Russia’s former ambassador to the United States said Wednesday that it would take him more than 20 minutes to list all of the Trump administration officials with whom he’s met or spoken to on the phone.
“First, I’m never going to do that,” Sergey Kislyak said in an interview with the state-owned network Russia-1, CNBC reported. “And second, the list is so long that I’m not going to be able to go through it in 20 minutes.”
Kislyak’s meetings with then-Trump campaign and transition officials — which some officials subsequently failed to disclose — have created headaches for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and others.
Of the latter, who resigned from his White House job in February after those contacts were revealed and is now under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, Kislyak told Russia-1: “So what?” Kislyak and Flynn had discussed American sanctions on Russia while former President Barack Obama was still in office.
Kislyak, CNBC reported, said that the prospect that Russia “picked America’s president” was “very sad” and “nonsense.”
Kislyak was among the Russian officials — along with Russia’s foreign minister — who attended an Oval Office meeting with President Trump in May that was closed to all media except the Russian state-owned TASS outlet.
Trump reportedly revealed sensitive information at the meeting regarding a key intelligence source on the Islamic State.
