A congressional oversight panel is seeking details from the White House about President Donald Trump’s discussion of a North Korean missile test in the presence of dinner guests at his Mar-a-Lago resort last weekend.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, wrote White House chief of staff Reince Priebus on Tuesday to request information about security protocols at the resort, as well as any classified or otherwise sensitive documents that may have been in public view while Trump and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe talked about the launch.
“[D]iscussions with foreign leaders regarding international missile tests, and documents used to support those discussions, are presumptively sensitive,” Chaffetz wrote. “While the President is always on duty, and cannot dictate the timing of when he needs to receive sensitive information about urgent matters, we hope the White House will cooperate in providing the Committee with additional information.”
Chaffetz noted that White House press secretary Sean Spicer assured the public that Trump was briefed in private both before and after the dinner in what is termed a Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility, or SCIF (“skiff”). But photos taken of Trump and Abe at their dinner table appeared to reveal the two men also reviewing information under the illumination of a cell phone flashlight.
The letter asks specifically for the White House to identify the documents examined at the table and their classification level, and whether any classified information was discussed in Mar-a-Lago’s common areas, “including while any individuals were speaking or recording on cellular telephones.”
The incident has invited bipartisan responses ranging from quizzical to critical. As the New York Times reported, Florida senator Marco Rubio said of the location of the Trump-Abe conversation, “Usually that’s not a place where you do that kind of thing.” Sen. John McCain opted for, “You can’t make this up.”
Democratic senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Tom Udall were demanding information about security at Mar-a-Lago prior to the weekend encounter, adding in a new letter to Secretary of Defense James Mattis that it was wrong to have “unknown and unvetted Mar-a-Lago members looking over the President’s shoulder as he conducts our foreign policy.”
Chaffetz asked for information about “whether and how the guests, employees, and residents at Mar-a-Lago are vetted in order to ensure that they are not foreign agents or spies on behalf of a foreign government.”
As the Palm Beach Post reported Monday night, Trump is set to travel to the resort for the third consecutive weekend, based on a Federal Aviation Administration notice about flight restrictions in the vicinity of Palm Beach between Friday and Monday.
