Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Putin’s pitch for exchange raises enmity
Trump ‘disagrees’ with it, aide says; Senate opposes it
WASHINGTON — The White House said Thursday that President Donald Trump “disagrees” with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to allow the U.S. to question 12 Russians accused of interfering in the 2016 election in exchange for permitting Russia to interview Americans whom the Kremlin accuses of unspecified crimes.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the proposal was “made in sincerity” by Putin, but Trump “disagrees with it.” She said the U.S. hopes Putin will have the Russians, who are indicted on charges filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, “come to the United States to prove their innocence or guilt.”
Putin suggested the exchange, and during a joint news conference at the end of the two leaders’ summit in Helsinki earlier this week, Trump called it an “incredible offer.” At home, Trump received bipartisan condemnation for remarks made during that news conference.
Later Thursday, the Senate approved a nonbinding resolution opposing Putin’s offer by a vote of 98-0.
The vote marked a rare decision by Republican leader Mitch McConnell to take up a resolution written by top Democrat Charles Schumer undercutting the GOP president.
“Let this resolution be a warning to the administration that Congress will not allow this to happen,” Schumer of New York said on the Senate floor just before the vote.
The White House had said Wednesday that the exchange proposal was under
consideration, even though the State Department called Russia’s allegations against the Americans “absurd.” In an interview with The Christian Broadcasting Network on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “that’s not going to happen.”
“The administration is not going to send, force Americans to travel to Russia to be interrogated by Vladimir Putin and his team,” Pompeo said.
The Russian claims against the Americans, including former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, involve allegations of fraud and corruption. Congressional Republicans have criticized the White House for even considering the offer, while McFaul has called it a “ridiculous request from Putin.”
Pushing back against criticism of his Putin meeting, Trump said Thursday that he wants another meeting with Putin to start implementing ideas they discussed in Helsinki, casting the summit as a starting point for progress on a number of shared concerns.
Trump asked National Security Adviser John Bolton to invite Putin to Washington for a fall meeting, and “those discussions are already underway,” Sanders said Thursday.
There was no immediate reaction from the Kremlin to the invitation.
Trump tweeted a list of topics discussed at the summit, including terrorism, security for Israel, Mideast peace, Ukraine, North Korea and more, and wrote: “There are many answers, some easy and some hard, to these problems … but they can ALL be solved!”
“I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed,” he wrote. Trump also met with Putin last year in Germany and Vietnam.
Despite the bipartisan criticism of his comments on Russia, Trump pointed blame at the media, tweeting: “The Fake News Media wants so badly to see a major confrontation with Russia, even a confrontation that could lead to war. They are pushing so recklessly hard and hate the fact that I’ll probably have a good relationship with Putin. We are doing MUCH better than any other country!”
“The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media,” he tweeted.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Thursday that she has not seen evidence that the Russians meddled in the 2016 election to help elect Trump, countering the U.S. intelligence agencies assessment on the issue.
Intelligence agencies concluded in early 2017 that Putin ordered “an influence campaign” aimed at helping the Trump campaign and harming his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
Nielsen said: “I haven’t seen any evidence that the attempts to interfere in our election infrastructure was to favor a particular party.”
But Nielsen still said she stands behind the intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia meddled in the election. She added that Russia’s influence operations were aimed at causing chaos in both parties.
QUESTIONS, CONCERNS
Numerous lawmakers have criticized Trump for his post-summit statements in which he raises doubts about Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.
Rejecting the intelligence findings “is an act of will on the part of the president, and that choice now leaves us contemplating a dark mystery,” Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said. “Why did he do that? What would compel our president to do such a thing?”
In a sign of unease over Trump’s statements, McConnell on Thursday ordered committee hearings on legislation to deter Russia from meddling in this year’s election.
Lawmakers in both parties have called for actions — such as tougher sanctions on Russia and limiting the president’s ability to impose tariffs based on national security — after the Trump-Putin meeting and last week’s indictment of 12 Russian intelligence agents on charges that involve the hacking of Democratic Party email accounts.
McConnell said in a statement that the U.S. intelligence assessment on the 2016 election “makes clear that President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at undermining public faith in our democratic process.”
