State Department documents containing details about the meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to discuss ending the war in Ukraine were left behind for anyone to see on a Alaska hotel printer, reports NPR.
The day after the summit concluded with little to no progress being made, NPR is reporting that the eight pages that were found “revealed previously undisclosed and potentially sensitive details about the Aug. 15 meetings between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Anchorage.”
According to the report from NPR’s Chiara Eisner, three guests staying at the Hotel Captain Cook, located 20 minutes away from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson where the Russian and American president were meeting, discovered the documents that included names, meeting times, phone numbers and other details.
Eisner wrote that the documents were left on one of the hotel’s public printers, adding, “NPR reviewed photos of the documents taken by one of the guests, who NPR agreed not to identify because the guest said they feared retaliation.”
“The first page in the printed packet disclosed the sequence of meetings for August 15, including the specific names of the rooms inside the base in Anchorage where they would take place. It also revealed that Trump intended to give Putin a ceremonial present,” the report states.
According to Jon Michaels, a professor of law at UCLA who lectures about national security, a government official leaving the documents laying around is a massive security breach.
"It strikes me as further evidence of the sloppiness and the incompetence of the administration," he told NPR. "You just don't leave things in printers. It's that simple."
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