President Trump reportedly told two senior Russian officials in 2017 that he wasn’t concerned with the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
During the president’s well documented meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak early into his presidency, he told the Russian officials that he was unconcerned about the country’s election interference because the United States did the same in other countries, the Washington Post reported Friday.
Three former officials with knowledge of the matter told the outlet that Trump’s claim alarmed White House officials, prompting them to limit access to the remarks to an unusually small number of people. In an attempt to keep Trump’s comments from being disclosed to the public, a memorandum summarizing the meeting was limited to all but a few officials with the highest security clearances.
“He thought the whole interference thing was ridiculous. He never bought into it,” one former senior official said. During the meeting, the president reportedly also said his firing of former FBI Director James Comey, which occurred one day prior, relieved “great pressure” on him.
At the time, White House officials saw Trump’s comments as him forgiving Russia for an attack that had been designed to help get him elected and thought he appeared to invite Russia to interfere in other countries’ elections in the future. Given the timing of Trump’s remarks, White House aides worried about the political ramifications if the comments became public.
An impeachment inquiry launched by House Democrats earlier this week revolves around records of Trump’s communications with foreign officials following an intelligence community whistleblower complaint that centers on the president’s July 25 phone call with the president of Ukraine. During the call, Trump asked the leader to probe former Vice President Joe Biden, his potential 2020 opponent.
The whistleblower alleged that White House officials “had intervened to ‘lock down’ all records of the phone call, especially the word-for-word transcript of the call.” The record of the call was indeed placed into a system reserved for the most sensitive intelligence information, the White House acknowledged.
