Unpublicized trips to meet foreign adversaries is not always an unwise or treasonous diplomatic effort. Remember Harry Hopkins in a July 1941 meeting with a scurrilous Joe Stalin in Moscow while the press was following FDR on his fishing holiday. Dr. Kissinger secretly met Mao and Chou in Beijing during our actual hostilities in the region. Records and transcripts document both those salient and heroic efforts.
But what about Trump’s meetings with Putin, or Kushner’s with both the Russians and the Saudis? Will our future graduate students be able to favorably compare these latter meetings to those of the old statesmen? Or will future law students scrutinize the records as examples of entrepreneurial folly and legal jeopardy?