Originally Posted by Rochard

Robbie, what you completely fail to understand this issue.

Anyone time someone from our government meets with a foreign national who works for a foreign government. This is mostly Senators and Congressmen (Congresswomen), anyone who works for the State Department, the US military, or in the intelligence community. This is standard, and if you cannot understand why these rules are in place you shouldn't even be debating this. The State Department, the intelligence community, and the White House needs to know who is meeting with who and what is said so they have the complete picture of what is happening with our relations with foreign governments. It doesn't matter if it involves Russia, the UAE, The UK, or France.

Did Bush meet with foreign governments before he became President? Of course he did. This normal in the course of government business. Afterwards, he filed a report with the State Department, and if needed, the CIA. President Clinton and President Obama did the same - they notified the State Department in advance, and most likely had someone from the State Department on staff with them who sat in on the meeting, or at least was briefed directly after the meeting. If the State Department had any questions they would follow up, and the same with the CIA.

Trump and his staff didn't do any of this. At all. They didn't notify the State Department of any meetings before or after, and they didn't file any reports. Instead, they kept everything secret. In fact, they flew in a leader of a foreign country without telling anyone and met with them in secret. Then they followed up by having further secret meetings with these people outside of the country.

Then if that is not enough, they lied about it under oath. All of them. Multiple times.