It’s starting to look like Donald Trump is either as dumb as we thought, or twice as traitorous as we suspected.
The Washington Post reports that at an Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the alleged American president revealed classified information to the two high-ranking members of an adversarial country. Current and former officials said the information jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State (ISIS).
The highly secretive information Trump shared with the Russians, the Post reports, “had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government.”
One U.S. official familiar with the situation commented:
“This is code-word information. [Trump] revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”
Code-word information is one of the highest classification levels used by American intelligence agencies and includes some of the most highly classified information the United States possesses.
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster was asked about the breach in protocol and commented:
“At no time were any intelligence sources of methods discussed and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known publicly.”
Just a few hours later, standing outside the office of Press Secretary Sean Spicer, McMaster told a gaggle of reporters:
“This is the last place I wanted to be.”
A former senior U.S. official who is close to current administration officials told the Post that Trump doesn’t seem to appreciate how highly sensitive such information is:
“Trump seems to be very reckless and doesn’t grasp the gravity of the things he’s dealing with, especially when it comes to intelligence and national security. And it’s all clouded because of this problem he has with Russia.”
Ah yes, the problem with Russia.
As investigations in Congress continue Thursday with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein scheduled to meet with all 100 Senators on the matter at hand, there is also word that former FBI Director James Comey will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee in the coming weeks, but only if the hearing is a public one and open to the media.
Interestingly, the official White House readout of the meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak contained no mention of them discussing ISIS, merely stating:
“Trump emphasized the need to work together to end the conflict in Syria. [The President] raised Ukraine” and “emphasized his desire to build a better relationship between the United States and Russia.”
Featured Image Via the Russian Foreign Ministry via Twitter
