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Trump’s Putin fire rages on

The fallout over the president’s visit with the Russian president is showing no signs of slowing down.

By ANDREW RESTUCCIA and LOUIS NELSON

It took the White House nearly 24 hours to publicly reject Russian President Vladimir Putin’s request to interrogate Americans, a proposal that was so roundly reviled that even the U.S. Senate managed to agree unanimously that it was a horrible idea.

The White House’s Thursday statement finally informing the public that, yes, the president opposes forcing U.S. citizens to face Russian investigators capped the fourth day of fallout from Trump’s visit with Putin — a week that was defined by dizzying reversals, government-wide confusion and conflicting statements from the commander-in-chief.

And there were no signs that the furor would die down any time soon.

Senior U.S. officials were still struggling on Thursday to fully understand exactly what unfolded during Trump’s two hour-plus meeting with Putin on Monday in Helsinki, in which the only other people in the room were a pair of translators.

The Russian government appeared to be taking advantage of the secretive meeting, suggesting that Trump and Putin had reached agreements on key issues despite denials from U.S. officials. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Putin made a proposal during the meeting to hold a referendum to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine, a plan that the news outlet said Russian diplomats believe Trump is considering.

The report dropped yet another volatile issue onto the laps of White House aides, who have struggled for days to answer even simple questions about Trump’s stance on Russia.

But the blowback hasn’t deterred Trump.

Now, the White House is facing the prospect of another Putin-Trump meeting -- this time in Washington. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted Thursday afternoon that Trump asked national security adviser John Bolton to invite Putin to Washington in the fall, adding, “those discussions are already underway.”

The news appeared to shock Dan Coats, Trump’s director of national intelligence, who has underscored his assessment that Russia is continuing to target the United States, despite Trump publicly casting doubt on the idea.

“Say that again,” Coats said when informed of the White House’s invitation to Putin during a panel discussion at the Aspen Security Forum. “Did I hear you? Ok...that’s gonna be special.”

Indeed, Trump’s hesitancy to forcefully condemn Putin for meddling in the 2016 election and his continued attacks have disturbed many in the U.S. government and forced high-profile administration officials to distance themselves from the president.

FBI Director Chris Wray, also speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, said Wednesday that Russia “continues to engage in malign influence operations to this day.” Wray even suggested that he considered resigning, saying, "I'm a low-key, understated guy, but that should not be mistaken for what my spine is made out of. I'll just leave it at that.”

Coats also hinted that he hasn’t ruled out resigning, saying on Thursday, “As long as I have the ability to seek the truth and speak the truth, I'm on board.”

Others sought to avoid angering the president. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Thursday that Russia undoubtedly interfered in the 2016 election, but declined to say directly that those efforts were aimed at helping elect Trump. “I haven’t seen any evidence that the attempts to interfere in our election infrastructure was to favor a particular political party,” she said during a separate interview at the Aspen Security Forum.

The comments came after Trump and his aides gave conflicting statements about Russia throughout the week.

Trump on Tuesday told reporters that he had intended to say "wouldn't" instead of "would" at Monday's bilateral news conference when he said "I don't see any reason why it would be" Russia that was behind a campaign of 2016 cyberattacks intended to interfere in that year's U.S. presidential election.

Then on Wednesday, Trump told reporters that Russia was no longer engaged in election interference efforts in the U.S., contradicting Coats, who has said such efforts are ongoing and prompting Sanders to claim Trump was not addressing a reporter's question when he said "no" during a White House pool spray.

In the latest White House contortion, Sanders on Thursday afternoon issued a statement backing away from Trump’s prior openness to Putin’s proposal to interrogate Americans.

The Russian president, at Monday’s news conference, had suggested that his government would allow special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators question the 12 Russian military intelligence officials it indicted last week if the U.S. would reciprocate by allowing the Russian government to interrogate certain Americans with ties to Bill Browder, an American-born financier who has lobbied heavily against the Russian government.

