Schumer Floor Remarks: The Administration Must Provide Congress With Transcripts of President Trump’s Meeting with Russian Officials

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer delivered remarks on the Senate floor discussing the severity of reports indicating President Trump revealed classified information to Russian officials during a meeting in the Oval Office and demanding the White House make transcripts of the meeting available to Congress. Below are his remarks:

By now we have all had the chance to read the report in the Washington Post that alleges stunning behavior on the part the president in a meeting with the Russian Ambassador and Foreign Minister.

According to the report, the president revealed classified information about a terrorist threat with the officials of a foreign government. And the president didn’t share it with just any government, the report states he shared it with Russia’s government, a global adversary that has violated the sovereignty of peaceful nations, propped up dictators and human rights abusers, including Iran and Syria, and has been widely proven to have interfered in our elections and the elections of our allies in Europe.

If this report is indeed true, it would mean that the president may have badly damaged our national security, nothing less, and in several ways.

First, if accurate, a disclosure of this type could threaten the United States’ relationships with allies who provide us with vital intelligence and could result in the loss of this specific intelligence source.

We rely on intelligence from our allies to keep America safe. America cannot have eyes and ears everywhere. If our allies abroad can’t trust us to keep sensitive information close to the vest, they may no longer share it with us. That undermines key relationships and even more importantly, makes us less safe.

Second, if accurate, such a disclosure could damage our interests in the Middle East. We do not collaborate with Russia in Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East for the simple fact that we have diverging interests. Russia, for example, has worked with Iran to prop up the brutal Assad regime. Sharing vital intelligence with Russian officials could allow the Russians to pursue or even possibly eliminate the source or figure out how the ally conducts operations, including any against Russia or Russia’s allies in the region.

And third, if the report is true, the president’s alleged carelessness with classified information will further damage the relationship between the White House and the Intelligence Community – an essential relationship to the security of America. The Intelligence Community needs to be able to trust the president, trust that he will treat classified information with caution, with care. Many of our intelligence professionals put their lives on the line every day to acquire information that is critical to our national security. That is critical to keeping Americans safe. They’ve done a very good job.

If the reporting is accurate, in one fell swoop the president could have unsettled our allies, emboldened our adversaries, endangered our military and intelligence officers the world over, and exposed our nation to greater risk.

Given the gravity of the matter, we need to be able to quickly assess whether or not this report is true and what exactly was said.

So, I am calling on the White House to make the transcript of the meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister and Ambassador available to the congressional Intelligence Committees as soon as possible. The White House should make the transcript of the meeting available immediately to the Congressional intelligence committees.

And if the president has nothing to hide, he should direct that the transcript of the meeting be made available.

The members who sit on those committees have the necessary clearances to review that transcript and any related summaries of the president’s meeting with the Russians. I agree with the senior Senator from Maine that this briefing should happen immediately. Those committees would be able to help establish the facts before we grapple with the potential consequences.

Last night, the Administration issued several overlapping denials; some questioned the overall veracity of the account, some took pains to specifically deny certain accusations, but not others. This morning, the president tweeted a version of events that undercut his advisers' carefully worded denials and seemed to confirm the reports that he had shared the information in question.

Following so closely after Mr. Comey's firing, which was rationalized to the press and the American public in several different ways over the course of a week, this administration now faces a crisis of credibility. The president has told us that we cannot take at face value the explanations of his some of his key advisers, but the events of the past week have taken this to an untenable extreme.

Their timelines and rationales in the Administration contradict one another. The "truth," as it were, sits atop shifting sands in this Administration.

We need the transcripts to see exactly what the president said, given the conflicting reports from the people in the room. Producing the transcripts is the only way for this Administration to categorically prove the reports untrue.

Mr. President, there is a crisis of credibility in this administration which will hurt us in ways almost too numerous to elaborate. At the top of the list are an erosion of trust in the presidency, and trust in America by our friends and allies. The president owes the Intelligence Community, the American people and the Congress a full explanation. The transcripts, in my view, are a necessary first step.

Until the Administration provides the transcript; until the Administration fully explains the facts of this case; the American people will rightly doubt if their president can handle our nation’s most closely kept secrets.