Putin tussles with his small hands...

Putin tussles with Chris Wallace in Fox interview

By LOUIS NELSON

Russian President Vladimir Putin sparred Monday with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace over allegations that the Kremlin sought to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with Putin declining to address the contents of a federal indictment against a dozen Russian military officials and arguing that there was no “rigging of facts” within the information allegedly leaked by the Russian government.

Wallace, in a roughly half-hour sit-down with Putin on Monday, presented the Russian president with a copy of the indictment announced last week by the Justice Department accusing 12 individuals from Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency of hacking into Democratic Party organizations and the campaign of Hillary Clinton and disseminating information from those cyberattacks. Putin refused to accept the printed-out indictment, which Wallace put on the table next to him.

The Russian president, for his part, quickly grew exasperated with Wallace’s probing questions on the issue, repeatedly asking the Fox News host for the opportunity to finish his answer. While he continued to deny that his government did not interfere in the 2016 presidential election, Putin argued that because the hacked information was real — released emails from the Democratic National Committee prompted the resignation of its then-chairwoman — the U.S. public should direct its frustration at the Democratic Party.

“Was it some rigging of facts? Was it some forgery of facts?... Any false information planted? No. It wasn't,” said Putin, who spoke to Wallace through a translator. “They hacked a certain email account, and there was information about manipulations conducted within the Democratic Party to incline the process in favor of one candidate. And as far as I know, the entire party leadership resigned.

“That manipulation is where public opinion should stop, and an apology should be made to the public at large instead of looking for the responsible — the party at fault,” the Russian president continued.

Russia’s alleged efforts to interfere in the election, as well as allegations that the campaign of President Donald Trump colluded in those efforts, are the subject of an investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump has regularly characterized Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt,” and at a Monday press conference with Putin in Helsinki, he said the probe is a “disaster” for the U.S.

Trump also said at Monday’s press conference that “I don’t see any reason why” Russia would attempt to interfere in the 2016 election, appearing to take the word of Putin over that of the U.S. intelligence community, which has assessed with “high confidence” that Putin ordered the election interference efforts.

The Russian president also asserted that his nation is not in possession of any compromising information on Trump, contradicting a claim made in a dossier of salacious but unverified intelligence compiled by a former British spy, who claimed that the Kremlin has video of Trump engaging in lewd acts with Russian prostitutes inside a Moscow hotel room.

Trump has denied the allegations in the dossier, and he and his allies have slammed it as a completely false attempt to undermine his presidency. But Trump’s apparent willingness to follow Putin’s lead Monday during the pair’s bilateral meeting prompted critics of the president, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, to once again raise the possibility that the Russian government might in some way be influencing Trump.

“We don’t have anything on them, and there can’t be anything on them,” Putin said in the Fox interview. “I don’t want to insult President Trump when I say this — and I may come as rude — but before he announced that he will run for presidency, he was of no interest for us.”