Come on Hank, Trump is the President of the USA.....a lofty & powerful position. Let him dispatch the spooks to do those jobs & concentrate on getting people back to work, eliminating poverty in this country, education, finance etc. The Russian Intel Agency's are way to smart then to buy leaks from a guy with no experience.....unless he does truly believe he can be Putin ....then he really is delusional.
There are several issues here. I am not going to buy "the sky is falling, the sky is falling" hysterics by Henny Penny and Turkey Lurkey especially with all the code words like "allegedly" and "most likely", etc being bandied about.
These are words which signal the other marxists that this is a rumor being floated to denigrate the president.
Not only that the language that all of us who have had to do with classified information know and recognize is a signal to us that this is a deception at large.
The president is the one in the room who decides what is classified at the moment and what is not when there is a question as related to the discussion even spontaneously.
There is the old clause "for your eyes only".
There are two basic requirements of sharing classified information.
1. Do you have the proper clearance?
2. Do you have the need to know?
Either one or both of these can be overridden by a "your ears/eyes only" given an individual with that power.
IOW even if the Russians in the room did not have the proper clearance the president could immediately and spontaneously override with a "for your eyes/ears only".
Having worked with highly classified material for the government I have had to STOP a meeting until someone of the proper rank granted a temporary clearance for a meeting member to continue on in the discussion.
If that officer or official was there a simple nod of the head would be all that was necessary otherwise that member would have to LEAVE the room.
No one outranks the president.
However for us underlings even to answer a question framed like "was classified information discussed" with a "yes" or "no" answer could possibly lead to my arrest.
This is now the new marxist trick - framing unanswerable questions.
The proper legal answer is "I can neither affirm or deny that question with my answer".
OH, THERE YOU HAVE IT!! The Sky is falling!!!
For this and other reasons, I know this is false news floated to denigrate the president.
HankD