Russia’s Putin Says Can Prove President Trump Didn’t Pass Russia Secrets

MOSCOW (AP/Reuters) —
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) meets with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni at the Bocharov Ruchei state residence in Sochi, Russia, Wednesday. (Reuters/Yuri Kadobnov/Pool)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed the ongoing scandal around President Donald Trump sharing classified intelligence with Russian officials as “political schizophrenia.”

President Trump came under fire earlier this week after it was revealed that he shared the sensitive intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak.

Speaking at a joint news conference with the visiting Italian prime minister on Wednesday, Putin said he had “no other explanation” as to why Trump came under attack other than “political schizophrenia.” President Putin even suggested that Russia share the records of last week’s talks between President Trump and Lavrov with the U.S. Congress, if the White House approved.

“It’s hard to imagine what else these people who generate such nonsense and rubbish can dream up next,” said Putin.

“What surprises me is that they are shaking up the domestic political situation using anti-Russian slogans. Either they don’t understand the damage they’re doing to their own country, in which case they are simply stupid, or they understand everything, in which case they are dangerous and corrupt.”

President Putin joked that that he would reprimand Lavrov because “he hasn’t shared those secrets with us.”

A Kremlin aide, Yuri Ushakov, later told reporters that Moscow had in its possession a written record of the conversation, not an audio recording.

Russia has repeatedly said that anti-Russian politicians in the United States are using groundless fears of closer ties with Moscow to sabotage any rapprochement and damage Trump in the process.

 

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