For the past week, the White House has been placed in an impossible bind, guided by a president who cannot definitively state whether the Russians attempted to influence the American electoral process. So far, Donald Trump has offered several contradictory opinions on this: during his press conference with Vladimir Putin, he told reporters that he couldn’t “see any reason why it would be” Russia, only to change the “would” to “wouldn’t” the next day. The day after that, he told a reporter that “no,” he did not believe Russia was trying to meddle any further, an answer that Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was forced to bend into something benign. Few White House officials, it seems, can get a read on what the president truly believes, or why he’s chosen to drag the administration through such a harrowing back-and-forth. But perhaps even more concerning, the majority of Trump’s aides are also in the dark about another crucial detail: what, exactly, Trump agreed to during his one-on-one meeting with the Russian president.

On Wednesday, Russia’s U.S. ambassador, Anatoly Antonov, mentioned to reporters that Trump and Putin had reached “important verbal agreements” concerning two bilateral arms treaties, and potential cooperation over fighting terrorism in Syria. Behind the scenes, The Washington Post reported, White House officials “at the most senior levels across the U.S. military,” scrambled to determine whether this was, in fact, the case. Left with “little to no information,” they eventually settled for broad descriptions of proceedings—according to Sanders, the two discussed “Syrian ­humanitarian aid, Iran’s nuclear ambition, Israeli security, North Korean denuclearization, Ukraine and the occupation of Crimea, reducing Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals, and of course your favorite topic, Russia’s interference in our elections,” an exchange she characterized as “the beginning of a dialogue with Russia.” Sanders offered no further details, and declined to elaborate on one of the more controversial ideas to emerge from the tête-à-tête: the proposal that Russia, at Putin’s behest, would interrogate two Americans who happened to be vocal Putin critics. “The president is gonna meet with his team, and we’ll let you know when we have an announcement on that,” she said. (She delivered a verdict Thursday afternoon, saying that Trump “disagrees” with the proposal, and that “Hopefully President Putin will have the 12 identified Russians come to the United States to prove their innocence or guilt.”) The response from the Defense Department, which was scheduled to brief reporters on Syria Thursday, was even more vague. “When we are able to provide more details, we will, but rest assured, the U.S. Department of Defense remains laser-focused on the defense of our nation,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White.

This sort of opacity toward the press isn’t unusual for the Trump administration, nor is the internal, in-the-dark scramble exactly a novelty—Trump caught his entire communications staff off guard in March, when he almost unilaterally agreed to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. The more worrisome possibility is that the president, who has consistently and deliberately lied to the American public regarding Russia, is beginning to employ the same tactics with his own staff. A New York Times report published Wednesday reveals the extent of Trump’s obfuscation; per the Times, two weeks before his inauguration, Trump was presented with overwhelming evidence by former C.I.A. director John Brennan, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, and former F.B.I. director James Comey, among others, that Russia had meddled in the presidential election, and that Putin himself had very likely ordered the attack. This evidence reportedly included texts, e-mails, and intel from a source close to Putin, as well as the contents of the controversial Steele dossier. According to those present for the briefing, Trump seemed “grudgingly convinced” of its veracity.

Of course, even if Trump was convinced, he’s shown no sign of it. Moreover, he’s repeatedly trashed the very people who briefed him that day, firing Comey months later, and criticizing Clapper and Brennan. He kept up the tirade as recently as Wednesday night, telling CBS’s Jeff Glor, “Certainly I can’t have any confidence in the past . . . I have no confidence in a guy like Brennan. I think he’s a total lowlife. I have no confidence in Clapper. You know, Clapper wrote me a beautiful letter when I first went to office, and it was really nice. And then, all of a sudden, he’s gone haywire because they got to him and they probably got him to say things that maybe he doesn’t even mean.” He continued, “But no, I certainly don’t have confidence in past people. You look at what’s happened. Take a look at all of the shenanigans that have gone on. Very hard to have confidence in that group.”

Trump also told Glor that in his meeting with Putin, he was “very strong on the fact that we can’t have meddling . . . I let him know we can’t have this, we’re not going to have it, and that’s the way it’s going to be.” Whether or not—and to what extent—he was telling the truth, of course, is impossible to divine.