
The Huffington Post website claimed on Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump himself met with the Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak during his election campaign.
The report was based on a May 13, 2016 report in The Wall Street Journal which indicated Trump had at least some interaction with Kislyak on April 27, right in the midst of campaign season.
The communication happened right before Trump delivered a foreign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., in which he said he believed in an easing of tensions and improved relations with Russia.
“A few minutes before he made those remarks,” The Wall Street Journal reported at the time, “uHufHTrump met at a VIP reception with Kislyak. He reportedly warmly greeted Kislyak and three other foreign ambassadors who came to the reception.”
It is not clear what Trump and Kislyak discussed, or how extensive the interaction was.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told The Huffington Post on Tuesday that there was no real meeting with Kisylak.
“The National Interest hosted Mr. Trump’s foreign policy speech and pre-speech reception. Several ambassadors were present. Mr. Trump was at the reception for about five minutes and then went immediately to the podium,” she said, adding, “We have no recollection of who he may have shaken hands with at the reception and we were not responsible for inviting or vetting guests. To state a ‘meeting’ took place is disingenuous and extremely misleading.”
Dimitri Simes, president of the Center for the National Interest who had acknowledged introducing Trump to Kislyak in a receiving line at the hotel, said he didn’t think there would have been time for an extensive meeting between Trump and the ambassador.
“From everything I saw, when the receiving line was over, the Secret Service led Mr. Trump to a specially cleared holding area behind the podium where he was supposed to speak,” he said Tuesday. “There would have been no opportunity for him to talk to Kislyak separately. After the speech was over, Mr. Trump returned to the holding area and then left the hotel without any time or format for a private encounter with anyone. Again, the Secret Service managed his movements.”
The report comes amid the uproar over meetings that some of Trump’s top campaign officials held with Russian officials.
Michael Flynn stepped down as national security adviser in February over the issue, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently recused himself from the Justice Department’s investigations into Russia’s meddling in the presidential race following reports that he had met with Russia’s ambassador twice during the campaign.
Sessions on Monday defended his answers about Russian contacts to the Senate Judiciary Committee as "correct", writing in a letter that he "did not mention communications (he) had had with the Russian ambassador over the years because the question did not ask about them."