donald Trump’s extreme agenda,” Reps. Hakeem Jeffries, Pete Aguilar and Katherine Clark said, arguing that voting “present” allowed them to “continue our fight to make life more affordable for everyday Americans.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said there’s “definitely a rising clamor for impeachment.”
“Of course, it requires a majority vote of the House to get there, but we need a structured method of thinking through all the lawlessness and criminality taking place,” Raskin said.
Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old activist who is running for Congress in Illinois, has argued that Democratic leaders need to “grow a f—ing spine,” and do more to challenge the Trump administration.
She has spoken out and protested against ICE activities in Chicago, and has pleaded not guilty to charges that she interfered with law enforcement during a protest outside an ICE facility in Illinois last fall that went viral on social media.
“One of the most critical failures in American politics is how our leaders have instilled this feeling that we shouldn’t fight for the world we want to see, that we shouldn’t take measures towards a future that we want to live in,” she told ABC News.
“Impeachment is just another tool in the accountability machine that’s supposed to work, but it doesn’t,” she said.
Raskin, who would lead impeachment proceedings in a Democratic House, said he would be “moving very quickly” in the next two months on “announcing a systematic way of thinking” about the various actions of the Trump administration that Democrats find objectionable, and potentially worth investigating.
