Putin dismisses claims on Trump, US poll meddling

WASHINGTON : Russian President Vladimir Putin said that claims about Russian involvement in US elections are untrue, and that the US actively interferes with elections in other countries.

He dismissed as “a load of nonsense” the idea that Russia has damaging information on President Donald Trump.

“I never met with him. We have a lot of Americans who visit us,” Putin said in an interview with NBC’s “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly.” He added: “Do you think we’re gathering compromising information on all of them right now or something? Are you all — have you all lost your senses over there?”

US intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia meddled in the presidential election to hurt the bid of Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump himself has been dogged by questions about any business dealings with Russia.

“Well, this is just another load of nonsense,” Putin said. “Where would we get this information from? Why, did we have some special relationship with him? We didn’t have any relationship at all.” He again denied any Russian involvement in the US presidential election and any knowledge of Russian contacts with the Trump campaign.

In the NBC interview, Putin was asked about reports of Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner’s attempt to set up a secret communications channel with Russia. Putin said he knew nothing about it and that he had not discussed with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak any meeting with Kushner.

“Had there been anything significant he would have reported it to the minister. The minister would have reported it to me,” Putin said. “There weren’t even any reports. There’s nothing to even talk about. There wasn’t even any kind of specific discussion about sanctions or anything else. For me, this is just amazing. You created a sensation out of nothing.”