Revealing Trump Team’s Security Error During Historic Alaska Talks

On Saturday, U.S. broadcaster NPR reported that during the course of the summit between Putin and Trump in Alaska, the American delegation inadvertently left behind negotiation documents in a hotel. According to a security expert, this incident demonstrates “the negligence and incompetence of the U.S. administration.”

According to NPR, documents believed to belong to the U.S. State Department and connected to the meeting between the Russian and American presidents were discovered in a hotel in Alaska. On Friday, August 15, Alaska hosted the presidents of the United States and Russia, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, who met to discuss a ceasefire and peace in Ukraine. The report noted that eight pages, apparently prepared by American staff and accidentally left behind, included the precise locations and times of the meetings as well as the phone numbers of U.S. government employees.

At approximately 9 a.m. on Friday, three guests at the Captain Cook Hotel discovered the documents, which had been left in one of the hotel’s public printers. The Captain Cook is a four-star hotel located 20 minutes from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, where the U.S. and Russian leaders convened. One of the guests provided images of the documents to the media outlet, but, fearing possible repercussions, requested anonymity.

The first page of the documents revealed the schedule of meetings on August 15, including the specific names of rooms inside the Anchorage base where the sessions were held. It also disclosed that Trump had planned to present Putin with a ceremonial gift. Pages two through five contained the names and phone numbers of three U.S. staff members as well as the names of 13 American and Russian officials. The list even included the correct pronunciation of all expected Russian attendees, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. Pages six and seven outlined how lunch during the summit was to be served and for whom it was intended.

The menu contained in the documents stated that the lunch was to be held “in honor of His Excellency Vladimir Putin.” The seating chart showed that Putin and Trump were to be seated directly opposite each other. Trump would have been surrounded by six American officials: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on his right, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Special Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff on his left. Putin was to be seated next to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and presidential aide on foreign policy Yury Ushakov. However, it appears that the lunch event at the Alaska summit was ultimately canceled.

The American media outlet reported that the White House and the U.S. State Department did not respond to requests for comment on the matter. John Michaels, a law professor at the University of California who lectures on national security, said that the documents found in the Alaska hotel printer revealed a lapse in professional judgment in preparing for such a high-risk meeting.

Michaels stated: “For me, this is further evidence of the negligence and incompetence of the administration. You simply do not leave things in printers.”

The printed documents represent the latest in a series of security breaches involving Trump administration officials. Earlier this week, members of a chat group that included law enforcement officials, among them Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, mistakenly added the wrong individual into a conversation about the ongoing search for a murder convict.

In March, U.S. national security leaders also accidentally added a prominent journalist to a chat group discussing imminent military strikes in Yemen. Following that security blunder, U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz resigned from his position.