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And the fallout continues, from the disclosure that the FBI opened an Counter Intelligence investigation into Trump’s suspicious behavior towards Russia.
It seems that Trump actively tried to keep his several Meetings with Putin a secret — even secret from other Administration officials.
President Donald 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.
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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.
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Trump's secrecy surrounding Putin "is not only unusual by historical standards, it is outrageous," said Strobe Talbott, a former deputy secretary of state now at the Brookings Institution, who participated in more than a dozen meetings between President Bill Clinton and then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. "It handicaps the U.S. government — the experts and advisers and Cabinet officers who are there to serve [the president] — and it certainly gives Putin much more scope to manipulate Trump."
www.philly.com — Jan 12, 2019
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Current and former US officials told the paper that Trump's efforts include confiscating the notes from his interpreter and not allowing them to discuss the details of the meetings with other officials in his administration.
The Post notes that this behavior by Trump is not usual per past presidential standards.
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Thursday, prior to the publishing of The Washington Post's story, Sen. Bob Menendez, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN that he was planing to sit down with his counterpart in the House to discuss priorities. And, he said if he had subpoena power, the first thing he'd go after would be the notes from the translator in the Putin meeting.
"I'd like to get the notes of the meeting that the President had with Putin. There was a translator so I'm sure she took notes down simultaneously in order to translate. Unless she's destroyed them, they would be of interest," he said.
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www.cnn.com — Jan 12, 2019
Question: If Trump wasn’t in league with Putin, then why all the ‘cloak and dagger’ secrecy over the details of their 5 Meetings?
Russia has just attacked America with their influence campaign in the 2016 Election, for gosh sake’s.
Ooooh, that’s why all the secrecy, and the deference, and the Putin ass-kissing — because Trump already knew about those Election Attacks — and what they meant for his own Electoral steal, into Power.
IOW, Trump the Putin-Toadie owes him, Big-Time.
No other reason for hiding their Notes makes a shred sense, unless Trump was league with Putin, well beyond America’s sovereign interests.
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