Russian photographer allowed in Oval Office meeting

NEW YORK — The White House is facing criticism for a possible security breach after it allowed a Russian news service photographer into the Oval Office to snap photos of President Donald Trump and a pair of top Russian officials.

While the administration downplayed the threat, a senior administration official acknowledged the White House had been misled about the role of the Russian photographer, who was actually employed by a staterun news agency. The official requested anonymity to discuss matters of security.

The photographer who stood feet from Trump as he talked with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, had told the White House he was Lavrov’s official photographer, the official said.

But he did not say that he also works for Tass, a Russian state-run news agency. And White House officials were surprised when photos depicting an apparently jovial moment between Trump and the two Russian officials appeared online a short time after Wednesday’s meeting, according to the official. There had been no plans to immediately broadcast images from the meeting.

The chummy photos left some observers agog, particularly coming a day after the president fired FBI Director James Comey, who had been running the investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russian officials.

The American media, however, never caught a glimpse of either Russian inside the White House. When the press pool was allowed into the Oval Office at the meeting’s conclusion, Lavrov and Kislyak were gone and, in a surprise, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was with Trump instead.

The White House posted photos online of the meeting a full day later, but they did not include any images of Lavrov. The ambassador also was not mentioned in the official White House readout of the meeting.

The White House defended the decision not to allow any independent press into the meeting. “We had an official photographer in the room, as did they,” spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday.

Sanders added that it was “proper protocol” to close a meeting to the press when Trump is meeting with a foreign official who is not a head of state.