Biden now has access to all of the phone conversations with Putin that Trump went to great lengths to conceal

• As president, Biden now has access to all the notes from Trump’s calls with Putin.
• A former Trump official told Politico that Biden “owns” the notes.
• The Biden White House did not say whether it had reviewed these memos yet.
• Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.

During Donald Trump’s four years as president, he was extremely guarded about his phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which numbered to at least a dozen. According to multiple reports, he kept notes from those calls in a top-secret computer system and delayed telling the American public about conversations.

But he won’t be able to hide what was said anymore now that President Joe Biden is in the White House.

Politico reported on Tuesday that once a new president is sworn in, they have access to the full memorandums of conversation — or “memcons” — written during past presidencies, which are detailed notes taken during calls with world leaders. 

A former Trump White House official told Politico that Biden’s national-security team won’t “need our approval to see those [records].”

“Biden owns all the call materials. There is only one president at a time,” the former Trump official said. 

One former Trump White House official told Politico that the records were not expunged before Trump left office, but transferred — as is custom — to the National Archives and Records Administration. 

Read more: Inside Democrats’ plans to make sure there’s no Trump 2.0

The Biden White House did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment. It also did not comment to Politico on whether it had seen the content of Trump’s calls with Putin.

But a former national-security official, who is described as being close to Biden, told Politico: “It is a national security priority to find out what Trump said to Putin.”

“Some things, like what happened in some face-to-face meetings where no American translator or note-taker was present, may never be fully known. But I would be very surprised if the new national security team were not trying to access” them, the source told Politico.

But a former Trump White House official didn’t agree with that logic, telling Politico: “There are certain things a president and his immediate staff should be able to hold privileged to do the work of government, without being subject to constant partisan gamesmanship.”

In atypical fashion for an American president, Trump had a markedly warm relationship with Putin, often lauding the Russian president’s leadership style. 

The Trump-Putin relationship contributed to questions about whether Russia’s interference in the 2016 election may have included collusion between Russia and the Trump team.

A special counsel investigation into the matter, conducted by Robert Mueller, acted as a spectre over much of Trump’s time in office, but Mueller ultimately said there was not enough evidence to charge anyone from the Trump campaign with illegally conspiring or coordinating with the Russian government. 

Meanwhile, Biden’s first call with Putin marked a change in tone from the White House. During the call, Biden pressed Putin on Russian election interference, the SolarWinds hack, and the poisoning of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny. 

Source: Read Full Article