President Trump appeared to admit Tuesday morning that he did share sensitive information, which multiple news outlets have reported was classified, with Russian officials in the Oval Office.
“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. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism,” Trump tweeted.
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….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017
…to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017
The tweets, which Trump published Tuesday morning, came several hours after administration officials, including national security advisor H.R. McMaster, claimed the original story published Monday by the Washington Post was false (“as written,” McMaster qualified). McMaster had said the president, in his Wednesday meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, did not discuss “any intelligence sources or methods.” He also said, cryptically, that he was “in the room” with the president and that “it did not happen.” But the Post story had instead reported that Trump had shared intelligence information, not the source or method by which the United States had obtained it. McMaster did not clarify what the “it” was he claimed did not happen.
The effect of McMaster’s denial of facts not asserted in the story, however, was the impression that administration officials had denied the main thrust of the story. And Trump’s own tweets don’t strictly contradict McMaster’s statement. But if the information Trump says he shared was classified, his tweets confirm the reporting from the Post.
Trump is correct that he has the “absolute right” to declassify U.S intelligence information as he sees fit. And because the president says the information he did share was related to “terrorism and airline flight safety,” he could argue it was in the national security interest to disclose the information. But his tweets do not grapple with another point from the Post article—that the information was shared with the United States by the intelligence service of an allied nation. Disclosing intelligence from foreign source without permission, as one former senior intelligence official has told THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is “one of the brightest red lines in the intel world.”
If the president crossed that line, that’s a serious problem, bigger than the leaks from the intelligence community that Trump and the White House claim are undermining his presidency.
