With the election just weeks away, Americans are once again faced with a common but vexing problem that has never been conclusively resolved. It’s about what's going on with former President Donald J. Trump and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.
A remarkable new book published Tuesday, nearly a day after U.S. intelligence agencies publicly warned voters that Russia was trying to interfere in the 2016 election campaign, reveals that the two men were secretly in touch. This report revived the mystery of the relationship between the two. In the last few years.
Journalist Bob Woodward’s book reveals that the former president and current Republican nominee has been unable to support Putin since leaving office in 2021, despite Trump’s pressure on Republicans to block military aid. The report quotes an anonymous aide who said he had met with him seven times. Ukraine fights against Russian invaders. The book also said that while in office in 2020, Trump sent coronavirus testing equipment to Putin for personal use during the early days of the pandemic.
No other journalists could confirm the post-White House contact on Tuesday, but the report disrupted the presidential campaign and roiled Washington. Former presidents often meet with foreign leaders, but it would be highly unusual for them to do so with an avowed adversary of the United States on opposite sides of a war without first consulting the White House and State Department.
Trump has long favored and accepted Putin, even praising him as a “genius” when he ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Trump has refused to say Ukraine must win the war and has resisted further U.S. pushback. He publicly stated that he would provide arms for Ukraine to defend itself and would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever it wants” to NATO allies that do not spend enough on their own military.
Just a week ago, Trump boasted that he had a “very good relationship” with Putin, and that if Putin won, he could negotiate a peace deal within 24 hours, even before he took office. It will be. As the vice presidential candidate said, it will be advantageous for the Kremlin. Trump has mentioned the Russian leader’s name at 41 campaign rallies this year, far more than in any year since he first became a presidential candidate in 2015, according to a database search.
It is unclear whether Trump remains in contact with Putin after leaving office. Woodward based his report on one unidentified Trump aide in his book “The War,” which was obtained by The New York Times and other news outlets on Tuesday ahead of publication next week. .
The aide said he was ordered to leave Trump’s office in his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, mansion so that he could have a phone call with Putin in early 2024. The book said aides told Woodward that Trump had met with Putin multiple times since leaving office, possibly as many as seven times.
Aides did not provide further details, and Mr. Woodward acknowledged in his book that he could not confirm the information from other sources. Nineteen current and former senior officials and career intelligence officials from the Trump and Biden administrations contacted by the Times on Tuesday said they had no knowledge of Trump’s contacts with Putin in the years since he left office. , several people said they had been in contact. It’s not unthinkable.
In a statement, the Trump campaign described Woodward’s book as a classic personal insult, without going into specifics, calling him a “slow, lethargic, incompetent, and generally boring human being” and “absolutely boring.” “a scumbag” — and dismissed his book. reported in it.
“None of these fabricated stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly psychotic man suffering from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” campaign communications director Stephen Chan said in a statement. .
Chan said Trump denied Woodward access to “War” and noted that the former president is suing the author over an earlier book. However, the statement did not say whether the former president had spoken to Putin after leaving office, and the campaign did not respond to messages directly asking about this.
The Kremlin denied reports in Woodward’s book about conversations between Trump and Putin. “This is not true,” spokesman Dmitri Peskov said in a text message. “It’s a typical bogus story in the context of a pre-election political campaign.”
Mr. Woodward, who rose to fame with his coverage of the Watergate scandal that helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon, relied on his contacts with government officials of both parties to regularly publish best-selling books containing explosive reporting. I am doing it. Some of his most sensational articles over the years have often come from anonymous sources, inviting disavowal from those quoted in them, and some fellow journalists have criticized his methods. Some people have doubts. At the same time, many of his most memorable scoops over the years are largely corroborated by later press coverage and memoirs.
