Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) believes that certain deep state actors may have planted fake news about the Russians paying Taliban personnel to kill U.S. soldiers.

The story was reported by the New York Times last week, and President Donald Trump has been thrown through the ringer because he supposedly did nothing about it.

The White House has disputed the facts of the story, and Banks told Breitbart News Tonight on SiriusXM that he thinks this may be the next phase of the Russia scam that has been perpetrated since before Trump was sworn into office.

Banks explained on the show that “initial tactical reports often require additional collection and validation,” and he is angered that the work by the Times could prevent the truth from ever being known.

“Gina Haspel, the CIA director, released a statement, released her first-ever statement, she’s never done this before, but she released a statement saying that the intelligence was not convincing enough that it rose to the point that they took it seriously that should brief the president about the alleged bounties on American troops or American civilians serving in Afghanistan,” Banks said.

“To your point, it’s hit pieces like this that make it much harder for the president to do his job, to get out, to bring our troops home and end the longest war in American history, but also to identify the real threats of the day … the intelligence community spent the last four days focused on refuting this hit piece when they should be focused on the greatest existential threat we face in America today which is combatting the China threat,” he added.

“Democrats want to wear out this Russian-Trump collusion hoax because they want to make hay out of that to divert attention away from the biggest weakness of all from Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, the Hunter Biden corruption issue is that Obama record fo appeasing and turning a blind eye to the nefarious actions of China,” Banks explained. “They don’t want to talk about that; that’s why they want to bring out this tired old Russian narrative that the American people have long moved on from.”

The Pentagon has come out and said that there is not enough evidence for the claim to be corroborated.

“The Department of Defense continues to evaluate intelligence that Russian GRU operatives were engaged in malign activity against United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan. To date, DOD has no corroborating evidence to validate the recent allegations found in open-source reports. Regardless, we always take the safety and security of our forces in Afghanistan – and around the world – most seriously and therefore continuously adopt measures to prevent harm from potential threats,” Pentagon Spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement given to American Military News on Monday night.

Yet again, it seems the fake news is putting America last by publishing dubious reports that hurt national security just to attack President Trump.