Yay, more anonymous information and allegation... coming from WaPo... I'll check back when more people have had a chance to chew on this dry bone.
It's absolutely true and this hasn't been a secret at all. This was public knowledge back in May 2017 and as Calamity has said, people on the left have been dismissed as having 'TDS' or some other foolish label they put on the fact checkers and truth-tellers.
I recall at the time, our focus was the firing of James Comey. Not only did Trump, Kislyak and Lavrov have a good laugh over the firing of James Comey because as Trump told them, “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job.” When I heard and saw photos of this meeting in the White House, I literally gave up on the US that very day. I knew that if the American public could tolerate our president welcoming and hosting two of Russia's top spies inside the Oval Office -- OUR Oval Office, then the America I knew was lost. If there wasn't an uproar and outrage over that meeting it meant that the U.S. has been sold out.
In this meeting, Trump was trying so hard to bend over backwards to please the Russian spies that he openly offered them highly sensitive information fiercely protected by the Israelis. He discussed classified information provided by an U.S. ally regarding about a planned Islamic State operation. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak absolutely howled with glee that Trump could so easily be prodded into giving up Israel state secrets. Trump provided enough details of this operation that the Russians could conclude the identity of the ally and the way in which it was collected.
For those of you here that will call it 'fake news', Trump actually admitted it himself, that he had disclosed sensitive information about the source of the Israeli operation. Even worse, he justified his stupid mistake. The disclosure was reported in The Washington Post on May 15, 2017. White House staff initially denied the report, but the following day Trump defended the disclosure, stating that he has the "absolute right" to "share" intelligence with Russia.
Absorb that for a moment, let it sink in. For Trump supporters who, at the time, dismissed this as a 'nothingburger' (that was athe catchphrase at the time) or called it 'fake news' or 'no big deal', just think about the gravity of that. Will you now say "That's not important, it's meaningless, they would have found out even if Trump didn't spill the beans." Is that what you'd say now?
There's an old idiom from WW11 that says 'loose lips sink ships'. It simply means 'beware of unguarded talk'. People in government and more importantly the president hold many state secrets and they are 'secret' for a reason. National security is at stake. When Trump laughingly shared this vital Israeli information he was putting lives at risk. That's not hyperbole or an exaggeration. Real men and women's lives were put at risk by our president on that day. When our allies (if we have an left) have lost confidence that the president of the United States will keep details of operations or other correspondence meant for his ears only, then we've totally lost our friends around the world and again, it puts the U.S. national security at risk.
US officials were so alarmed by Trump's decision to reveal classified intelligence to Russian officials during that Oval Office meeting in 2017 that they extracted a top-secret source from Russia shortly after that meeting. Yes, the CIA felt the American spy in Russia was in danger of being murdered and they feared that only because Trump might reveal his identity to the Russians. The information Trump shared with the Russians in 2017 wasn't directly connected to the source, but his disclosure to the Russians prompted intelligence officials to renew discussions about the potential risk that the source would be exposed by Trump either intentionally or unintentionally.
This is no joke and Trump supporters may just dismiss it with a wave of their hand and brush it off. When it comes down to what could literally be a life or death situation for any American citizen, and in particular someone who's working in Russia as a spy for the US intelligence, then it's no longer something that any sane, patriotic American should take lightly.
