Donald Trump said on Sunday that it was “time to move forward in working constructively with Russia” after his meeting at the G20 with Vladimir Putin.
After returning from the summit of the world’s leading economies in Germany on Saturday night, Trump began Sunday with a series of tweets defending himself against criticism that he had been too soft on the Russian leader at their first face-to-face meeting.
Trump said that he had “strongly pressed” Putin twice over Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election during their lengthy sit-down, adding: “He vehemently denied it. I’ve already given my opinion …”
US intelligence agencies have stated that Moscow tried to interfere with the election in order to help Trump. But the president himself has been equivocal about whether he believes this, stating on Thursday: “I think it could very well have been Russia. I think it could well have been other countries … Nobody really knows for sure.”
After Friday’s meeting – attended only by the two presidents, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, US secretary of state Rex Tillerson, and interpreters – Lavrov claimed Trump had told Putin he accepted the Russian leader’s denials of involvement in attempting to sway last year’s American election, and Putin said on Saturday he thought Trump believed those denials.
“[Trump] asked a lot of questions on this subject,” Putin said. “I, inasmuch as I was able, answered these questions. It seems to me that he took these [answers] on board and agreed with them, but in actual fact, it’s best to ask him how he views this.”
But Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, took issue with that on Sunday. “The president absolutely didn’t believe the denial of President Putin,” he told Fox News.
In his tweets on Sunday, Trump went on to hail a ceasefire in south-west Syria brokered by the US, Russia and Jordan, which began at noon local time. “We negotiated a ceasefire in parts of Syria which will save lives,” the US president said. “Now it is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia!”
US intelligence agencies have warned that Russia will keep up its efforts to interfere in US and other elections. Ash Carter, US defence secretary under Barack Obama, told CNN that that worried him. “There are state elections, municipal elections, as well as national elections,” he said. “There are elections in other countries. It’s important that there be consequences for the Russians in regard to this.”
At their meeting in Hamburg on Friday, Trump and Putin also announced they would set up a working group on non-interference in future elections.
“Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded … and safe,” Trump tweeted.
“This is like the guy who robbed your house proposing a working group on burglary,” Carter said. “It’s they who did this.”
Trump also said he had not discussed sanctions with Russia. The US imposes a number of different sanctions on Russia, relating to Moscow’s backing of separatists in Ukraine, its weapons sales, its human rights violations, and its interference in the 2016 election. “Nothing will be done until the Ukraine & Syrian problems are solved!” Trump tweeted.
Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, which is conducting one of the current congressional investigations into Russia’s interference in the election and its possible links to the Trump team, criticised the president’s comments on CNN on Sunday morning.
“How can we really believe that the president pressed Putin hard when only the day before he was denying whether we really knew Russia was responsible?” the California Democrat asked. “We’re, I guess, meant to believe that he’s much stronger in private than he’s willing to be publicly, but why does that make any rational sense?
“On the contrary, if he was really determined to press Putin, he would have gone into that meeting and said unequivocally ‘this is what Russia did’. Even by an account from the secretary of state, apparently the president asked Putin whether he did it, he didn’t go in there and confront him and say … ‘We know you did this, you have to stop.’”
John Brennan, former director of the CIA under Obama, agreed, telling NBC News: “I seriously question whether or not Mr Putin heard from Mr Trump what he needed to about the assault on our democratic institutions of the election.”
Schiff went on to condemn Trump’s suggestion that it was now time to “move forward”.
“To say: ‘OK, it’s been resolved, now we can move on’ – I don’t think we can move on. I don’t think we can expect the Russians to be any kind of a credible partner in some kind of cybersecurity unit. I think that would be dangerously naive for this country. If that’s our best election defence, we might as well just mail our ballot boxes to Moscow. I don’t think that’s an answer at all.”
He called the idea of working with Russia on cybersecurity “dangerously naive”, adding: “The president just went into a meeting with a man who ordered hacking of our democratic institutions. So Putin wasn’t just a tangential player here, he wasn’t just a disinterested party.”
‘Putin could be of enormous assistance’
On NBC News, Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a frequent critic of Trump’s, said of the cyber-security working group: “It’s not the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, but it’s pretty close.”
Another GOP senator frequently at odds with Trump, former presidential candidate John McCain, joked: “I’m sure that Vladimir Putin could be of enormous assistance in that effort, since he is doing the hacking.”
Schiff also said his committee was willing to call Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, following a New York Times story revealing that the three held a meeting with a Russian lawyer with links to the Russian state shortly after Trump won the Republican nomination, in what appears to have been the earliest known private meeting between key aides to the future president and a Russian.
“It certainly raises questions for a variety of reasons,” said Schiff. “Of course the president’s son had denied having any kind of meetings like this. They claim that this meeting had nothing to do with the campaign and yet the Trump campaign manager is invited to come to the meeting, and there is no reason for this Russian government advocate to be meeting with Paul Manafort, or with Mr Kushner, or with the president’s son if it wasn’t about the campaign and Russia policy.”
He added: “Obviously they were trying to influence one of the candidates, the leading candidate at that time on the Republican ticket.”
Donald Trump Jr has said the meeting was about a program that used to allow US citizens to adopt Russian children, which was ended by Russia in response to American sanctions, known as the Magnitsky Act.
“What it sounds like the meeting may have really been about … is the Magnitsky Act, and that is legislation, very powerful sanctions legislation, that goes against Russian human rights abusers,” Schiff said. “So if this was an effort to do away with that sanctions policy, that is obviously very significant. If they’re talking to the president’s team, then candidate Trump’s team, that contradicts, of course, what the president and his people have said about whether they were meeting with any representatives of the Russian government.”
‘Why did Obama do NOTHING?’
In his Sunday tweets, Trump also renewed his criticism of Obama, who has come under fire for an alleged lack of forcefulness in his response to the cyberattack. The Washington Post has reported that the Obama team was worried about triggering an escalation from Putin that might threaten the credibility of the election result, and also about being seen to be weighing in on the side of Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
“Why did Obama do NOTHING when he had info before election?” Trump tweeted.
Brennan, the former CIA director, defended the former administration. “I don’t believe that the Obama administration choked,” he said.
“I think we can look at the actions that were taken prior to the election and after the election. I confronted my main Russian counterpart, and – on August 4 – and told him: ‘If you go down this road, it’s going to have serious consequences, not only for the bilateral relationship, but for our ability to work with Russia on any issue, because it is an assault on our democracy.’”
He added: “And President Obama confronted President Putin in September. Jim Clapper [former director of national intelligence] and Jeh Johnson [former homeland security secretary] announced publicly in October about Russian efforts. So, after we did that, I wonder whether or not the Russians then took a step back and said: ‘Wait a minute now, we’re not gonna be as aggressive as we may have been otherwise.’”
But Carter, Obama’s defence secretary, admitted: “I think it’s quite clear that that was not sufficient.”
He added: “That’s why it’s so important to press the Russians now. If it were sufficient, Vladimir Putin’s answer to our president wouldn’t have been to say – cast doubt upon it or ask for further intelligence from the United States.”
(TheGuardian US)
