President Trump declined to endorse the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election in an extraordinary press conference with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Monday.
When asked about the intelligence community’s assessment, Trump changed the subject to the Democratic National Committee’s servers and Hillary Clinton’s emails.
“Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee? I’ve been wondering that,” the president said. “What happened to Hillary Clinton’s emails? 33,000 emails gone, just gone.”
“President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be,” Trump said, moments after Putin reiterated Russia’s repeated claim that it had not meddled in the election.
The Justice Department on Friday indicted twelve Russian military officers for crimes related to the election, including hacking into the DNC server and stealing the login information of Clinton associates such as campaign chairman John Podesta. At the press conference Monday, Putin said that he would consider extraditing the twelve officers, but added that he did not know the details of the situation.
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04.25.2024