President Biden and his national security team have several reasons to know what former President Donald Trump said to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his dozens of conversations. One of them is probably curiosity. “Trump kept his private conversations with foreign leaders closely while in office, even going so far as to have some of them hidden in the [National Security Council’s] top secret codeword system to limit access for employees and even cabinet members and prevent leaks, ” Political grades. Americans generally discovered their conversations with Putin in the Kremlin.
But there are also practical reasons, Political underlined. “Understanding what has been said between the two can help to illuminate whether Trump ever revealed confidential information or made any arrangements with the Kremlin leader that could take the new government by surprise.”
“It is a national security priority to find out what Trump said to Putin,” said a former national security officer close to Biden Political. “Some things, like what happened at some face-to-face meetings where no American translator or note taker was present, may never be fully known.” But other conversations have been memorized in crude transcripts, called “memcons”, or conversation memos, and Biden now has full access to them. Probably.
“They don’t need our approval to see this,” said a former Trump White House official. Political. “Biden has all the calling materials. There is only one president at a time.” Another former Trump official argued that Putin’s calls should be kept confidential, but legally that doesn’t work, said Kel McClanahan, executive director of the National Security Counselors law firm. “There is literally no situation, nor could there be, where a former president could prevent an incumbent president from seeing something.”
Next, “memcons” are considered presidential records and were transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration, said a former Trump White House official. Political. Biden employees did not disclose whether they saw the call records, but they also did not complain about not having access to them.
And the calls may not end up being so enlightening, said former senior Trump advisers Political, noting that Marina Gross, who acted as Trump’s interpreter in many of her interactions with Putin, “told associates that listening to their conversations was often like listening to two friends talking in a bar.” Read more at Political.
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