Guests at a hotel in Alaska found eight pages of documents from President Donald Trump’s meetings Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a printer, NPR reported Saturday.
The documents show the schedule of the summit with times and locations. They also show the lunch menu, the lunch seating chart, and the phone numbers of three of Trump administration staffers. The documents were found in a printer at Hotel Captain Cook, a four-star hotel in Anchorage that is near the military base where the summit took place.
Trump and Putin have had a hot and cold relationship, with Trump alternately taunting him and praising him. On Friday, the two leaders walked a red carpet together, as they met to discuss a potential end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The meeting ended abruptly without a Ukraine ceasefire deal. Trump told reporters it was “an extremely productive meeting,” but they “didn’t get there.”
“I think the meeting was a 10,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
The documents show which officials were involved in the summit. A “2:2” meeting took place among Trump; Steve Witkoff, special envoy for peace missions; Putin; and Yuri Ushakov, an aide to Putin for foreign policy and Putin’s “America guru.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent were also involved, among others.
The documents show that Trump planned to give Putin an “American bald eagle desk statue.”
The discovery of the documents “strikes me as further evidence of the sloppiness and the incompetence of the administration,” Jon Michaels, a professor of law at UCLA, told NPR. “You just don’t leave things in printers. It’s that simple.”
This document breach is reminiscent of when Trump administration officials added Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat where they discussed plans to bomb Yemen — though likely less embarrassing.
The lunch, which did not end up happening, was to be held “in honor of his excellency Vladimir Putin.” The seating chart shows assigned spots for 13 officials, with Americans on one side and Russians on the other. Meeting organizers planned to serve filet mignon, halibut Olympia, and crème brûlée.
The White House and the State Department did not respond to NPR’s questions about the documents.
The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes — which Trump ignored — making Alaska a safe place for Putin to fly to and avoid arrest.
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Through this meeting, Putin has “broken out of international isolation” and “wasn’t in the least challenged” by Trump, Laurie Bristow, a former British ambassador to Russia, told the Associated Press.
“They spent three years telling everyone Russia was isolated, and today they saw the beautiful red carpet laid out for the Russian president in the U.S.,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told Axios.
