Letter to President Donald J. Trump - Do Not Meet Putin Alone

Letter

Dear President Trump:

If you insist on meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, on Monday, we write to urge that you include senior members of your team and not meet one-on-one with Mr. Putin, as reportedly planned. Mr. Putin is a trained KGB intelligence veteran who will come to this meeting well-prepared. As the Kremlin said last week, a one-on-one meeting with you "absolutely suits" him. There must be other Americans in the room.

If you are not prepared to make Russia's attack on our election the top issue you will discuss, then you should cancel the Helsinki summit. Mr. Putin is not a friend of the United States. The unanimous judgment of the professional men and women of the United States intelligence community is that Russia, at Mr. Putin's direction, undertook a sophisticated campaign to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election -- a judgment that was just last week upheld in a bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Just yesterday, the Justice Department indicted 12 Russian military intelligence agents with hacking the computer networks of U.S. political organizations. These follow previous indictments of 13 Russians associated with the St. Petersburg "troll factory." These individuals must be brought to the United States so that they can stand trial, and you should demand that Mr. Putin hand them over.

Our intelligence leaders unanimously assess that Mr. Putin will continue to try to interfere in upcoming U.S. elections. Russia continues its aggressive policy to undermine NATO, European solidarity, and Western institutions and norms. It continues to support a murderous regime in Syria, and to destabilize and occupy parts of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin wants to see the West divided and weakened. You must not play into his aims.

We hope that you will use the opportunity of a meeting with Mr. Putin to advance a well-coordinated U.S. message, supported by senior leaders in your own administration, to hold Russia accountable for its unacceptable behavior. To do so, you must rely on the expertise and the experts of the State Department, Defense Department, CIA and other U.S. government agencies -- not wing it on your own.