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REPORTER: For President Putin, if I could follow up as well. Why should Americans and why should President Trump believe your statement that Russia did not intervene in the 2016 election, given the evidence that U.S. intelligence agencies have provided? And will you consider extraditing the 12 Russian officials that were indicted last week by a U.S. grand jury?

TRUMP: Well, I'm going to let the president answer the second part of that question. But, as you know, the whole concept of that came up perhaps a little bit before but it came out as a reason why the Democrats lost an election, which frankly, they should have been able to win because the electoral college is much more advantageous for Democrats, as you know, than it is to Republicans. We won the Electoral College by a lot. 306 to 223, I believe.

And that was a well fought, that was a well fought battle. We did a great job. And frankly, I'm going to let the president speak to the second part of your question. But just to say it one time again and I say it all the time, there was no collusion. I didn't know the president.

There was nobody to collude with. There was no collusion with the campaign and every time you hear all of these you know 12 and 14 - stuff that has nothing to do and frankly they admit - these are not people involved in the campaign.

But to the average reader out there, they're saying well maybe that does. It doesn't. And even the people involved, some perhaps told mis-stories or in one case the FBI said there was no lie. There was no lie. Somebody else said there was. We ran a brilliant campaign and that's why I'm president. Thank you.

Quote from today when Trump steps in to deflect a reporter's question to Putin.

REPORTER, AP: President Trump, you first. Just now, President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did. My first question for you sir is, who do you believe? My second question is would you now, with the whole world watching, tell President Putin, would you denounce what happened in 2016 and would you want him to never do it again?

TRUMP: So let me just say that we have two thoughts. You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server. Why haven't they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee?

I've been wondering that. I've been asking that for months and months and I've been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media. Where is the server? I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying?

With that being said, all I can do is ask the question.

My people came to me, Dan Coates, came to me and some others they said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia.

I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be. But I really do want to see the server but I have, I have confidence in both parties.

I really believe that this will probably go on for a while but I don't think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server. What happened to the servers of the Pakistani gentleman that worked on the DNC?

Where are those servers? They're missing. Where are they? What happened to Hillary Clinton's emails? 33,000 emails gone, just gone. I think in Russia they wouldn't be gone so easily.

I think it's a disgrace that we can't get Hillary Clinton's thirty three thousand e-mails.

I have great confidence in my intelligence people but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today and what he did is an incredible offer.

He is such an egocentric child.

Not the only factor here. It looks like Israel was Israel was pushing for this meeting as well.

It was press conference as national nightmare, summed up succinctly by the BBC on its home page minutes later with this headline: “Trump Sides With Russia Against FBI.”

...Almost superfluous in the moment, the news media’s job became crucially important in the immediate aftermath.

What happened on that stage needs to be made undeniably clear to every American citizen who isn’t hopelessly lost in denial. (And clearly, many are.)

...But the press’s default position is to normalize, to represent various points of view with equal weight, to be swayed by the pomp of the presidential office. To act like everything is just as variation on a theme — something we’ve seen before but maybe in a slightly paler shade.

That’s not good enough.

Who's taking care of the translators to make sure they survive to tell the tale in 20 / 30 years?

Russian National Charged in Conspiracy to Act as an Agent of the Russian Federation Within the United States

...The court filings detail the Russian official’s and Butina’s efforts for Butina to act as an agent of Russia inside the United States by developing relationships with U.S. persons and infiltrating organizations having influence in American politics, for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation.

Inside the Decade-Long Russian Campaign to Infiltrate the NRA and Help Elect Trump
Femme fatales, lavish Moscow parties and dark money – how Russia worked the National Rifle Association

Rep. Will Hurd
‏Verified account
@HurdOnTheHill
I've seen Russian intelligence manipulate many people over my professional career and I never would have thought that the US President would become one of the ones getting played by old KGB hands.
11:51 AM - 16 Jul 2018 from Washington, DC

the US President would become one of the ones getting played by old KGB hands.

