Trump’s Russia ‘hoax’ claims take hit from special counsel

Federal indictments allege campaign of election-meddling

For two years, Donald Trump – as both candidate and president – frequently has dismissed the notion of Russian meddling in U.S. elections as a “hoax” and even denigrated heads of U.S. intelligence agencies for suggesting otherwise.

At times he has also taken Russian President Vladimir Putin’s word on the issue.

That view hit choppy waters this past week with the special counsel’s indictment of 13 Russian nationals for alleged cyber-meddling.

Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, added a few waves as the highest ranking White House official to say flatly on Saturday that evidence of Russian election meddling “is now incontrovertible.”

The president has not commented formally on the meddling aspect of the FBI’s allegations, preferring to claim instead that they prove there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign and show that the outcome of the election was not affected. The indictments took no position on either issue.

On Saturday, he continued to help the theme about the indictments not showing collusion but, in two tweets, did not address Russian wrongdoing or possible steps to counter it.

Still, Trump’s reaction did not repeat his past “hoax” claims that stretch back two years.

In August at a rally in Huntington, West Virginia, Trump even mocked the notion of Russian meddling, calling the allegations as made-up to explain Hillary Clinton’s loss in the presidential elections.

“The Russia story is a total fabrication,” he said. “It is just an excuse for the greatest loss in the history of American politics. That’s all it is.”

“Have you seen any Russians in West Virginia or Ohio or Pennsylvania?” he asked his audience to bursts of laughter. “Are there any Russians here tonight? Any Russians?”

That jibe now looks especially problematic, given the indictments detailing how named Russian nationals allegedly traveled to the U.S. under false pretenses to carry out meddling schemes.

Over the years, Trump has also called Putin as a witness to bolster his “hoax” claims.

After meeting with the Russian president in July, Trump told Reuters that he asked the Russian leader outright whether Moscow had interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

“I said, ‘Did you do it?’ He said, ‘No, I did not, absolutely not.’ I then asked him a second time, in a totally different way. He said, ‘Absolutely not.’ ”

He kept up the drumbeat in November, after the APEC meeting in Vietnam, when he again met briefly with the Kremlin leader.

“Every time he sees me he says, ‘I didn’t do that,’ and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it,” Trump said, the BBC reported.

“I think he is very insulted by it,” he added, “which is not a good thing for our country.”

After sharp blowback from those remarks, Trump clarified his position. “As to whether or not I believe it or not, I’m with our agencies. I believe in our ... intelligence agencies,” he said. “What (Putin) believes, he believes.”

In September, during the first debate with Clinton, Trump suggested that any number of people could be the culprit who stole emails from the Democratic National Committee.