Rep. Gregory Meeks isn’t at all surprised by the cozy relationship between Donald Trump’s special envoy and the Kremlin.
The New York Democrat offered up an unfazed attitude during his appearance on CNN News Central on Wednesday, after a bombshell Bloomberg report revealed that Steve Witkoff held an October phone call with Putin’s top foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov.
“This seems to be more of the usual,” Meeks, 72, told CNN’s John Berman. “It seems Witkoff, as well as the president, are in bed with the Russians.”
Meeks, who serves as a ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, then implored the public to “believe their eyes” about the Trump administration’s intimate relationship with Moscow.
“There are warning lights signing right now against what is taking place with Mr. Witkoff and just about everybody else that is doing these negotiations,” Meeks continued.
In the leaked call, Witkoff, 68, coached the Kremlin on how the Russian dictator should curry favor with Trump before broaching a proposed peace plan between Russia and war-torn Ukraine.
According to Bloomberg’s transcript of the five-minute call, Witkoff told Ushakov that Putin should personally phone Trump ahead of his planned meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—where Zelensky hoped, but ultimately failed, to secure long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles—to congratulate him on the Gaza ceasefire.
Witkoff then laid out in detail how that conversation should unfold, encouraging the Putin aide to present Russia’s proposed peace plan in a positive, if highly misleading, light.
“As far as this transcript is concerned, there is nothing that they are doing to stop Russia and its incursion into Ukraine,” Meeks said. “And now they’re trying to… this 28-point plan—clearly, it’s a plan that Russia gave to Witkoff or someone of that nature, who then tried to impose that on the Ukrainian people.”
He concluded: “There is no accountability going towards Russia right now.”
During the call, Witkoff, a personal friend of Trump’s for more than 40 years, even acknowledged to Ushakov that Ukraine would be forced to make sweeping concessions to Moscow.
“Now, me to you, I know what it’s going to take to get a peace deal done: Donetsk and maybe a land swap somewhere,” Witkoff said. “But I’m saying instead of talking like that, let’s talk more hopefully because I think we’re going to get to a deal here. And I think Yuri, the president, will give me a lot of space and discretion to get to the deal.”
Throughout the call, Witkoff gushed about Putin. “You know I have the deepest respect for President Putin,” he said at one point. When referencing Zelensky’s upcoming White House visit, Witkoff downplayed his role, saying he’d be meeting the Ukrainian president only “because they want me there.”
Bloomberg also reported on a second leaked phone call—this one between Ushakov and Russian economic adviser Kirill Dmitriev—in which the two discussed drafting their own version of a peace plan to pass through Witkoff, confident he would keep it “as close to [Russia’s version] as possible.”
Trump defended his envoy’s Kremlin courtship, telling reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday night that Witkoff was doing “what a dealmaker does.”
“That’s a standard thing, you know, because he’s got to sell this to Ukraine, he’s got to sell Ukraine to Russia…. You know, that’s a very standard form of negotiation,” Trump, 79, said.
White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung told NewsNation the story proved just “one thing.”
“Special Envoy Witkoff talks to officials in both Russia and Ukraine nearly every day to achieve peace, which is exactly what President Trump appointed him to do,” he said.
Trump has a long history of letting Putin get precisely what he wants, including rolling out an actual red carpet for his Russian counterpart during a flop summit in Alaska in August.
This latest development doesn’t seem to be an exception. The initial draft of what is now believed to be Trump’s 28-point peace plan was accused of being written by Moscow even before the phone calls were leaked. The plan included Ukraine handing over territory to Russia, ending its hopes of joining NATO, and inviting Russia to rejoin the G8. Lawmakers across the aisle slammed it as a complete cave-in to Putin.
Trump’s own ally and appointed official, NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker, admitted on FOX Business Network on Tuesday morning that there’s “some truth” to claims that Russia hasn’t made a single concession during the months-long negotiations.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has since revised a new 19-point plan that Ukraine has tentatively agreed to, CNN reported. Witkoff and a revised version of the plan are set to be received in Moscow, where Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that it was “premature” to tell whether a peace deal was close, according to The Independent.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
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