President Donald Trump said he never questioned Russian leader Vladimir Putin about U.S. intelligence reports that Moscow paid the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan, casting doubt on the reports in an interview.

"I have never discussed it with him," Trump said in an interview on Tuesday with "Axios on HBO."

Trump, a Republican who has sought to cultivate warmer relations with Moscow, has said he was not briefed on the matter before it emerged in news media in late June. He has called the reports a hoax and casts doubt on them.

Asked why he did not confront Putin on the issue in their call last Thursday, Trump told Axios, "That was a phone call to discuss other things, and frankly, that's an issue that many people said was fake news."

He said he and the Russian president discussed nuclear nonproliferation on the call.

Democrats in Congress have accused Trump of not taking intelligence information concerning the deaths of soldiers seriously enough and have berated him for being beholden to the Russian president. They have pressed for more information from the intelligence community and the White House.

"Just as I have said to the president: With him, all roads lead to Putin," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. "I don't know what the Russians have on the president, politically, personally, or financially."

Speaking on ABC's "This Week," Pelosi also noted that some of the U.S. allies involved in Afghanistan were briefed on the report and have accepted it.

National security adviser Robert O' Brien has said Trump was not verbally briefed on the Russian bounty intelligence because his CIA briefer concluded the reports were uncorroborated, backing up Trump's account that many intelligence officers doubted the report's veracity. 

"It never reached my desk. You know why? Because they didn't think – intelligence, they didn't think it was real," Trump told Axios. "I wouldn't mind – if it reached my desk, I would have done something about it."

He went on to say that it is not true that he does not read the daily intelligence briefing. "I read it a lot, you know, I read a lot. They like to say I don't read. I read a lot."

But four U.S. and European sources and a widely read CIA report in May contradicted the stance taken by both Brien and Trump. 

White House officials have also not denied that the information was included in the President's Daily Brief, a daily summary of classified information and analysis on national security. Some news outlets have reported the bounty issue was included in the brief in February and that Trump may not have read it.

Trump has spoken to Putin at least eight times since the intelligence was first included in his briefing, Axios said.

The New York Times first reported in June that U.S. intelligence had concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit had offered the Taliban payments of up to 100,000 U.S. dollars for each U.S. or allied soldier killed.

Trump's dismissal of the intelligence practically shelved the possibility of acting on it. Officials previously considered an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses.

Combat in Afghanistan claimed the lives of twenty Americans last year. 

(With input from Reuters)