Sensitive documents from the Alaska summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were mistakenly left behind in a hotel business center, according to an NPR report.
The eight-page packet, marked with “U.S. State Department” insignia, was discovered Friday at a four-star Anchorage hotel. Guests who found the papers shared photographs with NPR on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation.
The documents contained a detailed timeline of Trump and Putin’s meeting, seating charts, luncheon menus, and “precise locations and meeting times of the summit and phone numbers of U.S. government employees,” NPR reported. They also revealed Trump’s ceremonial gift to Putin—an “American Bald Eagle Desk Statue.”
Despite the sensitivity of the contents, the White House downplayed the incident. Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told NPR the documents were merely a “multi-page lunch menu” and argued that leaving them in the printer “did not constitute a security breach.”
Experts disagreed with the administration’s response. Jon Michaels, a UCLA law professor who specializes in national security, said: “It strikes me as further evidence of the sloppiness and the incompetence of the administration. You just don’t leave things in printers. It’s that simple.”
NPR reporter Chiara Eisner noted that the mishap added to a pattern of security lapses by Trump officials. Earlier in the week, a law enforcement group chat involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement inadvertently included a stranger, while in March national security leaders mistakenly added a journalist to a discussion about military strikes in Yemen.