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!”
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.
Quoted from: nytimes.
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