Despite the fact that Russians have proven themselves adept at listening in on U.S. officials’ calls made from Ukraine, Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland spoke to President Donald Trump on his cellphone from a restaurant in the country’s capitaol, as top Ukraine diplomat Bill Taylor revealed Wednesday.
In his testimony during the first public hearing of the impeachment inquiry, Taylor relayed that one of his staffers, David Holmes, overheard the call in which Trump expressed a keen an interest in launching a sham investigation against the Bidens.
As experts told the Washington Post, it is extremely unsafe in general to hold such calls over unencrypted cellphone lines, and all the more in a country infiltrated by Russian intelligence.
In 2014, the Kremlin actually leaked a call made in Ukraine that spies intercepted between the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and an assistant secretary of state, where the latter made a rude remark about the EU, in an attempt to embarrass the U.S. and alienate its European allies.
However, the unsecured call is business as usual for the President, who routinely communicates with his cellphone despite warnings from security officials that Russian and Chinese spies are certainly listening in.
