National Security Adviser John Bolton said President Trump will discuss a “full range of issues” with Russia leader Vladimir Putin at their upcoming summit, including Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
“I expect it will be somewhat unstructured, but it will give them a chance to go over some of these issues free of the pressure of immediate deadlines or crises,” Bolton said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“In establishing that line of communication the president has very much in mind he wants to understand the Russian position and perhaps more importantly he wants Vladimir Putin to understand our positions,” he continued.
Trump will sit down with Putin in Helsinki on July 16, the first formal one-on-one meeting between the two leaders.
They had previously met on the sidelines of a G-20 gathering in Germany and an Asian Pacific conference in Vietnam last year.
After tweeting last Thursday that “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!,” Trump switched gears on Friday and said he would discuss the matter.
“We’re going to talk about Ukraine, we’re going to be talking about Syria. We’ll be talking about elections … we don’t want anybody tampering with elections,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One.
Bolton met with Putin last week to lay the groundwork for the meeting and said Putin continued to dismiss allegations of interference.
“What president Putin said to me, through the translator of course, that she said there was no meddling in the 2016 election by the Russian state,” Bolton said.
“So I think it still raises the question, I think the president will want to have a conversation about this and say we don’t want to see meddling in the 2018 election,” he added.
The US intelligence community has said the Kremlin interfered in the election and special counsel Robert Mueller is investing Russian involvement and whether members of Trump’s campaign colluded.
The president has called Mueller’s probe a “witch hunt.”
