HELSINKI—President Donald Trump, standing beside Russian leader Vladimir Putin, questioned the U.S. intelligence conclusion that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election, a move lawmakers of both parties said was a stunning alignment with an adversary.
Mr. Trump said he and the Russian president “spent a great deal of time” discussing the matter during their four hours of talks here on Monday, and said Mr. Putin “was extremely strong and powerful in his denial.”
Asked whom he believed—U.S. intelligence agencies or Mr. Putin—Mr. Trump said Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, “came to me [and] said, they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia.”
“I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be,” he added.
.. Mr. Putin said they discussed the possibility of inviting Mueller investigators to Russia to question the charged officers, but added he would expect the U.S. to offer a reciprocal arrangement. Mr. Trump interjected: “I think that’s an incredible offer.”
.. The U.S. has largely ceased cooperation with Russia on pursuing cybercriminals in recent years, as the line between Kremlin-sponsored espionage and routine cybercrime has increasingly blurred in Russia, according to former U.S. officials. Names of criminal hackers shared by U.S. law enforcement with Moscow would often not be arrested but instead wind up working in close alignment with Russia’s intelligence services, turning the effort to cooperate into a recruitment tool for the Kremlin, those officials said.
.. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who often advises the Trump administration, said the president should “clarify” his remarks about the U.S. intelligence community and Mr. Putin. “It is the most serious mistake of his presidency and must be corrected—-immediately,” he said in a tweet.
.. “I can’t remember a similar episode from modern American presidential history where, when standing beside the person who was our most dangerous adversary, the president continually refused to say a negative word on any subject,” said Mr. Burns, who also served as U.S. ambassador to NATO.
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called Mr. Trump’s posture toward the Russian leader “a breach of his duty to defend our country against its adversaries.”
.. “Our relationship has never been worse than it is now,” Mr. Trump declared. “However, that changed, about four hours ago.” Hours earlier, in a tweet, Mr. Trump blamed the U.S. for the poor state of its relations with Moscow.
The Russian Foreign Ministry’s Twitter account on Monday quoted that tweet and wrote: “We agree.”
Mr. Trump said: “I hold both countries responsible.”
“The United States has been foolish. We’ve all been foolish,” he said. “We have both made some mistakes.”
The Risks Lying Within Donald Trump’s One-on-One Meeting With Vladimir Putin
GOP senator, who recently met with Russia’s leader, warns of ‘denial, hostility, blaming others’
“If our experience is any indication of what the president will find, it will be denial, hostility, blaming others and long and tedious responses,” the Kansas Republican said in an interview as he was returning home... Moreover, Sen. Moran suggests the president might want to think twice about his plan to meet privately with Mr. Putin, with no aides present. The senator and his colleagues are fuming at the way the Russian media portrayed (or, they say, baldly mis-portrayed) their own private meetings with Russian officials, suggesting the Americans only briefly and meekly raised the issue of Russian meddling in the 2016 election campaign... Trump, understandably, has focused instead on what he sees as the upside potential. In general, he thinks the world is a safer place if the U.S. and Russia get along. More specifically, he wants Russia to help in the effort to force North Korea to denuclearize by not providing backdoor economic relief to the regime in Pyongyang, particularly by buying North Korean coal... Russia may use the very fact of a private meeting with the president to claim the U.S. has accepted Russia’s annexation of Crimea and acknowledged its right to interfere in Ukraine. Russian media already have trumpeted statements by Mr. Trump suggesting sympathy for the Russian position on Crimea as proof the Americans have thrown in the towel on the subject.Moreover, Mr. Putin may well use Mr. Trump’s own apparent ambivalence about the value of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to portray the U.S. and Russia as moving beyond the traditional alliance that has guarded Western security through the post-World War II era... Mr. Trump and his aides are playing a good-cop, bad-cop routine, in which Mr. Trump questions the motives of America’s allies and carries on pointed spats with the leaders of France, Germay and Canada, while his aides praise the allies and their efforts. In a briefing for reporters last week, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Mr. Trump’s ambassador to NATO, lauded what she called “the biggest increase in defense spending by our allies since the Cold War.”.. Finally, Mr. Putin doubtless will continue to simply deny any interference in the 2016 election campaign, a denial that Mr. Trump noted again on Twitter last week: “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!”The risk is that the Russian leader will use Mr. Trump’s seeming willingness to accept his denials as proof that any claims to the contrary—including a seven-page bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee last week—are specious.Mr. Trump’s critics already portray him as way too cozy with his Russian counterpart. Unless Mr. Trump plays the summit well, he could allow the meeting to play directly into that critique.
The ‘DO NOT CONGRATULATE’ leak shows the White House is panicking
the taxonomy of White House leakage is a worthy study. A surprising number of leaks are the result of simple vanity — the desire to appear in the know. Other leakers are trying to embarrass or sabotage a rival. Some leaks result from deviousness — the attempt to box the president in on a policy matter.
Donald Calls Vladimir: The Transcript
You have caused revolution in legitimacy. All that was previously trustworthy and reputable is now disreputable and untrustworthy, and vice versa. You promote crazy conspiracy theory and shift burden of proof to your adversaries. You replace honesty with authenticity and policy with drama and reality with manufactured reality. These are correct moves.
.. President Putin: We believe your most brilliant tactic is when you bait media into nonstop hysteria over your deliberately stupid Twitter comments so that journalists chase ghosts, people stop reacting and nobody sees your true intention. Bury signal in noise: Very clever!
.. President Putin: To be honest, we don’t mind these new sanctions. They are too weak to hurt us, but they feed Russian complex about Western persecution, very useful to me.