President Trump said Monday he “never mentioned the word or the name Israel” in his conversation with Russian officials at the White House during which he is said to have revealed sensitive intelligence from an ally about ISIS.
His remarks in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during which he stopped the press pool from leaving the room in order to clarify the incident, are all but certain to revive the controversy Trump had left behind in Washington last week when he departed for his first foreign trip as president.
Consider this incident over? POTUS: "I never mentioned the word Israel" in convo w/ Lavrov. Bibi: "The intelligence cooperation is terrific" pic.twitter.com/9Gyku1XG0c
— Jacob Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) May 22, 2017
Last week, The Washington Post reported that Trump had shared with Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and Sergei Kislyak, Moscow’s envoy to Washington, highly classified information about ISIS’s operations from an unnamed intelligence-sharing ally. That country reportedly did not give permission to the U.S. to share the information with Russia, and U.S. officials had urged the Post not to name the country the information came from. The New York Times later identified that ally as Israel, and reported that details of the intelligence shared with the Russians could make its way back to its Iran, a Russian ally, and expose an Israeli intelligence asset.