White House aides ‘hiding in offices’ and blaring TVs to ‘muffle the sounds of shouting’

White House aides were sent into a wild frenzy on Monday night after reports emerged that President Donald Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian officials last week during a meeting in the West Wing.

As news of the story broke, Sean Spicer’s communications team attempted to drown out shouting with a blaring television and reporters had a surprise encounter with Trump’s top national security adviser, HR McMaster.

Reporters at the White House claim to have heard shouting coming from a room that Spicer, Steve Bannon and Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders were in during the chaotic night.

Shortly after reporting about the noise on Twitter, White House staffers turned up the volume on a TV to drown out the noise.

Other White House aides were ‘hiding in offices’ to avoid speaking to the press, a senior aide told The Daily Beast.

‘Do not ask me about how this looks; we all know how this looks,’ the senior aide, who described the scene as tense and ‘a morgue’, added.

White House officials denied the Washington Post report about Trump releasing classified information in several statements, including a 45-second on-camera statement delivered by McMaster, during which he said little more than ‘I was in the room, it didn’t happen’.

Officials refused to answer specific questions, including what precisely the report had gotten wrong, ensuring it would dominate a week that White House officials hoped would be quiet in advance of the president’s first foreign trip.

Reporters started gathering in the hallway outside Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s office right after the Post story broke.

As the group grew to more than 20 people, press aides walked silently by as journalists asked for more information. Soon, three of the four TV channels being played in the press area were reporting the Post story.

At one point McMaster, who hadn’t yet delivered his televised denial, stumbled into the crowd of journalists as he walked through the West Wing.

‘This is the last place in the world I wanted to be,’ he said, nervously, as he was pushed for information. ‘I’m leaving. I’m leaving.’

Not long after, the press office sent a trio of short, written statements. Then Spicer briefly appeared to say McMaster would speak outside soon, prompting a mass exodus to a bank of microphones set up in the West Wing driveway.

‘I was in the room, it didn’t happen,’ McMaster told reporters after emerging.

‘The president and the foreign minister reviewed a range of common threats to our two countries including threats to civil aviation,’ McMaster said. ‘At no time, at no time were intelligence sources or methods discussed and the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known.’

Reporters immediately returned to Spicer’s office, hungry for answers.

As they huddled in a hallway, one reporter for the conservative One America News Network spotted a handful of staffers, including Spicer and spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, walking not far from Spicer’s office.

Soon after, faint, muffled sounds were heard coming from that direction.

It was unclear precisely where they were coming from or what they were – but after a reporter tweeted about the noise, White House staffers quickly turned up the volume on the office television, blaring a newscast loudly enough to drown out any other potential noise.

‘WH comms staffers just put the TVs on super loud after we could hear yelling coming from room w/ Bannon, Spicer, Sanders,’ Buzzfeed’s Adrian Carrasquillo reported.

Sanders, however, told reporters that she didn’t know anything about any yelling, CNN’s Jim Acosta reported.

The Post cited current and former US officials who said Trump had shared classified details with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during a meeting last week.

They said the information, which had been provided by a US partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement, was considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the US government.

The Post story did not claim that Trump revealed any specific information about how the intelligence was gathered, as McMaster’s denial suggested.

Around 7.30pm on Monday, Sanders emerged to announce that White House officials would not be answering any more questions for the evening.

‘We’ve said all we’re going to say,’ she said, asking reporters to clear the hallway. They obliged.

Source: How the West Wing reacted to newest Trump-Russia claims | Daily Mail Online