Russian Asset or Dupe: Trump Has Concealed or Didn't Keep Records of at Least Five Meetings With Putin
December 18, 2019
Meetings or phone calls of Donald Trump with certain foreign leaders, particularly Vladimir Putin, may not exist or are hidden on a classified server.. (Gage Skidmore)
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH
A January 13, 2019, article in The Washington Post was headlined, “Trump has concealed details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from senior officials in administration”:
President Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials, current and former U.S. officials said….
The constraints that Trump imposed are part of a broader pattern by the president of shielding his communications with Putin from public scrutiny and preventing even high-ranking officials in his own administration from fully knowing what he has told one of the United States’ main adversaries.
As a result, U.S. officials said there is no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader at five locations over the past two years. Such a gap would be unusual in any presidency, let alone one that Russia sought to install through what U.S. intelligence agencies have described as an unprecedented campaign of election interference.
A March 15, 2019, Washington Post article emphasized the lack of transparency in Trump’s talks with Putin, asking in its headline about the infamous Helsinki summit between Trump and Putin, “Trump met Putin in Helsinki. More than 200 days later, will we ever find out what they said?” The Post speculated that because Trump has insisted on keeping details of his talks with Putin secret that “the Helsinki summit may remain shrouded in mystery for years.” The Post notes that at least one of the private Putin meetings, Trump seized the notes of the US interpreter.
A January 29, 2019, Vox article wrote of a meeting between Trump and Putin at the November G-20 meeting in Argentina:
If you’re a US president, it’s probably not a great idea to meet with a foreign leader who meddled in your country’s elections without some way to record what’s being discussed.
But that’s just what President Donald Trump apparently did — again.
According to the Financial Times, Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin during last November’s G20 summit in Argentina without a US official present to take notes.
The Washington Post reported on another Trump-Putin private meeting on June 28, 2019, without note takers at the 2019 G-20 summit in Osaka.
We accept no advertising and are only responsible to our readers.
Indeed, on December 11, a federal Judge ruled that Mike Pompeo, as Secretary of State, was not in compliance with the Federal Records Act because he was not insuring that the White House was keeping records of Trump’s meetings with Putin. According to Politico:
A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to toss out a lawsuit over missing notes documenting President Donald Trump’s face-to-face meetings with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
American Oversight and Democracy Forward, a pair of left-leaning watchdog groups, sued Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the State Department, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the archivist of the United States in June over the missing notes. The groups charge that Pompeo violated the Federal Records Act by allowing Trump to reportedly confiscate meeting notes prepared by State Department employees and for failing to preserve them.
Politico wrote that The Washington Post “reported that no detailed record of Trump’s communications with Putin existed, prompting a flurry of document requests from Congress and outside groups.”
Politico also notes that “Trump’s efforts to keep under wraps the details of his conversations with other world leaders have taken on a new light in the wake of the ongoing impeachment inquiry.”
This is not the only lawsuit working its way through the courts regarding seemingly missing information on the substance of talks between Trump and Putin, and indeed other foreign leaders with whom Trump might be having “controversial” calls.
In an October 7, 2019, BuzzFlash Editor’s Commentary, entitled, “Trump Could Easily Delete Incriminating Evidence He Has Hidden, BuzzFlash wrote about another legal action aimed at forcing the White House to keep and preserve records of Trump’s meetings and phone calls with foreign leaders, in this case based on the Presidential Records Act (a variation of the Federal Records Act). Once again Putin was at the center of unaccounted for summaries or transcripts of his conversations with Trump.
BuzzFlash wrote at that time:
Although only a blip on the torrent of impeachment and other news, as Trump continues to suck the oxygen out of the news cycles, a lawsuit that speaks to the possibility of vital White House documents disappearing was the subject of a federal court ruling last week.
Two DC watchdog organizations and a historian organization filed suit against the Trump administration in May (before the July 25 phone call) seeking a binding court order that the White House would preserve all documentation of Trump’s meetings and phone calls with foreign leaders. According to CNN, the plaintiffs also “asked the court to order the White House to keep all documents regarding policies, legal advice and investigations about record-keeping.” This would theoretically force the Trump administration to abide by the Presidential Records Act, which it is not doing.
CNN noted that “The groups had sued Trump and his executive office in May for failing to document at least five meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and one with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.”
With the disclosure that Trump has personally asked at least three foreign leaders (Ukraine, China and Australia) to help him in his 2020 election campaign (although he calls it asking for help in reducing corruption, but the only fabricated corruption he mentions relates to the Bidens), the lawsuit took on a new urgency.
