The Washington Post reports that President Trump “revealed highly classified information” to high-ranking Russian officials last week. According to the Post‘s sources, Trump disclosed to Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak information about a source of intelligence on ISIS.
Here’s more from the Post:
H.R. McMaster, the national security advisor who was in the Oval Office meeting last week, spoke to the Post but did not deny the paper’s report.
“The president and the foreign minister reviewed common threats from terrorist organizations to include threats to aviation,” McMaster told the Post. “At no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known publicly.”
Requests for more information from White House sources have not yet been returned.
The president has broad discretion on declassifying classified government information, though it is not clear what information Trump is reported to have revealed. The Post says it is “withholding” much of the information “at the urging of officials who warned that revealing them would jeopardize important intelligence capabilities.”
A former senior intelligence official told THE WEEKLY STANDARD: “sharing of another country’s intel without permission is one of the brightest red lines in the intel world.”
Dina Powell, the deputy national security advisor for strategy, asserted the Post‘s story was not true. “This story is false,” Powell said in a statement to reporters. “The president only discussed the common threats that both countries faced.”