#45

the best at everything

North Korea wins

Putin wins

it's non-stop glory

Russian pro-gun activist linked to NRA charged with spying in US for

Trump Throws a Server Wrench into Mueller’s Indictment Machine
Challenged by an AP reporter to say whether he believes U.S. intel or Russia's Putin, president demands answers to questions his critics most fear

It was as if Trump either completely misunderstood the question — or chose intentionally to ignore it in order to make his statement about the server and the Clinton emails.

In any case, Trump’s response instantly sent CNN’s Anderson Cooper and former President Barack Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan spiraling to new levels of extreme Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Maria Butina, 29, was arrested Sunday in the District and made her first appearance in U.S. District Court before Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson. Her attorney, Robert Neil Driscoll, told the judge that Butina’s residence was searched by the FBI in April, that she had testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in a closed session several months ago, and that “we have been offering to cooperate with the government the entire time.”

Butina did not speak during the brief hearing other than to state her name. A detention hearing and preliminary hearing were set for Wednesday.

The charges against Butina come days after the Justice Department unveiled an indictment against 12 Russian intelligence officers for allegedly conspiring to hack Democrats in 2016 and just hours after President Trump cast doubt on Russia’s involvement in an extraordinary joint news conference with President Putin.

Butina is accused of developing relationships with American politicians and a “gun rights organization,” none of which are named in the affidavit supporting the criminal complaint. FBI Special Agent Kevin Helson wrote that Butina was attempting to “establish a ‘back channel’ communication for representatives of the Government of Russia.”

The affidavit also contains apparent communications, by direct message on Twitter, between Butina and the unnamed Russian official. “Your political star has risen in the sky,” the official told Butina. “Now it is important to rise to the zenith and not burn out (fall) prematurely,” and they later discussed the “Russia-USA friendship society.”

In 2017, Butina and the official attended the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, the affidavit states.

Driscoll said during the hearing that Butina had recently earned a master’s degree in international relations from American University. “Maria Butina is not an agent of the Russian Federation,” Driscoll said in a statement after the hearing. He said she “has been cooperating with various government entities for months regarding public allegations related to her contacts with various American and russian individuals,” testified for eight hours before the Intelligence Committee and provided “thousands of documents.”

“The substance of the charge in the complaint is overblown,” Driscoll said. He said the government was attempting to make such actions as attending the prayer breakfast into “nefarious acts,” when Butina was merely networking to develop relationships with Americans.

Butina, a former Siberian furniture owner, founded a Russian gun rights group called the Right to Bear Arms and became an assistant to Russian central banker and former senator Alexander Torshin, who is a lifetime member of the NRA.

She began reaching out to NRA members and other American gun enthusiasts in 2013, on several occasions hosting NRA executives and gun activists in Moscow, including one delegation that included former Milwaukee Sheriff Dave Clarke. She and Torshin also attended a series of NRA events in the United States starting in 2014.

As she traveled the U.S., she had a number of key interactions with the Trump campaign. In June 2015, as Trump announced his candidacy, Butina wrote a column in the National Interest, a conservative U.S. magazine, suggesting that only by election a Republican could the U.S. and Russia hope to improve relations.

The next month, she attended a town hall meeting in Las Vegas where Trump--who had declared his candidacy for the presidency the previous month--was speaking. She found her way to a microphone and publicly asked Trump: “What will be your foreign politics, especially in the relations with my country?”

“I know Putin and I’ll tell you what, we get along with Putin,” Trump responded, in the first of his many campaign statements about his desire to build better ties with Russia.

Butina also attended an NRA convention in May 2016, where a Republican operative named Paul Erickson worked to get Torshin a meeting with Trump. In an email to the campaign, Erickson referred to Torshin as “President Putin’s emissary” in an effort to improve relations with the United States.

The meeting did not happen, but Butina and Torshin did have brief interaction with Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, at the event. Trump Jr. has said the interaction was brief and not memorable.

Butina then accompanied Erickson to Trump’s inauguration, one of a number of Russians who attended the festivities and toasted to better relations between Russia and the U.S.