US President Donald Trump will press Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Moscow\u2019s denial of meddling in the 2016 presidential election when the two leaders meet next month, national security adviser John Bolton said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Bolton said he discussed concerns about Russian meddling in the US elections with Putin during his visit to Moscow on Wednesday, citing activities targeting congressional elections coming up in November as well as the 2016 presidential contest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe election meddling issue was definitely something we talked about,\u201d Bolton told the CBS \u201cFace the Nation\u201d program. Bolton said he brought up both the 2016 election and Russian activities in upcoming congressional elections.<\/p>\n
Speaking about the meddling, Bolton told the \u201cFox News Sunday\u201d program: \u201cI think it\u2019s something that we\u2019re concerned about. That\u2019s why the president is going to speak with him about it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the president will have to pursue that further and I think that\u2019s one reason why he and President Putin need to have this conversation,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cVladimir Putin is the one who makes the decisions and I think our leader needs to speak with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s praise of Putin as a strong leader and his stated desire to forge better relations with Russia are of concern to critics. They fear he may cede too much during their first official summit on July 16 in Helsinki, Finland.<\/p>\n
The Republican president said he would raise the issue of election meddling with Putin as well as Russia\u2019s role in Syria and Ukraine.<\/p>\n
After Trump and Putin met briefly in Vietnam in November 2017, Trump was criticized in the United States for saying he believed Putin when he denied Russian meddling.<\/p>\n
US intelligence agencies have alleged that Russian hackers had tried to help Trump win the White House, something Russia has flatly denied. Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating whether Trump\u2019s campaign worked with Moscow. Trump denies any collusion and has called the probe a \u201cwitch hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Putin last month said patriotic Russian hackers may have staged cyber attacks against countries that had strained relations with Moscow and denied state intervention – a departure from the Kremlin\u2019s previous denials of any Russian interference.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m concerned when the president tweets, you know, Russia denies they meddled in our election,\u201d Republican US Senator Lindsay Graham told NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d program on Sunday. \u201cWhen they say they didn\u2019t meddle, they\u2019re lying.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I\u2019m glad the president is going to confront Putin. Show him the evidence you\u2019ve got, Mr. President, because it\u2019s overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bolton also said he discussed Russia\u2019s annexation of Crimea with Putin and his aides during a 90-minute meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Putin was pretty clear with me about it, and my response was we\u2019re going to have to agree to disagree on Ukraine,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s not the position of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US President Donald Trump will press Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Moscow\u2019s denial of meddling in the 2016 presidential election when the two leaders meet next month, national security adviser John Bolton said on Sunday. Bolton said he discussed concerns about Russian meddling in the US elections with Putin during his visit to Moscow on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35995,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35996,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35994\/revisions\/35996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}