Trump called the idea an "incredible offer" during the news conference. And on Wednesday, after it became clear that Russia also wanted to question former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, Sanders said that the president would “meet with his team” on Putin's proposal, setting off a Russia-related backlash against the Trump administration for the third straight day.

By Thursday, as the Senate prepared to formally rebuke Trump, the White House reversed course.

“It is a proposal that was made in sincerity by President Putin, but President Trump disagrees with it," Sanders said in a statement. "Hopefully President Putin will have the 12 identified Russians come to the United States to prove their innocence or guilt.”

The Senate subsequently voted 98-0 to approve a resolution introduced by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that the U.S. should "refuse to make available any current or former diplomat, civil servant, political appointee, law enforcement official, or member of the Armed Forces of the United States for questioning by the government of Vladimir Putin."

Trump has been heavily criticized throughout his presidency, and before that his campaign, for what has been perceived as a relatively soft stance towards Russia. Trump has regularly spoken warmly of Putin, a former KGB agent, even as Russia has been accused of attempted assassinations on British soil and continues to occupy the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, fuel ongoing violence in Ukraine, and aid the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Even in its Thursday statement rebuking Putin's interrogation offer, the administration offered that the much-criticized proposal had been made with "sincerity."

The reversal also follows fresh expressions of frustration from McFaul, Browder, the larger diplomatic community, and some of Trump’s own allies.

“Most shocking, and just lamentable, I think is my real reaction, when the White House was given the opportunity to categorically reject this moral equivalency between a legitimate indictment with lots of data and evidence to support it from Mr. Mueller with a crazy, cockamamie scheme with no relationship to facts and reality whatsoever, the White House refused to do that,” McFaul told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe" on Thursday.

Browder, who lobbied successfully in favor of a 2012 U.S. sanctions package against Russia known as the Magnitsky Act, told CNN that the proposed interrogation swap "is probably one of the most insane things I've ever heard coming out of [Trump's] mouth."

"What President Trump was saying is that he wants to take a bunch of loyal patriots, people who have given up money for government service to serve their nation, who have been protecting this nation against Russian interference, Russia organized crime, and he wants to hand them over to the Russian criminals," said Browder, who gave up his U.S. citizenship in 1998. "To hand me over to Putin is basically to hand me over to my death."

While the White House had publicly said it's open to the idea of reciprocal interrogations, others, including the president's own State Department, have cast aside Putin's suggestion.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in an interview recorded Thursday with the Christian Broadcasting Network, said "that's not going to happen" when asked about Putin's proposal.

"The administration is not going to send, force Americans to travel to Russia to be interrogated by Vladimir Putin and his team," he said.

Thomas Bossert, the president's former homeland security adviser, said on "Good Morning America" on Thursday that accepting Putin's suggestion would be "a significant mistake" and "galling."

In the Senate, GOP lawmakers had also been quick to push the president towards rejecting Putin's offer.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who sits on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote on Twitter that "Under no circumstances should #Putin officials ever be allowed to come into the U.S. & 'question' Americans on their list. I don’t believe this will ever be allowed to happen which is why the ⁦@WhiteHouse⁩ should publicly & unequivocally rule it out."

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called the Russian allegations "jokes" and "absurd" and told CNN "I challenge you to find one member of the House and Senate that believe this is a good idea.”

John Kerry, who served as secretary of state under President Barack Obama, wrote on Twitter: "The administration needs to make it unequivocally clear that in a million years this wouldn't be under consideration, period. Full stop," adding that the proposal is "not something that should require a half second of consultation. Dangerous."

In Aspen, Coats stated that he had a “good relationship” with Trump, even as he expressed frustration that the president publicly sided with Putin over his own intelligence agencies.

“Obviously, I wished he had made a different statement, but I think that now that has been clarified,” Coats said, referring to Trump in Helsinki.

“I don’t think I want to go any further than that,” Coats added.