Donald Trump

Coats, Nation's Top Intel Official, Says He Wishes Trump Hadn't Met Alone With Putin

What to Know

  • Dan Coats, Kirstjen Nielsen and Rod Rosenstein are speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado Thursday
  • The event comes after President Donald Trump's growing list of comments following his meeting with Russia President Vladimir Putin
  • Coats has asserted that Russia meddled in the U.S. election with "ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy"

Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, said Thursday he wished President Donald Trump had not met alone with Vladimir Putin of Russia.

In an extraordinary acknowledgement, the nation's spy chief said he had no idea what was said in the Helsinki summit Monday between Trump and the Russian president, NBC News reported.

"If he had asked me how that ought to be conducted, I would have suggested a different way," Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana, told NBC News' Andrea Mitchell at the Aspen Security Forum. "But that's not my role, that's not my job…it is what it is."

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