Russia: no proof of meddling in US
• While the Kremlin denies accusations of election interference, Trump says the claims are a hoax that is sowing discord in country
Russia’s government insisted on Monday that there was no evidence it meddled in the US elections, after Washington indicted 13 Russians for alleged covert efforts to sway voters.
“There are no indications that the Russian government could be involved in this,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
It was the Kremlin’s first comment since the indictments were filed on Friday by a US special prosecutor as part of a federal government probe.
The indictments allege that a Putin associate led a Russiabased operation churning out social media content, using fake US identities, that included criticisms of Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.
US President Donald Trump on Sunday glossed over any Russian responsibility and offered no indication of what his administration would do about it. He wrote on Twitter that Russia had indeed succeeded in sowing discord in the US but denied his campaign had colluded with Russia, saying this was what Moscow wanted people to believe.
“If it was the GOAL of Russia to create discord, disruption and chaos within the US then, with all of the Committee Hearings, Investigations and Party hatred, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams,” Trump tweeted. “They are laughing their asses off in Moscow. Get smart America!” he added.
“The Russian ‘hoax’ was that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia — it never did!” he said, alleging that “the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems”, referring to Clinton and her party. He also accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation of spending “too much time” on the probe.
Peskov said the claims centred on Russian citizens but that the Russian government was not involved.
The US has failed to provide “significant evidence” of any meddling in its affairs, he said. He said Russia “does not have a custom of interfering in other countries’ internal affairs and is not doing this now”. Earlier Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had dismissed the claims in the indictment as “blabber”.
The allegations of Russian interference and collusion with the Trump campaign are being investigated by several congressional committees and by special prosecutor Robert Mueller.
The indictment makes no claim of collusion between Trump’s campaign team and Russia, but it says some of the accused communicated with “unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign. I do think there are other shoes to drop here besides this indictment,” former national security director James Clapper said on CNN.
Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein said there were “no allegations in this indictment” that any American was a “knowing participant” in the Russian scheme. That led Trump to declare that this vindicated his campaign team.
Rosenstein also said there was no judgment on whether the Russian campaign “altered the outcome” of the election.
Speaking at a security conference in Munich, Germany on Saturday, National Security Advisor HR McMaster called the evidence of Russian interference in US democratic processes “incontrovertible”.
In January, the US Treasury Department issued a list of prominent Russian political and business figures who could be sanctioned, as required under a law passed in 2017 to punish Moscow’s election meddling.
However, the administration said new sanctions called for under the law were not needed because the measure was already having a deterrent effect.