WHOA: Trump revealed highly classified info to Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting:https://t.co/Y543U1tlyY
— Ben Terris (@bterris) May 15, 2017
The information the president relayed 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, officials said.
The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said Trump’s decision to do so endangers cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump’s meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and the National Security Agency.
“This is code-word information,” said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”
I suppose the most positive spin you can put on this is that Donald Trump, as president, is on an extremely steep learning curve.
Nah.
If anyone other than the president had done this, that person would have committed a federal crime and been subject to prosecution and imprisonment.
This is immensely worse than anything Hillary Clinton did with her private email server.
Update: National security adviser H.R. McMaster denies things that The Washington Post does not allege.
The New York Times has reported the same thing.
[A]ccording to the officials, Mr. Trump discussed the contents of the intelligence, not the sources and methods used to collect it. The concern is that knowledge of the information about the Islamic State plot could allow the Russians to figure out the sources and methods.
