Trump-Putin summit set for July 16 in Finland as president defends Kremlin on election interference and slams ‘Hillary/Russia’ corruption instead
The two world leaders will meet on July 16 in Helsinki, Finland
In a tweet before the summit was announced, Trump defended Russia on accusations of election interference and slammed Clinton instead
Trump will attend a NATO summit in Brussels next month and then go to London and Scotland
National Security Advisor John Bolton was hashing out details this week in Moscow
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says a meeting would be helpful to the countries’ relations, in spite of Russian election meddling in 2018
Bolton slapped down allegations while in Moscow that it would prove there’s some ‘nexus’ between President Trump and Russia’s election meddling
By EMILY GOODIN
DAILYMAIL.COM
28 June 2018
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland, the White House announced Thursday morning.
The two leaders will discuss relations between the United States and Russia and a range of national security issues.
Topics of discussion will also include the Ukraine and Syria, Trump said at the White House on Wednesday and potentially Russian election meddling.
It’s the first formal summit between the two world leaders.
The two men had their first face-to-face meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, last July. They had a brief meeting in November at the APEC Summit in Da Nang, Vietnam.
Trump is also due to visit Belgium, England and Scotland in mid-July.
The meeting’s announcement came as Trump took to twitter to defend Russia on accusations of election interference and slam Hillary Clinton instead.
‘Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election! Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t Shady James Comey and the now disgraced FBI agents take and closely examine it? Why isn’t Hillary/Russia being looked at? So many questions, so much corruption!,’ the president wrote Thursday.
His tweet appears to contradict what his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at a Senate hearing on Wednesday.
Trump is sure to warn Putin that it is ‘completely unacceptable’ to interfere in U.S. elections, Pompeo said.
‘I’m confident that when the president meets with Vladimir Putin he will make clear that meddling in our elections is completely unacceptable,’ Pompeo said during a Senate subcommittee hearing that covered a range of foreign policy challenges.
U.S. intelligence agencies believe Moscow interfered in the 2016 election to the benefit of Trump. And special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating possible collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer took to twitter to slam the president and encourage him to sit down with Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
‘Why do you trust Putin more than your own Republican DOJ officials and the Republican special counsel that was appointed by a Republican? Sit down and do the interview,’ he wrote.
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