US President Donald Trump has undertaken extraordinary measures to conceal the details of his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, several current and former US officials have revealed, The Washington Post reported.
This included Trump even seizing the notes taken on one of these meetings by his interpreter and instructing him not to reveal the details of the same to other US administrative officials.
This incident reportedly took place after Trump had held a meeting with Putin in Hamburg in 2017. The US President had been accompanied by then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and the matter only came to light when a White House adviser and a senior State Department official requested information from the interpreter regarding a readout shared by Tillerson, the report added.
As a result of Trump’s apparent determination to keep these a secret, there are no detailed records of these face-to-face meetings, even within the classified files. Trump reportedly met with Putin in at least five different locations in the past two years, according to US officials.
Responding to these allegations in an interview with Fox News, Trump denied concealing any details about his meetings with Putin and said that “anyone could have listened to that meeting”. He also said that Putin and him had discussed Israel among other subjects, the report added.
Meanwhile, Special Counsel Robert S Mueller is said to be in the final stages of his investigations into whether Trump or his associates co-conspired with the Russian government to influence the 2016 elections, the report added.
(With inputs from The Washington Post)
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