President Trump contradicted U. S. intelligence assessments that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, and President Vladimir V. Putin said he didn’t know that Mr. Trump was in Russia in 2013.
what Mr. Trump said
the facts
Those who accused Russia of seeking to influence the 2016 election include the United States intelligence community, Democratic lawmakers and most Republican lawmakers, technology companies like Google and Facebook, and even top members of Mr. Trump’s administration.
Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, indicted 13 Russians and three companies in February, accusing them of posing as American activists and manipulating the election. On Friday, he charged 12 Russian intelligence officers with hacking the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Mr. Trump, however, has either cast doubt on or explicitly disagreed with this assessment since 2016 — even though he has also falsely denied doing so.
what Mr. Trump said
the facts
Mr. Trump is conflating two issues and referring to conspiracy theories that the Justice Department has rejected.
He is right that F. B. I. agents never examined the Democratic National Committee servers themselves. However, agents instead coordinated with the D. N. C. to obtain forensics from a third-party security firm that James B. Comey, the former F. B. I. director, described to Congress last year as an “ appropriate substitute .”
“The Pakistani gentleman” is an reference to Imran Awan, a Pakistani-American former technology worker for Democratic staff in the House of Representatives. Some conservative commentators have suggested that Mr. Awan and his associates stole and sold equipment, data and perhaps even the Democratic National Committee emails that were released during the election.
(Mr. Trump, too, has cited Mr. Awan in several Twitter posts, and spoke about him in an interview with The New York Times in December .)
Mr. Awan was arrested last summer on unrelated charges of obtaining a fraudulent bank loan and pleaded guilty this month. In the plea agreement, dated July 3, federal prosecutors wrote that the government interviewed 40 witnesses, examined the House Democratic Caucus’s server, computers, hard drives and other electronic devices, reviewed electronic communications between House employees and questioned Mr. Awan during voluntary interviews. They concluded:
what Mr. Trump said
the facts
Mr. Trump was responding to a question that was meant for Mr. Putin, about why Americans should believe the Russian president’s statement that Moscow did not intervene in the 2016 election. Instead, Mr. Trump jumped in to claim that the “concept” of Russian election interference did not emerge until after the November 2016 vote.
In fact, the Democratic National Committee, congressional Democrats and the Obama administration had sounded the alarms months before the election.
The D. N. C. pointed to Russian hackers in June 2016. Congressional Democrats blamed Russia in September 2016. And the United States intelligence community formally accused Russia of hacking and releasing the Democratic committee’s emails in October 2016.
As for his claim that the Electoral College is “much more advantageous for Democrats,” it’s worth noting that Democrats have lost two out of the past five presidential electoral votes, despite winning the popular vote.
what Mr. Trump said
the facts
Mr. Trump had a combined 306 Electoral College votes to Hillary Clinton’s 232, not 223, as he said.
But two of Mr. Trump’s pledged electors and five of Mrs. Clinton’s opted to vote for other candidates, so the final tally was 304 to 227. (Some, but not all, states require the electors to honor the popular vote, or can fine or replace electors who break their pledge.)
His claim that he beat Mrs. Clinton “easily” is also dubious. Mr. Trump’s share of Electoral College votes ranked 46 out of 58 elections. He also lost the popular vote by the third largest margin among winning presidential candidates since 1824.
what Mr. Trump said
the facts
Mr. Trump was responding to a Russian reporter who said the American president had called Mr. Putin “an adversary, a rival.” Mr. Trump denied that he had ever used those words.
Yet in an interview with CBS that aired on Sunday, Mr. Trump specifically used the word “foe” to describe Russia (as well as the European Union and China) — though he clarified the word wasn’t necessarily negative.
Here is what he said in that interview:
what Mr. trump said
the facts
Asked about his misleading comment last week that Germany is “captive” to Russia because of its Russian gas imports, Mr. Trump said the United States “will be competing” with Russia as an energy provider.
It is true that the United States was the top producer of oil and natural gas in 2017, according to the Energy Information Administration, the Energy Department’s statistical agency.
But the United States still relies on foreign oil imports, given that it is the world’s top oil consumer, and overall is a net importer of energy. It does, however, export more natural gas than it imports.
what Mr. Putin said
the facts
In November 2013,Mr. Trump hosted the Miss Universe pageant in a suburb of Moscow. Mr. Putin’s claim of ignorance of Mr. Trump’s presence is contradicted by Mr. Trump himself, as well as two other people.
In a 2014 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr. Trump claimed that Mr. Putin had sent him a “ beautiful present with a beautiful note ” while he was hosting the pageant. That same year, in a speech to the National Press Club, Mr. Trump said he “ spoke, indirectly and directly, with President Putin, who could not have been nicer ” during his time in Moscow. (Mr. Trump backtracked on those comments during the 2016 election, when he said he had no relationship with Mr. Putin.)
Aras Agalarov, a Moscow billionaire who knows the Trump family, told The Washington Post in June 2016 that Mr. Putin canceled a scheduled appearance at the pageant. But Mr. Putin sent Mr. Trump “a decorative lacquered box, a traditional Russian gift, and a warm note,” according to Mr. Agalarov.
Mr. Agalarov’s publicist, Rob Gladstone, brokered the June 2016 meeting between the Trump campaign and a Kremlin-connected lawyer.
