Comey’s firing overshadows the Russian foreign minister’s meeting with Trump.
Meeting comes amid controversy over Comey firing
WASHINGTON — If President Donald Trump had any qualms about his first meeting with Russia’s top diplomat and its controversial Washington envoy on the morning after Trump fired the FBI director investigating Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election he showed no outward sign of unease Wednesday.
Trump posed for gripand-grin photos in the Oval Office, a venue usually reserved for welcoming other heads of state, with Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s visiting foreign minister, and Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador who has caused endless headaches for the White House.
The president’s first meeting with a senior Russian aide was closed to the U.S. news media. The White House had announced the meeting with Lavrov, but did not mention that Kislyak also would attend.
That was disclosed by the Kremlin, which quickly posted photos of its diplomats smiling and shaking hands with Trump. The images were carried by the state-run Tass news agency and disseminated on Twitter by Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its Washington embassy.
The White House reticence perhaps was understandable. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was fired in February after the Washington Post disclosed that he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence and other top officials about his conversations with Kislyak.
And Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced to recuse himself from any role in the FBI investigation of Russian meddling in the presidential race after other news reports revealed that at his Senate confirmation hearing he had not disclosed his own meetings with Kislyak.
For his part, Lavrov appeared buoyant. On his way into earlier talks with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Lavrov had feigned ignorance of the outcry in Washington over Trump’s summary sacking of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday.
“Was he fired?” the veteran diplomat asked, widening his eyes for comic effect. “You’re kidding! You’re kidding!”
Back in Russia, President Vladimir Putin gave Trump a vote of confidence — albeit in full hockey regalia, as he prepared to take to the ice in the Olympic venue city of Sochi.
“President Trump is acting in accordance with … his law and his constitution,” Putin told a CBS News reporter who caught him rink side and asked about the Comey affair.
In the annals of international relations, Trump’s unorthodox style of dealing with friends and foes alike has given rise to plenty of astonished double-takes.
But Lavrov’s visit — underscored by fresh Kremlin denials of any interference in the U.S. presidential election — qualified as among the more surreal diplomatic encounters of Trump’s nearly four months in office.
Even before Comey was fired, headlines this week had focused on testimony by former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who said she had warned the White House less than a week after Trump took office in January that Flynn might be vulnerable to blackmail for lying about his discussions with Kislyak, which were intercepted by U.S. intelligence monitoring of the diplomat.
That made it all the more surprising that the White House would acquiesce to a visual prompt on Wednesday about the Russian ambassador’s role in an everwidening investigation.
Lavrov’s trip to the White House also carried overtones of deliberate messaging. His meeting with Trump was not added to the president’s public schedule until late Tuesday, hours after Comey’s firing. Lavrov’s planned meeting with Tillerson had already been announced.