President Donald Trump entertained a proposal from Vladimir Putin to let Russian authorities pose questions for the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday.
Trump made no commitments to the Russian leader when Putin raised the idea at a private meeting in Helsinki on Monday and is “going to meet with his team,” Sanders said.
Allowing the interrogation of a former American ambassador, who held diplomatic immunity while in Moscow, would be an unprecedented breach in protections traditionally provided to the nation’s foreign service.
In exchange for the opportunity to have McFaul and a number of other Americans questioned, the Russian president offered to let Special Counsel Robert Mueller observe interrogations of 12 Russian intelligence agents indicted by a U.S. grand jury last week for hacking Democratic Party email accounts.
‘Some Conversation’
Sanders said “there was some conversation about” Putin’s proposed exchange during Trump’s summit with the Russian leader in Helsinki on Monday, where the two leaders spent about two hours together accompanied only by translators.
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05.19.2025