U.S. State Department documents containing sensitive government information were discovered on a public printer at an Alaska hotel, two hours before a high-stakes summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Eight pages — containing a schedule, several phone numbers of government employees, and a luncheon menu — were found in a public hotel printer at Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage, a 20-minute drive from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson where the two world leaders met Friday to discuss the future of the war in Ukraine.
Three guests staying at Hotel Captain Cook found the pages around 9 a.m. Friday, two hours before the summit began, according to NPR. It’s not clear who left the papers but seven of the pages were “produced by the Office of the Chief of Protocol”, according to images obtained by NPR, which is part of the State Department.
The hotel, which has 550 rooms, declined to comment on where the printers were located.The Independent has also contacted the U.S. State Department and White House about the incident, who was responsible for handling the documents, and whether it is considered a security breach.
A White House spokesperson told NPR that abandoning the documents in a public printer was not considered a security breach.
The first five pages contain the sequence of the day’s events, including the participants, locations, and times. Below the names of Putin and his Russian aides sits a pronunciation for each name. Under the Russian president’s name, the file suggests: “POO-tihn.”
The pages also contained phone numbers of government employees and a gift that Trump planned to give Putin, described as “American Bald Eagle Desk Statue.”
The sixth page showed a lunch seating chart. The two world leaders were seated at the center of the table, flanked on both sides by their respective officials, six for Trump and five for Putin.
The seating chart showed Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and White House Chief Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Special Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff. Putin’s group would include his Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, his Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov, and Minister of Defense Andrey Belousov.
The seventh page revealed the menu for lunch, which ended up being cancelled Friday. The first course would have offered a green salad with champagne vinaigrette dressing and sourdough bread with rosemary lemon butter. For the main course, there would’ve been a choice of either filet mignon with brandy peppercorn sauce or halibut Olympia. Buttery whipped potatoes and roasted asparagus were intended to be offered as sides while the planned dessert was créme brulé with ice cream, the documents revealed.
The last document showed what appeared to be a stylized copy of the menu. At the top read: “Luncheon in honor of his excellency Vladimir Putin.”
Speaking to NPR, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly brushed off the discovery as a “multi-page lunch menu” and suggested leaving the documents on a public printer was not a security breach.
The Trump administration has had several high-profile security breaches in its early months. In March, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sent sensitive information about a planned U.S. military strike in Yemen to senior officials and a journalist from The Atlantic on the messaging platform, Signal. The incident, dubbed “Signalgate,” led to the ousting of Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser.
Other lawmakers and security experts lambasted the administration over the latest incident in Alaska.
“How many more headlines are we going to read about INCOMPETENT security breaches by the Trump Admin???” Florida Democratic Congressman Darren Soto posted on X Saturday.
Jon Michaels, a UCLA law professor who specializes in national security law, told NPR the incident “strikes me as further evidence of the sloppiness and the incompetence of the administration.”
“You just don’t leave things in printers. It’s that simple,” he added.
Trump and Putin met at the Alaska military base on Friday afternoon to discuss an end to the war, more than three years after Russia’s invasion. The leaders announced “great progress” had been made, but they still did not reach any kind of plan to end the war.
