13 May, 2017
The meeting with Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday was the highest-level public contact between Trump and the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin since Trump took office on January 20. In a letter firing Comey Tuesday, Trump said that Comey told him "on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation".
Lavrov's meeting with the president was scheduled for 10:30 a.m. ET, and it was declared closed to the press.
Former CIA deputy director David Cohen said it was not a good idea at all to let a Russian news agency and its equipment inside the Oval Office. And in a surprise, Trump greeted the media with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The meeting hadn't been listed on the president's official schedule.
Putin and Trump will meet in Hamburg in July, Sergey Lavrov has announced following the talks with the United States president, TASS reported. "Very simply, he was not doing a good job".
"If we manage to find. a common position with the United States on this issue, it will be the most important result", he said, quoted by the state news agency Interfax.
Trump's meeting with Kislyak came as part of a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who was in Washington to talk to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. After his talks with Trump and Tillerson, he will head to Fairbanks, Alaska State, to attend the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting.
The White House called reporters into the Oval Office around the time of the meeting, but Lavrov and Kislyak had already left.
During his appearance with Tillerson, Lavrov feigned surprise when asked whether Comey's firing as Federal Bureau of Investigation director cast a shadow over the U.S. -Russia talks.
As far as the day's discussions are concerned, the White House and the State Department put out terse statements, and gave no briefing, leaving it once again to the Russians to frame the presentation.
When Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked how the firing might affect U.S. -Russia relations, Peskov replied, "We hope that it will not affect them at all".
Since the end of Obama's presidency in January, the United States has gradually withdrawn from the diplomatic process, leaving Russian Federation to take the lead.
Comey's dismissal has sparked new calls for an independent probe into Russia's attempts to influence last year's USA presidential election - despite the Trump administration's assertion that Comey was removed over his handling of the investigation into Clinton's private email server.
