President Donald Trump pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin about Russian interference in the 2016 election when the two leaders met on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters Friday.
Tillerson said Trump opened the more than two hour meeting by questioning Moscow's cyber intrusions in America's political system. The two had a "very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject," Tillerson said.
Putin continued to deny Russian involvement.
The highly anticipated face-to-face was the first ever in-person meeting between Trump and Putin and took place amid ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and allegations that some members of Trump's presidential campaign colluded with Russia's government. Moscow and Trump dispute the claims, which are being probed by the House and Senate intelligence committees and special counsel Robert Mueller.
Until Thursday, their scheduled meeting had been touted as a brief tête-à-tête on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hamburg.
But on Thursday evening, the White House issued guidance describing Trump’s sit-down as an “expanded meeting” with Putin. And despite being scheduled for only 30 minutes, it ended up lasting 2 hours and 16 minutes.
Nevertheless, only four people were in the room for the Friday session, in addition to Trump and Putin: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and two translators.
Top Trump aides had remained coy about what might come up during the meeting, with several telling reporters they had no idea which issues would be on the table.
One issue, however, remained, critical to several lawmakers: that Trump push Putin over alleged interference in the 2016 election.
In recent days, Democrats increasingly implored Trump to use the meeting with Putin to confront the Russian strongman about Moscow’s purported meddling.
A group of five Democratic senators, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., even sent a letter to Trump Thursday, warning him not doing so would amount to “a severe dereliction of the duty of the office to which you were elected."
Trump, however, during a joint press conference Thursday in Warsaw with Polish President Andrzej Duda, essentially cautioned he would not do so, reiterating his oft-refuted suggestion that countries other than Russia meddled in the 2016 election.
"I think it could very well have been Russia, but I think it could well have been other countries,” Trump said Thursday. “Nobody really knows … Nobody really knows for sure.”
That sentiment, which Trump has offered several times previously, goes against the overwhelming consensus of the U.S. intelligence community, which has repeatedly offered its conclusions that Russia, at Putin’s direction, meddled in the election.
Throughout the campaign, and the first five months of his presidency, Trump has frequently refused to criticize Russia or Putin.
In April, just one day after his top diplomat had said relations with Moscow were at a “low point,” Trump even tweeted that "things will work out fine between the U.S.A. and Russia.”
Tensions between the rival superpowers have escalated since Trump took office as the two nations have aligned with competing factions in the Syrian conflict — tensions that mushroomed even further after the U.S. bombed a Syrian airfield earlier this year.
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