White House: Actually, Trump did discuss Russia sanctions with Putin
President Trump says he didn't talk about sanctions during his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but at least two administration officials have since contradicted him to confirm the two leaders did actually discuss U.S. sanctions on Russia related to meddling in last year's election.
"There were sanctions specific to election meddling that were discussed but not beyond that," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Monday.
That is at odds with what Trump said in a Sunday tweet after he returned from the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, where he met Putin: "Sanctions were not discussed at my meeting with President Putin. Nothing will be done until the Ukrainian & Syrian problems are solved!"
Asked about the difference, Sanders said her understanding is that "the president's tweet was referencing sanctions regarding Ukraine and Syria" and did not encompass all sanctions the U.S. has put on the country. The two leaders did, apparently, discuss the sanctions the Obama administration put in place late last year in retaliation for a high-level election meddling campaign Russia carried out in the United States.
The U.S. has slapped sanctions on Russia over both its 2014 "annexation" of the Crimea region of Ukraine and the 2016 assessment of the U.S. intelligence community that Russia sought to influence last year's presidential election in favor of Trump by hacking prominent Democratic political organizations and individuals and leaking that information to websites such as WikiLeaks.
Since Trump took office, his critics have decried his past praise for Putin and welcoming of warmer relations with Russia, and have expressed concern that he would try to lift at least some of those sanctions.
After the Trump-Putin meeting on Friday on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the two presidents also discussed pending U.S. legislation that would require congressional approval before any sanctions would be removed. The Senate last month voted overwhelmingly to approve new Russia sanctions to send a strong message to Putin on election interference.
"With regard to the interference in the election, I think the President (Trump) took note of actions that have been discussed by the Congress," Tillerson said. "Most recently, additional sanctions that have been voted out of the Senate to make it clear as to the seriousness of the issue."