Trump confiscated reporters notes to keep Putin meeting details secret.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Just days after a bombshell report revealed that the F.B.I. investigated whether President Donald Trump was working on behalf of Russian interests, more troubling details have emerged.
Renewed scrutiny of five meetings Trump has held with Russian President Vladimir Putin has revealed surprising efforts to suppress any record of conversations between the two leaders—including Trump personally confiscating an interpreter’s notes.
The Washington Post reported that Trump’s 2017 meeting with Putin in Hamburg, Germany—also attended by then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson —ended with the president instructing an interpreter “not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials.”
The Hamburg meeting is one of five notable off-record meetings Trump has held with Putin, though it is the only known instance of the president confiscating an interpreter’s notes.
U.S. officials have also been unable to get a readout of Trump’s two-hour meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Finland, this past summer, during which no Cabinet officials or aides were allowed in the room.
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The Hamburg meeting also occurred shortly after Trump met with Russian officials in the Oval Office, and famously noted that firing F.B.I. director James Comey had relieved pressure Trump was facing from the Russia investigation.
Trump has, indeed, demonstrated a devil-may-care attitude to disclosing sensitive information in the past. At the same Oval Office meeting with Russian officials back in May, the president revealed classified intelligence gathered by Israel , causing an international fracas, which experts warned could cause Israel and other nations to reconsider how they share intelligence with the United States. If Trump is acting with special care to conceal records of his meetings with Russia, it would be a significant departure from the way he regularly comports himself.
The Hamburg meeting is one of five notable off-record meetings Trump has held with Putin, though it is the only known instance of the president confiscating an interpreter’s notes. U.S. officials have also been unable to get a readout of Trump’s two-hour meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Finland, this past summer, during which no Cabinet officials or aides were allowed in the room.