President Donald Trump revealed highly classified information about so-called Islamic State (IS) to Russia’s foreign minister, officials have told US media.
During the May 10 meeting at the White House with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak, Trump began describing details about an Islamic State terror threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft.
The information came from a partner of the US which had not given the US permission to share it with Russia, says the Washington Post. It happened when Mr Trump met Sergei Lavrov in the Oval Office last week, says the paper.
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, officials said.
The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said Trump’s decision to do so endangers cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump’s meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and the National Security Agency.
The fallout from this story could be enormous and not just because there is a boundless trove of Republican quotes over the past year – directed at Mrs Clinton – about the utmost importance of protecting top-secret information.
Read on below in more depth with Washington post and the BBC News analysis.
Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador. Washington Post
Trump ‘shared classified information with Russia’ BBC
