Congress needs to investigate the “disgraceful” leaks of President Trump’s private conversations with world leaders, a top Democratic senator said on Thursday.
“A president of the United States, a governor would tell us they’ve got to be able to have confidential conversations,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner told The Daily Beast. “And I think it was disgraceful that those [came out].”
Warner is the top ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“Whether that is Intel or Judicial [committees] looking into it, somebody ought to,” the senator told The Daily Beast.
The Washington Post published Thursday morning leaked classified transcripts of Trump’s private conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia. The phone calls took place shortly after Trump’s inauguration but were just now leaked to the Post.
The transcripts showed Trump asking Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto not to speak to the press about the wall that Trump wants to build on the US-Mexico border.
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 28: President Donald Trump speaks on the phone with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in the Oval Office of the White House, January 28, 2017 in Washington, DC. On Saturday, President Trump is making several phone calls with world leaders from Japan, Germany, Russia, France and Australia. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“We should both say, ‘We will work it out.’ It will work out in the formula somehow,” Trump said to Peña Nieto. “As opposed to you saying, ‘We will not pay,’ and me saying, ‘We will not pay.'”
Trump’s phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was even more combative, as Trump complained about an agreement struck under the Obama administration for the US to take in 1,250 refugees from Australian detention centers.
“This is going to kill me,” Trump said, according to the leaked transcript. “I am the world’s greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. And now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people.”