Intel chief unaware Trump was planning to meet with Russians in Oval Office

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said Thursday that he didn’t know about the meeting between President Trump and Russian officials in the Oval Office last May before it occurred.

Coats, who Trump nominated to the intelligence post shortly before his inauguration, also acknowledged that it was “probably not the best thing to do” when asked about the meeting during remarks at the Aspen Security Summit.

{mosads}Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the United States, in the Oval Office on May 10. Photographs of the meeting first emerged from Russia’s Tass news agency.  

“Probably not the best thing to do,” Coats said, sighing, when asked about the meeting by NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell. “No, I was not aware of that [in advance].”

“I am not aware of anything like that since,” Coats continued. “You have to understand — you have a president that did not come through the system, came from the outside. I don’t think there was any nefarious attempt there to do anything, but that’s history.”

The Washington Post subsequently reported that during the meeting, Trump revealed classified information about an Israeli intelligence operation against the Islamic State.

Coats did not directly address those reports. But when asked whether news of the meeting hurt the U.S. intelligence community’s relationship with foreign intelligence agencies with whom it shares information on terrorist and other threats, Coats said that the U.S. has formed “very trusted relationships with people” that are not affected by the “news of the day.” 

“We have really restored and retained a lot of very good relationships where we just have to put the news of the day on a shelf,” Coats said.