Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., on Friday asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to provide them with all documents that would shed insight on commitments President Trump made during his summit last month with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.
Senior staff and experts were not present during the first part of Trump’s meeting with Putin, and only translators in the room. As a result, Menendez and Shaheen are requesting that members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee receive classified and unclassified cable traffic, interpreter’s notes, memoranda of conversations, and policy directives about the summit.
The lawmakers said their “concern about this meeting is heightened” by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation looking at Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin. They also said the matter was urgent given the upcoming 2018 midterm elections.
“We make this request only as a direct result of the extraordinary and, to our knowledge, unprecedented circumstances of President Trump’s two hour, one-on-one meeting with a leader identified as a threat to the United States by President Trump’s own National Security Strategy,” the lawmakers wrote to Pompeo on Friday. “This situation requires urgent congressional oversight particularly in light of any potential U.S. commitments resulting from the meeting and to understand and address any Russian misinformation related to the meeting. In order to conduct the oversight responsibilities of this committee, it is appropriate we have access to these materials.”
The letter was sent after Pompeo appeared before the panel last month, but failed to dive into details about Trump’s meeting with Putin.
“It’s not for me to disclose the content of those conversations,” Pompeo said.
Trump’s meeting with Putin elicited widespread backlash after he told reporters during a joint press conference in Helsinki that he had no reason not to believe Putin, who stressed to him that the Russian government was not to blame for interference in the election.
The comments were at odds with a January 2017 report from the U.S. intelligence community that found Russian agents were responsible for interfering in the election.
Trump later admitted that he misspoke when he said he didn’t “see any reason why” Russia would have meddled in the 2016 election, and said he believes the U.S. intelligence community assessment that found Russian agents did interfere in the electoral process. Trump also said during a CBS News interview that he holds Putin “responsible” for interference in the U.S. electoral process.
