American allies might be less willing to share intelligence with the United States following a report that President Trump revealed secrets during a meeting with Russian officials.
“Reports that this information was provided by a U.S. ally and shared without its knowledge sends a troubling signal to America’s allies and partners around the world and may impair their willingness to share intelligence with us in the future,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said in a statement Tuesday.
McCain said that rather than sharing information with the Russians, Trump should spend his time “focusing on Russia’s aggressive behavior, including its interference in American and European elections, its illegal invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, its other destabilizing activities across Europe, and the slaughter of innocent civilians and targeting of hospitals in Syria.”
Trump discussed the details of a terrorist threat in a way that may have “jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State” during a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, according to a Washington Post report based on information from “current and former U.S. officials.” But Trump’s national security team swiftly denied the story.
“I was in the room,” White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster, a three-star Army general, told reporters Monday. “It didn’t happen.”
McCain has lauded Trump’s national security team repeatedly in recent months, but he did not accept the veracity of that denial. “Regrettably, the time President Trump spent sharing sensitive information with the Russians was time he did not spend focusing on Russia’s aggressive behavior,” he said.
Trump’s meeting with Russian officials took place last week. “[Trump] did not reveal the specific intelligence-gathering method, but he described how the Islamic State was pursuing elements of a specific plot and how much harm such an attack could cause under varying circumstances,” according to the Post. “Most alarmingly, officials said, Trump revealed the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the U.S. intelligence partner detected the threat.”
The president defended his conversation Tuesday morning, after McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also contradicted the story. “As president I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety,” Trump tweeted. “Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said those tweets “undercut” McMaster’s statement and called for the president to give a transcript of the meeting to the Senate Intelligence Committee. “We need to be able to quickly assess whether this report is true and what exactly was said,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
There reports in January that former Obama administration officials had advised Israeli counterparts to be cautious about sharing intelligence with Trump, on the theory that his team might reveal it to the Kremlin. Top Democratic lawmakers dismissed those concerns at the time, however. “I would not believe that is a risk factor,” Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Washington Examiner in January. “I think this is handled at the professional levels and it’s not a risk factor.”
