W. House shifts on Putin sanction talk

WASHINGTON — The White House said Monday that President Trump did briefly discuss Russian sanctions when he met with Vladimir Putin last week — directly contradicting what Trump himself declared a day earlier.

“There were sanctions specific to election meddling that were discussed, but not beyond that,” White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said during her afternoon briefing.

That’s the opposite of what Trump claimed Sunday, the latest in his constantly shifting story about what happened in the meeting with Russia’s leader last Friday.

“Sanctions were not discussed at my meeting with President Putin. Nothing will be done until the Ukrainian & Syrian problems are solved!” he declared on Twitter.

The White House has quietly lobbied to weaken a congressional bill that codifies sanctions against Russia for its meddling in the 2016 election, in spite of the ongoing probe into whether any Trump officials colluded with Russia to swing the election their way.

Marc Short, the White House’s top legislative affairs liaison, told reporters that they didn’t oppose the sanctions themselves but the way that Congress was looking to put them into practice, because the bill doesn’t contain loopholes for national security purposes he argued are standard practice in legislative sanctions bills.

“We support the sanctions in the bill on Russia,” he said. “What our concern is that the legislation we believe sets an unusual precedent . . . by not including national security waivers.”

Sanders also added further confusion to Trump’s own selfcontradictions on whether he was seeking to work with Russia on cybersecurity — even though Russia was the one that attacked the American election system in the first place. After being roundly mocked for saying he was doing so, Trump walked back his claim and said it wasn’t on the table.

Sanders said “discussions may still take place.”