He ordered the chairmen of the Banking and Foreign Relations Committees to hold a hearing on Russia sanctions and asked them to recommend “additional measures that could respond to or deter Russian malign behavior.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said this week that he’ll propose new sanctions on Russia that could only be waived if the administration certifies that Moscow has ceased interfering in U.S. elections.
Graham acknowledged Thursday that Trump has had a “bad week” on Russia.
“I think it’s imperative that he understand that he’s misjudging Putin,” Graham told reporters. “I don’t think he was prepared as well as he should have been.”
Graham said Trump was right to criticize previous administrations for their handling of Russia. But he said Trump “is not making the problem better, he’s making it worse.”
A bill offered by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Democrat Chris Van Hollen of Maryland would impose stiff sanctions on Russia’s energy and banking sectors if the Director of National Intelligence — not Trump — certifies that Russia interfered in any future election.
Separately, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee blocked a move to subpoena the American translator from the Helsinki summit to testify about the private talks between Trump and Putin.
The panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, said Thursday that he wanted the translator, who works for the State Department, to appear in a closed session, saying Congress must “find out what was said” during the two-hour Trump-Putin meeting.
“It is incumbent on us, given what the president said publicly that was of such great concern to our country, to our NATO allies, that we find out what was said privately,” Schiff said.
The California lawmaker said he realizes it’s an “extraordinary” step to subpoena the interpreter but it’s also extraordinary for the president to meet alone with a U.S. adversary.
Senate Democrats have been pushing for testimony from the interpreter to determine if Trump made any deals with Putin during the session.
PUTIN CONDEMNATION
Putin, in his first public comments about the summit, told Russian diplomats Thursday that U.S.-Russian relations are “in some ways worse than during the Cold War,” but that the meeting with Trump allowed them to start on “the path to positive change.”
“We will see how things develop further,” Putin said.
He also warned that certain political forces in the United States — a formulation that usually refers to a supposed anti-Russian cabal in the U.S. national security establishment — were trying to undermine what he called a successful meeting this week with Trump.
“We see that there are forces in the United States that put their own group and narrow partisan interests above the national ones,” Putin said. “Our renowned satirists once wrote very well about such people: ‘Pathetic, paltry people.’ But this is not so in this particular case. These people are not pathetic and not paltry. On the contrary, they are quite powerful and strong if they can, excuse my crudeness, force-feed millions of their people various stories that are hard to digest in normal logic.”
In speaking of “pathetic, paltry people” in reference to opponents of Trump’s Russia policies, Putin appeared to be quoting from the book The Twelve Chairs by Russian satirists Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, using a derisive phrase that is familiar to readers of Russian literature.
The comments were some of the most extensive to date by Putin about the Russian view about whether a “deep state” of national security elites dominates U.S. politics and is conspiring to thwart Trump.
Trump toughened his tone about Russia on Wednesday, saying in a CBS News interview that he told the Russian president to his face during Monday’s summit to stay out of America’s elections “and that’s the way it’s going to be.”
That rhetoric marked a turnabout from Trump’s first, upbeat description of the summit with Putin.
Still, Trump backtracked on whether Russia is currently targeting U.S. elections. Asked the question Wednesday, his “no” answer put him sharply at odds with recent public warnings from his own intelligence chief.
Hours later, the White House stepped in to say Trump was answering “no” to taking more questions, not “no” to the election-targeting question.
At the news conference with Putin on Monday, Trump was asked if he would denounce election interference in 2016 and warn Putin never to do it again, and he did not directly answer. Instead, he delivered a rambling response, including demands for an investigation of Clinton’s email server and a description of Putin’s “extremely strong and powerful” denial of meddling.
Trump asserted Wednesday at the White House that no other American president has been as tough on Russia. He cited U.S. sanctions and the expulsion of alleged Russian spies from the U.S., telling reporters that Putin “understands it, and he’s not happy about it.”
Pressed on why Trump has repeatedly passed on opportunities to publicly condemn Putin’s actions, Sanders suggested that Trump was working to make the most of an “opportunity” for the two leaders to work together on shared interests.
Information for this article was contributed by Zeke Miller, Ken Thomas, Lisa Mascaro, Deb Riechmann, Tami Abdollah and Susannah George of The Associated Press; by Laura Litvan, Chris Strohm, Terrence Dopp and Steven T. Dennis of Bloomberg News; and by Andrew E. Kramer of The New York Times.