Trump wrote grateful note to Putin after Russian nerve agent attack in UK, new book claims

Donald Trump wrote a flattering note to Vladimir Putin after an ex-Russian intelligence officer and his daughter were poisoned by a deadly nerve agent in the UK in 2018, a former Trump advisor wrote in his upcoming memoir.

Former National Security Advisor HR McMaster detailed Trump’s relationship with the Russian President during his year-plus stint in the post in his book At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, obtained by The Guardian. The book’s release date is August 27.

Sergei Skripal, a British citizen and former Russian intelligence officer, and his daughter Yulia, were exposed to novichok, a lethal nerve agent, in Salisbury, England in March 2018. The pair were hospitalized for weeks but ultimately survived.

Three days after the attack, as world leaders in the west scrambled to respond to the near-death incident, Trump sat in the White House admiring a March 7 article in the New York Post titled “Putin heaps praise on Trump, pans US politics,” the now-retired general wrote.

The then-president grabbed a black sharpie to pen an “appreciative note” on the article, the Guardian reported. Trump then asked McMaster “to get the clipping to Putin.”

“I was certain that Putin would use Trump’s annotated clipping to embarrass him and provide cover for the attack,” the former national security advisor wrote in his memoir.

McMaster recalled giving the note to the White House office of the staff secretary: “Later, as evidence mounted that the Kremlin, and very likely Putin himself had ordered the nerve agent attack on Skripal, I told them not to send it.”

The praise captured by the Post article was part of an effort by Putin to alienate Trump from his advisors who urged him to take a tougher approach