Government documents with details about meeting schedules and seating charts − as well as an extravagant menu and reminder to pronounce President Vladimir Putin’s name “POO-tihn,” were accidentally left in a hotel printer in Alaska amid President Donald Trump’s meeting with the Russian leader.
The documents with State Department markings, reported by NPR, were discovered in the printer in an Anchorage hotel around 9 a.m., hours before Trump’s summit with Putin at a nearby military base.
Hotel guests shared the pages with NPR. The documents laid out the precise locations and meeting times of the summit at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson, as well as phone numbers of government employees and the menu for a planned three course lunch that did not occur, including which chairs the presidents would use.
The documents appear to have been produced by federal government staff and were left behind. Some of the information, including plans for a lunch and a news conference, was made public before the meeting took place.
But much of it was the type of information the White House wouldn’t usually share until after an event, such as whether a gift was exchanged. Some of the details verged into sensitive information that wouldn’t typically be made public at all, such as what times Trump would be in what room.
Security incidents
Planned movements of the president and meetings with world leaders, such as which seat they will take during a meeting, are often kept secret until they take place for security reasons.
When such security breaches have happened before they are normally considered international incidents and are investigated. In 2023, a police document detailing President Joe Biden’s movements, including which streets would be closed and other security measures, were found on a Belfast street while the president was in Ireland.
The White House did not immediately return a USA TODAY request for comment Aug. 17. But Deputy White House Press Secretary Anna Kelly told NPR Aug. 16 that the papers were a “multi-page lunch menu” and suggested leaving the information on a public printer was not a security breach.
Kelly also dismissed the article in a statement to NewsNation.
“It’s hilarious that NPR is publishing a multi-page lunch menu and calling it a ‘security breach,’” Kelly said. “This type of self-proclaimed ‘investigative journalism’ is why no one takes them seriously and they are no longer taxpayer-funded thanks to President Trump.”
Lunch menu
Two of the pages seen by NPR included a menu for the canceled lunch, which was to include filet mignon with brandy peppercorn sauce and halibut olympia, a green salad and crème brûlée.
The other pages included which seats Trump, Putin and their aides would take during the lunch and which rooms they would be in at what time. The remaining pages include contact information for staff members as well as the names of the 13 U.S. and Russian state leaders who attended, including phonetic pronounciation of the Russian names. Among the details was a gift from Trump to Putin, an “American Bald Eagle Desk Statue.”
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Documents detailing Trump-Putin Alaska summit left at hotel printer
