The White House has denied a Washington Post report that Donald Trump revealed classified information when he met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak last week.
National security adviser H.R. McMaster told reporters this Monday: “The story that came out tonight, as reported, is false. The president and the foreign minister reviewed a range of common threats to our two countries, including threats to civil aviation. At no time — at no time — were intelligence sources or methods discussed.”
“The president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known. Two other senior officials who were present, including the secretary of state, remember the meeting the same way and have said so. Their on-the-record accounts should outweigh those of anonymous sources.”
“I was in the room — it didn’t happen.”
McMaster took no questions from reporters after he issued his statement.
McMaster issues a denial of the Washington Post report: pic.twitter.com/17vTW07Tcj
— Axios (@axios) May 15, 2017
Dina Powell, who serves as the deputy national security adviser for strategy, also denied the story in an earlier statement.
“This story is false,” Powell said. “The president only discussed the common threats that both countries faced.”
On Monday, the Washington Post reported that in his meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak, Trump “went off script and began describing details about an Islamic State terrorist threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft.”
“I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day,” Trump said, according to the Washington Post report.
Officials told the Post: “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.”