A CNN article last week stated,
A government transparency group and historical archivist groups have asked a federal court to intervene immediately in the Trump administration's record-keeping practices -- a move that seizes on new allegations that the White House has restricted access to some of President Donald Trump's conversations with world leaders.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the National Security Archive and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations asked DC-based federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Tuesday for a temporary restraining order that would force the White House to preserve all records of meetings, phone calls and other communications with foreign leaders. They also asked the court to order the White House to keep all documents regarding policies, legal advice and investigations about record-keeping.
Jackson spoke with the lawyers in the lawsuit in a phone call Tuesday afternoon. She sought assurances from the Justice Department that any presidential records would be safe as the groups' lawsuit continues -- setting aside recent allegations that the White House mishandled transcripts of Trump's calls with foreign leaders. That assurance would eliminate the need for Jackson to get involved by considering a restraining order on the White House.
On October 1, Judge Jackson decided not to issue a court order to the White House to preserve all pertinent documents, including key ones in the impeachment inquiry. She appeared to accept the Trump administration at its word that the documents would not be “at risk,” according to The Washington Post:
Justice Department attorneys promised a federal judge Wednesday that the White House will not destroy records of President Trump’s calls and meetings with foreign leaders while the court weighs a lawsuit brought by historians and watchdog groups.
In a two-page filing, Justice Department lawyer Kathryn L. Wyer told a judge in Washington that the Trump administration and executive office of the president “voluntarily agree . . . to preserve the material at issue pending” litigation.
However, on October 3, Judge Jackson reversed herself and decided to issue a court order, after all, to preserve the records.
A federal judge has ordered the White House to preserve a wide range of evidence about President Donald Trump’s dealings with foreign leaders, including his interactions related to Ukraine that have fueled an impeachment investigation in the House.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued the order Thursday, directing that White House officials not destroy records of “meetings, phone calls, and other communications with foreign leaders.”
The judge’s order also appears to specifically address reports that the Trump White House set up a special system to limit access to certain records of presidential conversations with foreign leaders.
Furthermore, Politico noted, “Another unusual aspect of the judge’s order is that it appears to cover Trump directly….It applies to the ‘defendants’ in the lawsuit of which there are only two: the Executive Office of the President and President Donald J. Trump.”
Although Judge Jackson backed up her ruling with the possibility of criminal charges or a contempt of court finding for violations, let's remember that Donald Trump plays by his own rules. In short, the possibility that he has had documents deleted or will make them vanish still looms.
After all, let’s not forget the 2017 Trump Oval Office meeting with senior Russian officials, in which he reportedly told them that he was not upset about Russia’s meddling (on his behalf) in the 2016 presidential election, because everybody does that, revealed highly classified information that caused the CIA to exfiltrate a US mole in the Russian government because Trump had endangered him and mocked James Comey.
According to a Washington Post September 27 article:
A memorandum summarizing the meeting was limited to a few officials with the highest security clearances in an attempt to keep the president’s comments from being disclosed publicly, according to the former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Consider that meeting account to be a prime candidate for “disappearing.”
So we don’t know to what extent Trump has personally been acquiescent to Putin on vital national security issues. Secondly, it is clear that the July 25 Zelensky call, for which a more complete transcript has not yet been provided, is likely just the tip of the iceberg. And the plaintiffs in the lawsuit overseen by Judge Berman asked her to require the Trump administration not to destroy any records related to the whistleblower complaint.
Trump’s response to demands that he comply with the Presidential and Federal Acts has been predictable. First, administration attorneys continue to fight against the two lawsuits to require legally mandated transparency in Trump’s meetings and phone calls with foreign leaders.
Second, Trump has decided, in light of the impeachment fallout from the July 25 call with Zelensky, to limit the number of people on any calls with foreign leaders to Trump loyalists. A December 13 CNN article stated,
President Donald Trump's senior aides have further restricted the number of administration officials allowed to listen to the President's phone calls with foreign leaders since his July 25 call with Ukraine's President was revealed and became the centerpiece of the impeachment inquiry, according to multiple White House sources….
It amounts to a concerted effort to prevent Trump's conversations -- which officials have said sometimes veer off into unguarded or undiplomatic territory -- from becoming known to even those inside the administration.
As for Trump’s conversations with Putin, even Trump’s aides remain largely in the dark. We know that the Trump defenders are repeating Russian Intelligence talking points, but we don’t know what Trump is telling or promising to Putin.
Beyond the narrow grounds for impeachment, precipitated by a lone whistleblower’s report, are innumerable possibly incriminating Trump conversations and meetings with foreign leaders that may never see the light of day.
After Note: Trump regularly violates the Presidential Records Act. A 2018 Politico story described how government employees are paid more than $60,000 a year try to Scotch tape back together routine documents that are required to be preserved. Politico’s sub-headline for the article is, “The president's unofficial 'filing system' involves tearing up documents into pieces, even when they're supposed to be preserved.”
Continue the conversation at the BuzzFlash Nation group on Facebook.