Democrats aim to keep focus on Trump’s meeting with Russians

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats don’t want to let President Donald Trump forget the day he met with top Russian diplomats at the White House, even as he tries to move past allegations of possible collusion between Moscow and his presidential campaign.

They’re peppering the president’s national security team with questions about the damage they believe Trump caused by sharing top-secret intelligence with the Russians on May 10. Among their inquiries: Did Trump’s guests try to bug the Oval Office? What steps were taken to ensure Russia didn’t distribute the information with anyone else? Did the president ever consult with government information security experts?

It’s a complete 180 from a year ago when Trump and many other Republicans made Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server the centerpiece of the 2016 presidential campaign. Just as Republicans repeatedly hammered Clinton for failing to adhere strictly to the federal government’s rules for handling classified information, Democrats are lecturing Trump on the same points.

“When you deal with sensitive intelligence, you can’t be unscripted,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said last week of Trump’s apparently spur-of-the-moment decision. “It’s not the way to conduct business, particularly when you’re dealing with highly classified information from another source.”

The intelligence about a specific Islamic State threat that Trump disclosed to the Russians allegedly was gathered by Israel, apparently violating the confidentiality of an intelligence-sharing agreement. The president’s action also raised fears other countries would think twice before confiding in the U.S.

But Trump has rejected the criticism, arguing he has “an absolute right” as president to share information with Russia and other countries. And he posted a tweet on Tuesday that underscored his mounting frustration over allegations of possible links between his presidential campaign and Moscow.

“Russian officials must be laughing at the U.S. & how a lame excuse for why the Dems lost the election has taken over the Fake News,” Trump wrote.

Presidents are in fact legally empowered to classify and declassify information at their discretion. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, a former Republican senator selected by Trump for the post, appeared unconcerned about Trump’s disclosure during an Armed Services Committee hearing last week.

Coats said he’d been traveling and hadn’t spoken to Trump about his Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. They were accompanied by a photographer employed by Tass, a Russian state-run news agency.

“Well, I wasn’t in the room and I don’t know what the president shared,” Coats said in response to a question from Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., who also is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Heinrich called Coats’ answer troubling.