Bolton deflects or defects...

Bolton deflects on Putin’s involvement in 2016 election

By QUINT FORGEY

White House national security adviser John Bolton on Sunday declined to rule on whether Russian President Vladimir Putin was involved in the Kremlin’s cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee and other targets during the 2016 presidential campaign.

But Bolton said President Donald Trump will have the chance to ask Putin directly about his role when the two leaders meet Monday in Helsinki.

“That's what one of the purposes of this meeting is, so the president can see eye to eye with President Putin and ask him about it,” Bolton said on ABC's “This Week.”

Bolton had originally been scheduled to also appear on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, but the White House quashed that interview for what it deemed “bad behavior” by the cable network.

Bolton’s hesitancy to implicate Putin in Moscow’s aggression echoes Trump’s own seeming ambivalence on whether the ex-KGB officer knew about his government’s attempts to undermine American democracy — or whether they ever happened at all.

“Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” the president tweeted late last month.

But following special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment Friday of 12 Russian military intelligence officers for hacking the DNC, Trump is coming under greater pressure to confront Putin directly.

“I can tell you when I met with President Putin a few weeks ago to prepare for the Helsinki meeting, he made it plain that he said the Russian state was not involved, and he was very clear with his translator that that's the word that he wanted,” Bolton said Sunday.

“Now we'll have to see, given that these are allegations concerning GRU agents, obviously part of the Russian state, what he says about it now," Bolton added.