A good CNN article out now that asks the question - WHY did Trump take such pains to ensure that nobody, including his own senior staff knew anything about what he and Putin spoke about?
Maybe. Possible. Set out a false trail of evidence, hope somebody goes haring after it, baying like hounds, then reveal that its all a hoax. 'Course, you don’t tell them who’s hoax it was, because that would be dumb.
Of course, I’m not much like Trump, not an especially stable genius, just ordinary, garden-variety.
More likely explanation is that Trump habitually operates like a mob boss, and this is just how he rolls.
Although I regard Trump as a criminal and a traitor, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt regarding his insistence on keeping his Putin chats secret.
It’s possible that these chats were so banal, so utterly devoid of any intelligence, that exposing them would be too humiliating.
True, all of Trump’s public utterances and tweets are banal and devoid of intelligence, but he pretends that that is his fake persona, that he’s play-acting for the “uneducated people who are his favorite people.” But this excuse wouldn’t apply in a one-on-one with Putin. To reveal these chats would reveal the “Emperor” as not only wearing no clothes, but unable even to put on his diapers without help.
Has Trump also kept similar chats with other heads of state out of all official records?
The man is way, way to stupid to realize that. There is exactly zero introspection, or self realization. He is not capable of seeing his own faults.
I’m going to assume you made a serious statement here and I’m not being whooshed.
No. The ramifications of secret chats are much more damaging and far-reaching, no matter his reasons for keeping them secret.
For a start, it enables Putin to claim anything he likes about what was said and there is no way for Trump or anyone else to refute those assertions.
Also, whatever is said in those chats becomes binding on future presidents and other members of government. Continuity and accountability are badly broken when only Trump knows what was said.
There is never, ever a good reason for his discussions with an adversarial head of government to be completely secret. Classified and unavailable to the public, perhaps. But not secret.
Aren’t conversations between heads of state usually secret?
They aren’t made public but they are documented and preserved. Unless one of them is under the control of the other.
Performance reviews are strictly confidential.
It’s helpful if you read the whole post.
I had read it, thank you, and chose my word precisely.
No.
Secret from the public, sure. Secret from the rest of the Administration? No.
Then consider choosing your argument carefully next time as well. 
Are the meeting transcripts subject to the Presidential Records Act?
Faults? What faults? He’s the most faultless person there ever was! The smartest too; knows more about everything than all the so-called experts. Right? Just ask him!
That was my first thought as well. Some googling tells me that there are plenty of people who think likewise, but I couldn’t find anything very authoritative.
What meeting transcripts?
The Kremlin may have transcripts of the meetings—in fact they almost certainly do. Those would not be subject to any US legislation, of course.
Mueller’s full accounting of Manafort’s lies, after the cooperation deal was signed:
Still reading through. I read the first part about the $125,000 payment, slotting in the words “Kilimnik” and “Gates” for the shorter and longer redactions, but then section 2 starts with the overt heading “Konstantin Kilimnik’s Role in the Witness Tampering Conspiracy” so apparently there was nothing about Kilimnik and probably not Gates either in the first section.
There is a mention of owing someone money, but I believe that Manafort owes Deripaska some amount in the millions, so the $125k is probably not related to that.
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Things start to become interested/completely redacted starting around page 12. Regrettably, I can’t make any inferrences from it, beyond that I feel like quite a number of the references are about “the President”. But, obviously, that’s just my brain inserting it.
Still, probably the actual text would raise the eyebrows of any judge who was seeing the document for the first time, I would bet.
They take a special form of Botox in the eyebrows to paralyze them when they are going to read something Mueller hands them.