House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday U.S. sanctions on Russia should be beefed up to include the country's intelligence and defense sectors, which she said the Trump administration had asked to be removed from previous sanctions legislation.

"When Congress in a bipartisan way passed sanctions on Russia, the administration told us to take out the sanctions on the GRU - the intelligence, as well as the defense, sectors of Russia. Those should definitely still be there. They were there in a bipartisan way. It's just administration wanted them out. I don't know why. So we should have those in there," Pelosi told reporters.

Critics of President Donald Trump are again assailing the administration's relationship with Moscow amid reports that Russia had offered Taliban fighters in Afghanistan bounties to kill U.S. soldiers. For days, the president has been under fire, accused by some of either willfully ignoring those reports, or being left out of the loop by White House staff.  

He has dismissed the matter as a hoax perpetrated by Democratic foes and the liberal media. The White House has contended that the reports on those bounties were uncorroborated.

Newsmax's Jeffrey Rubin contributed to this report.