White House chief of staff Reince Priebus has refuted claims that President Trump accepted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assurances that his government did not interfere in the 2016 U.S election.
White House chief of staff Reince Priebus has refuted claims by Russian President Vladimir Putin that President Trump appeared to accept assurances that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 U.S election.
Priebus said on “Fox News Sunday,” “The president absolutely did not believe the denial of President Putin.”
Trump “immediately came into the meeting, talked about Russian meddling in the U.S. election, went after that issue at least two separate times. This was not just a five-minute piece of the conversation, this was an extensive portion of the meeting," Priebus added. "After going at it with President Putin more than once -- two times maybe even three times -- the president at that point, after spending a large part of the meeting on the subject, moved on to other topics.”
While Priebus was not in attendance at the meeting, this broad account seems to echo that of Trump who tweeted Sunday, “I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election. He vehemently denied it. I've already given my opinion.”
The U.S. president was likely referring to comments he made shortly before the G20 summit, saying, “I think it very well could be Russia but I think it could very well have been other countries. I think a lot of people interfere.”
In his Sunday tweets, Trump also mentioned that he discussed a cybersecurity partnership with Putin during their meeting on Friday.
Trump wrote, “Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded."
