If US President Donald Trump was inclined to be tentative when raising election meddling with Russian President Vladimir Putin tomorrow, the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers with hacking in 2016 has made that approach a much harder sell.
A federal grand jury on Friday alleged that officers of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, secretly monitored computers and stole data from the campaign of Trump’s former rival, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The charges put an even greater spotlight on Trump’s treatment of Putin, who has denied making efforts to intervene in the US election that Trump, a Republican, unexpectedly won.
Trump has called the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Moscow a “witch hunt” and has shown an eagerness to get along with his Russian counterpart, repeatedly referring to the former KGB leader’s denials of such behaviour.
“Trump has maybe a little less room to manoeuvre if he wants to downplay the issue or pretend that it’s not real,” said Jeffrey Mankoff, a Russia expert at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
Trump has said he plans to raise the issue.
When asked at a news conference in Britain on Friday whether he would tell Putin to stay out of US elections, Trump said “yes”. But the president indicated he did not expect much progress on the issue. “I will absolutely bring that up,” Trump told reporters. “I don’t think you’ll have any ‘Gee, I did it. I did it. You got me.’”
Critics said they were sceptical Trump would press the issue at all, despite the indictments.
“Even with today’s news, we can expect Trump to raise Putin’s attack on our democracy in a passing, perfunctory way before again taking — or at least claiming to take — Putin’s denials at face value,” said Ned Price, a former national security council spokesman for President Barack Obama.
Democratic lawmakers urged Trump to cancel the get-together with Putin.
The president is spending the weekend at his golf property in Scotland before leaving today for Helsinki, where the meeting is scheduled to take place.
Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said the release of the charges “has no impact on Monday’s meeting.”
But the summit, and the extent of Trump’s emphasis on election meddling, could highlight a divide between him and his own advisers, not to mention other Republicans, about the seriousness of Russia’s activities.
Defence Secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser John Bolton, at least prior to joining the White House, have both been more critical of Moscow than the president they serve.
And the administration’s broader policy toward Russia is harsher than the rhetoric employed by Trump, who recently suggested that Moscow be readmitted to what is now the Group of Seven, since Russia was kicked out of the bloc of industrialised countries for annexing Crimea from Ukraine.
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