At least a dozen calls from former President Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin were never released, nor leaked throughout Trump’s term. Now that Joe Biden is president, he now has access to the those previously unheard calls.
During the Trump administration, the then-president’s calls to Putin were kept under tight wraps. Some calls were intentionally hidden by the National Security Council via a “codeword system” to prevent staffers from potentially leaking the content of the calls.
Trump was known to confiscate notes from the White House Russian interpreter after calls with Putin. A former Trump official even argued that the calls actually shouldn’t be accessible to Biden.
“They don’t need our approval to see those,” a former Trump White House official told Politico. “Biden owns all the call materials. There is only one president at a time… There are certain things a president and his immediate staff should be able to hold privileged to do the work of government, without being subject to constant partisan gamesmanship.”
Biden has the legal right to see, or listen to anything recorded in the White House. The only person who can claim executive privilege is the sitting president.
