Pelosi: If Trump did share info with Russia, it 'undermines' trust with U.S. allies

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

last updated 16 May 2017

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is calling The Washington Post's report that President Trump shared highly classified information with Russian officials "a very serious matter."

During a CNN town hall Monday night, Pelosi said that if Trump did give this protected information to an "adversarial country," it would be a major problem with serious ramifications. "It would be a concern that even if the president didn't reveal a source, what he did reveal could be traced directly to a source," Pelosi said. "It endangers the person or persons, the activity, it could undermine an operation that could be saving lives, and it undermines the trust that we would have with our allies."

The information that the U.S. receives from its foreign partners is shared very "carefully," Pelosi added, with those intelligence officials "not expecting the president of the United States to wittingly or unwittingly" pass it along.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.