On the eve of his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump questioned the veracity of American intelligence about foreign meddling in the U.S. election, arguing on July 6, 2017 that Russia wasn’t the only country that may have interfered.
“Nobody really knows for sure,” Mr. Trump said.
As U.S. investigations into Russia’s meddling forge ahead, Mr. Trump is under intense scrutiny for how he handles his first face-to-face session with Mr. Putin. U.S. intelligence officials say the unpredictable Russia leader ordered interference into the 2016 election that brought Mr. Trump to the White House.
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Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin plan to sit down on July 7, 2017 in Hamburg, Germany, on the sidelines of the G20 Summit.
Loathe to cast a shadow on his election victory, Mr. Trump has avoided firmly blaming Moscow for campaign hacking in the past, and on July 6, 2017, he was similarly elusive. He argued variably that it could have been Russia, probably was Russia and indeed was Russia, while insisting it could have been other countries, too, and adding: “I won’t be specific.”
“A lot of people interfere. It’s been happening for a long time,” Mr. Trump said in Poland. Asked specifically whether he planned to discuss the issue with Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump demurred.
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The President sought to redirect any scrutiny toward his predecessor, Barack Obama, accusing him of allowing Moscow to meddle on his watch. Though the Obama administration warned Russia publicly and privately before Election Day to stop interfering, questions have since been raised about whether he acted aggressively enough to stop the threat.
“They say he choked. Well, I don’t think he choked,” Mr. Trump said. “I think he thought Hillary Clinton was going to win the election, and he said, ‘Let’s not do anything about it.’”
Mr. Trump said the CIA had informed Mr. Obama about the hacking months before the election but added that “mistakes have been made”. Though Mr. Trump has made similar statements before, it was an extraordinary public expression of doubt about U.S. intelligence capabilities by a President while standing on foreign soil.
Mr. Trump’s comments came as he opened his second visit to Europe, a trip that will also take him to Germany for the Group of 20 Summit, where he’ll meet with Mr. Putin. In Warsaw, Mr. Trump used part of a joint news conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda to attack several U.S. news organisations for their coverage of his presidency, eliciting sympathy from Mr. Duda, who suggested that he, too, was covered unfairly. “We don’t want fake news,” Mr. Trump said.
Standing alongside the visiting American, Mr. Duda said he hoped Poland would soon sign a long-term contract for U.S. liquefied gas deliveries that will help it cut dependence on Russian oil and gas, which Moscow has previously used as a tool to exert political pressure. Poland received its first U.S. delivery in June 2017, a one-time deal that it hopes to make permanent.
Drawing an implicit contrast with Russia, Mr. Trump pledged that the U.S. would never use energy to coerce eastern and central European nations. He vowed that it wouldn’t allow other nations to coerce them, either.