President Trump did not rule out the possibility of a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2016 campaign after one of his foreign policy advisers suggested the idea, according to a person who was present during the exchange.
“He didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no,” the official, who was in the room during the meeting where the idea was floated, told CNN.
The idea of meeting Putin was proposed by George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to Trump’s campaign. Unsealed documents revealed this week that Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his contacts with a professor linked to the Russian government.
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After Papadopoulos proposed the idea at the March 2016 meeting, it was Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was the chair of Trump’s national security team and an Alabama senator at the time, who rejected it, according to CNN.
In court documents, Papadopoulos said that he told Trump campaign officials during that meeting that “he had connections that could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and President Putin.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the president did not recount all the details of the March 2016 meeting, but dismissed its significance.
“Again, it was a brief meeting that took place quite some time ago. It was the one time that group ever met,” Sanders told CNN on Monday.
“What I can say is that I think that Papadopoulos is an example of, actually, somebody doing the wrong thing while the president’s campaign did the right thing,” she told the network on Tuesday.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is currently investigating Russia’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election, as well as any possible ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
Both Trump and his former Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, met with various world leaders in New York in September 2016 during the United Nations General Assembly.
Other presidential candidates have, in the past, held meetings with foreign leaders. For example, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) met Colombia’s president in 2008, while he was the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee.