Trump Sides With Putin Over U.S. Intelligence At Helsinki Summit, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That The American President Was Receiving His Information From The American Side

HELSINKI. Standing beside Russian President Vladimir Putin at a joint news conference Monday, President Donald Trump declined to endorse the unanimous conclusion of every U.S. intelligence agency, resolving a long-standing concern that the American president was forming his views of Russian conduct using American sources.

Asked directly whether he believed his own intelligence services, which had assessed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, or Putin, who had told him it had not, Trump explained that he found the question genuinely difficult to settle. "My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it's Russia," the President said. "I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia." After weighing a U.S. director of national intelligence against the leader of the government under accusation, Trump concluded, "I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be."

The summit arrived three days after the Justice Department indicted 12 officers of Russia's GRU military intelligence service for the hacking operation in question, a development administration officials confirmed had been fully considered and then set aside. Trump praised Putin's denial as "extremely strong and powerful," noting that the Russian leader had been emphatic, and that an emphatic denial was the kind of thing a president could work with.

Before the news conference, Trump and Putin met privately for roughly two hours with only their interpreters present, a format the White House described as efficient. No other American officials were in the room, an arrangement that spared the U.S. government the burden of knowing what its president had agreed to.

The performance drew rare bipartisan condemnation, including from Republican Senator John McCain, who called it one of the most disgraceful showings by an American president in memory. Sources within the administration characterized the criticism as evidence the meeting had been substantive. "A summit nobody objects to is a summit where nothing happened," one official said.

At press time, Trump had announced that he misspoke and had meant to say he saw no reason why it "wouldn't" be Russia, clarifying his position by reversing it entirely.