Woodward’s latest book includes other tantalizing articles that also made headlines in Washington on Tuesday, including by President Biden over last year’s Gaza war and by Israel’s Benjamin・Contains profanity-filled rants against Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Among the stories Mr. Woodward recounts is a private Fourth of July lunch after Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate performance, during which he met his longtime confidant, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. However, he gently tried to bring up the idea of the president withdrawing from the campaign.
“I don’t want to see your legacy in jeopardy,” Blinken reportedly told Biden, adding that every president is entitled to “a line” as a historical legacy. “It would be great if this decision led to him staying and getting re-elected,” Blinken said. “If that means you stay and lose re-election, that’s the verdict.”
The publication also reported that Biden had come to regret appointing Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and was furious after appointing a special counsel to investigate the president’s son, Hunter Biden. There is. “I shouldn’t have chosen Garland,” Biden told his colleagues, according to the book.
After the failed attempt to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, Biden received a visit from an unlikely source, former President George W. Bush, the publication said. Mr. Bush reportedly told Mr. Biden, “Well, I understand what you’re going through,” and that he too felt he had been misadvised by intelligence officials.
On Russia, Biden accused his former ticket mate, President Barack Obama, of mishandling Russia’s earlier, more limited invasion of Ukraine in 2014. “That’s why we’re here,” Biden reportedly told a friend. . The Obama-Biden administration was a mess, he added. “Mr. Barak never took Mr. Putin seriously.”
The book’s report that Trump sent Putin a then-unusual Abbott point-of-care coronavirus test attracted a lot of attention. According to the book, Mr. Putin was said to have been particularly worried about getting infected at the time, and asked Mr. Trump not to reveal his actions publicly because it could cause political damage to the U.S. president. It is said that Putin reportedly said, “Please don’t tell anyone. It’s you who will be angry, not me.”
U.S. and Russian officials publicly announced in 2020 that coronavirus supplies were sent to Russia shortly after Trump and Putin’s May 7 phone call. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at the time that “some testing equipment was being sent as well as ventilators.” But officials did not say the devices were for Putin’s personal use or that the Russian president had advised Trump to keep the conversations secret. .
After reporting on Woodward’s book on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris criticized Trump for being too close to Putin, citing the provision of coronavirus testing equipment. “Everyone was scrambling to get these kits,” she said in an interview on Howard Stern’s satellite radio show. “This man, the president of the United States, is sending them to Russia, to a murderous dictator, for his personal use.”
Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, Mr. Trump’s running mate, insulted Mr. Woodward in response to a question about the former president’s possible contacts with Mr. Putin, saying he had no contact with Mr. Trump on the subject. He said he had not discussed it. “Even if it’s true,” Vance added, there’s nothing wrong with talking to world leaders.
In fact, Trump has publicly hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at Mar-a-Lago. Just last month, he had dinner with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in New York. But these meetings are publicly known, Trump has posed for photos with the guests, and the leaders are all allies of the United States.
The publication of Mr. Woodward’s book caused a sense of déjà vu in some people in Washington. On October 7, 2016, just weeks before the presidential election, the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies issued a statement regarding Russian election interference.
U.S. intelligence agencies later concluded that Mr. Putin ordered the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election to help Mr. Trump defeat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Trump rejected that conclusion and suggested he believed Putin’s denials. Although Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III did not find a criminal conspiracy that could be proven in court, there was an unusual number of contacts between Russia and people around Mr. Trump during the campaign. This was documented.
Woodward’s book leaves as many questions as it answers. The paper quoted Trump’s top campaign aide Jason Miller as saying, “I haven’t heard them talking about it, so I’m not going to press that.” But Miller also said that if they wanted to talk, “I’m sure they would know how to reach each other.”
Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence appointed by Mr. Biden, sidestepped the question in response to Mr. Woodward. “I don’t pretend to know all my contacts with President Putin,” she told him. “I’m not going to talk about what President Trump did or didn’t do.”
Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, Julian E. Burns, Anton Troianovsky, Valerie Hopkins, Dylan Friedman, Katie Rogers, Chris Cameron and Eileen Sullivan contributed reporting.
