WASHINGTON
— Last November, President Trump told reporters that he believed the
Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, when he vigorously denied having
meddled in the 2016 presidential election, an allegation that Mr. Trump
has repeatedly called a hoax.
“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,” Mr. Trump said at the time.
On
Friday, Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, indicted 13 Russian
nationals and described a vast, sophisticated Russian operation to
interfere in the election, delivering to Mr. Trump the kind of evidence
that the president has long sought to dismiss as political attacks from
his rivals.
Mr.
Mueller’s indictments do not directly address the question of whether
Mr. Trump or any of his campaign associates colluded with Russia in the
effort to affect the presidential election. Mr. Trump has insisted that
“there is no collusion,” and he repeated that contention Friday
afternoon in his first comment on the Russian operation described in the
indictments.
“Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President,” he tweeted
shortly after departing the White House for Mar-a-Lago, his estate in
Florida. “The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump
campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!”
The
president was briefed on the indictments at the White House Friday
morning by Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and Donald F.
McGahn II, the White House counsel. Aides said he seemed elated because
he felt they bolstered his claim that his campaign was not involved in
any effort to subvert the election.
But
by laying out in excruciating detail the evidence of Russian meddling
spanning the last four years, Mr. Mueller instantly created a new
political reality for Mr. Trump.
It
remains unclear how the president will respond to that reality. In
addition to saying that he believed Mr. Putin’s denial, Mr. Trump has
repeatedly condemned those who have said that the Russian meddling
occurred, including members of his own intelligence community.
How Russian Bots Invade Our Elections
How do bots and trolls work to
infiltrate social media platforms and influence U.S. elections? We take a
closer look at these insidious online pests to explain how they work.
By NATALIA V. OSIPOVA and AARON BYRD on Publish Date October 31, 2017.
Photo by Aaron Byrd/The New York Times.
Watch in Times Video »
“This
Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It’s an excuse
by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won,”
Mr. Trump told Lester Holt, the NBC News anchor, in an interview last
May.
In
September, the president tweeted that “the Russia hoax continues, now
it’s ads on Facebook. What about the totally biased and dishonest Media
coverage in favor of Crooked Hillary?”
PolitiFact called Mr. Trump’s denial of Russian meddling its 2017 “Lie of the Year.”
Since
his election, Mr. Trump has often privately expressed concern that the
charges of Russian meddling undermine the legitimacy of his presidency.
He has told associates that if he accepts the premise of Russian
meddling, it would call into question the idea that he won the election
on his own merits.
In
news conferences, on Twitter and at campaign rallies, he has called the
Russia investigation “fake news” and has repeatedly predicted that Mr.
Mueller’s investigation will end without finding much.
In
fact, the indictments on Friday were cited by Rod J. Rosenstein, the
deputy attorney general, as proof of the great lengths to which the
Russians went to infiltrate the United States political system.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment