President Donald Trump on Saturday tried to blame the Obama administration for not responding aggressively enough to Russian hacking of Democratic targets in the 2016 U.S. election — cyberattacks underpinning the indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers.

Trump’s first response to special counsel Robert Mueller’s initial charges against Russian government officials for interfering in American politics came in tweets the president posted while at his golf resort in Scotland, two days before a high-stakes summit in Finland with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

“The stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama Administration, not the Trump Administration,” Trump tweeted. “Why didn’t they do something about it, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September, before the Election?

The indictment announced Friday said the Russians hacked into Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic Party and released tens of thousands of private communications as part of a broad conspiracy by the Kremlin to meddle in an American election that ended up putting Trump in the White House.

U.S. intelligence agencies have said Moscow was aiming to help the Trump campaign and harm Clinton’s bid.

The 29-page indictment lays out how, months before Americans voted in November 2016, Russians schemed to break into key Democratic email accounts, including those belonging to Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Stolen emails, many politically damaging for Clinton, appeared on WikiLeaks in the campaign’s final stretch.

The charges say the Russian defendants, using a persona known as Guccifer 2.0, in August 2016 contacted a person in touch with the Trump campaign to offer help. And they say that on the same day Trump, in a speech, urged Russia to find Clinton’s missing emails, Russian hackers tried for the first time to break into email accounts used by her personal office.

Mueller did not allege that Trump campaign associates were involved in the hacking effort, that Americans were knowingly in touch with Russian intelligence officers or that any vote tallies were altered by hacking.

The White House seized on those points in a statement that offered no condemnation of Russian election interference.

Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism about Russian involvement in the hacking while being accused by Democrats of cozying up to Putin. Trump, hours before the indictment was made public, complained about the Russia investigation hours, saying the “stupidity” was making it “very hard to do something with Russia.”

The Kremlin denied anew that it tried to sway the election. “The Russian state has never interfered and has no intention of interfering in the U.S. elections,” said Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov.

The indictment identifies the defendants as officers with Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, also known as GRU. If that link is established, it would shatter the Kremlin denials of the Russian state’s involvement in the U.S. elections, given that the GRU is part of the state machine.

The Russian defendants are not in custody, and it is not clear they will ever appear in an American court.

The indictment accuses the Russian hackers, starting in March 2016, of covertly monitoring the computers of dozens of Democratic officials and volunteers, implanting malicious computer code known as malware to explore the networks and steal data, and sending phishing emails to gain access to accounts.

One attempt at interference came hours after Trump, in a July 27, 2016, speech, suggested Russians look for emails that Clinton said she had deleted from her tenure as secretary of state.

“Russia, if you’re listening,” Trump said, “I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

That evening, the indictment says, the Russians attempted to break into email accounts used by Clinton’s personal office, along with 76 Clinton campaign email addresses.

By June 2016, the defendants, relying on fictional personas such as DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, began planning the release of tens of thousands of stolen emails, the indictment alleges.

The Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks displayed the campaign’s private communications, including deliberations about messaging that played into attacks that Clinton was calculating and a political flip-flopper. Private speeches she gave to financial industry firms were particularly damaging within the left wing of the Democratic party and among independents frustrated with the influence of Wall Street in politics.

The indictment alleges that Guccifer 2.0 was in touch with multiple Americans in the summer of 2016 about the pilfered material, including an unidentified congressional candidate who requested and then received stolen information.

On Aug. 15, 2016, the indictment says, Guccifer 2.0 reached out to someone in contact with the Trump campaign and asked the person if they had seen anything “interesting in the docs I posted?” Guccifer 2.0 said it would be a “great pleasure” to help.

Prosecutors say weeks later, Guccifer 2.0 referred to a stolen DCCC document posted online and asked the person, “what do u think of the info on the turnout model for the democrats entire presidential campaign.” The person responded, “(p)retty standard.”

The indictment doesn’t identify the person, though longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone acknowledged Friday, through his lawyer, a “24-word exchange with someone on Twitter claiming to be Guccifer 2.0.”

“This exchange is now entirely public and provides no evidence of collaboration or collusion with Guccifer 2.0 or anyone else in the alleged hacking of the DNC emails,” said lawyer Grant Smith.

The charges come as Mueller continues to investigate potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. Before Friday, 20 people and three companies had been charged in the investigation.

Defendants include four former Trump campaign and White House aides, three of whom have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate, and 13 Russians accused in a powerful social media campaign to sway U.S. public opinion in 2016.

Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said on Twitter that it was time to end the investigation since “no Americans are involved” in Friday’s indictment. But with Mueller still investigating, it’s not known whether further indictments are taking shape or will.
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Donald Trump heads to Helsinki Sunday for a summit meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, leaving his NATO allies — including Britain — bruised and once again scratching their heads about how to cope with an unconventional, freewheeling U.S. President who appears unsentimental about the Western alliance and discounts diplomatic niceties.

After midweek encounters in Brussels, where Trump accused Europeans of being delinquent and reportedly hinted the U.S. might withdraw from NATO unless they increase their defense spending rapidly, some European officials say the Continent now needs to start thinking about defense plans independent of NATO.

Cross-border European defense initiatives already planned, such as a quick-reaction Anglo-French expeditionary force, are likely to be advanced more quickly by European governments in the wake of this week’s NATO summit.

“Europe has spent the past 18 months experimenting with an array of tactics to influence President Donald Trump, but so far neither Angela Merkel’s tough talk nor Emmanuel Macron’s red-carpet treatment has fundamentally changed Trump’s policy decisions,” noted Leslie Vinjamuri of Britain’s Chatham House.

Europeans floundering

European officials say they were floundering in their efforts to contain Trump, and they fear a bigger bust-up next year, if, as is certain, not all of the alliance’s European members have increased by the end of 2018 their defense spending to at least two percent of their national GDPs.

In a post-summit briefing, Denmark’s defense minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen complained of the difficulty “to decode what policy the American president is promoting.” He added: “There is a complete unpredictability in this, and one of the things you need in this alliance is predictability towards Russia.”

But other European officials say they see calculation underpinning Trump’s approach at international summits, arguing it is straight out of his 1987 book The Art of the Deal, which recommends rough-house negotiating tactics, including wrong-footing opponents and demanding much more than you are ready to settle for.

President Trump argues his confrontational deal-making style is working. For years a succession of U.S. presidents — from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama — have tried to cajole European allies to increase their military spending, but no U.S. leader has been more abrasive about it than Trump.

This week he claimed victory in persuading European members of NATO to increase their defense spending more quickly than they had agreed before. European leaders dispute his claim, saying they are on track to meet by 2025 a target of spending of at least two percent of their GDPs in line with a pledge they made in 2014 when Obama was in office.

​Table-thumping needed, defenders say

The U.S. President has his defenders when it comes to his table-thumping approach to NATO — both in the U.S. and Europe — who say Trump’s tough tactics will be the only way to ensure the alliance’s European members do take on a greater share of the defense burden. They place the blame for the regular transatlantic spats since Trump came into office on the failure of Europe’s political class to take long-standing American grievances about military burden-sharing — as well high European Union tariffs on U.S. goods — more seriously.

Many in Britain’s military and intelligence establishments are also supportive of Trump’s complaints. A group of eight former British military and intelligence chiefs, who worry Britain could slip from being a tier one’ military power, argued in a midweek newspaper advertisement published this week that Trump’s criticism of the Europeans (and Canadians) over burden-sharing was valid. They argued the threats Britain faces demands increased military expenditure, even though Britain is one of only four European countries that already meets the two percent target.

Combat readiness across the board among European militaries is woefully inadequate.

Last February, the German parliament’s military commissioner issued a scathing report on the readiness of Germany’s armed forces, noting that only a fraction of crucial weapons systems was operational. At the end of 2017, Six out of six of the navy’s submarines were out of commission and none of the air force’s 14 large transport planes were available for deployment due to repairs. More than 20,000 officer and non-commissioned officer positions were unfilled.

Many fighter jets, tanks and ships are outdated, the commissioner noted, and in some cases not fully operational because of poor planning or lack of spare parts. Some air force pilots are unable to train because too many aircraft are being repaired. The report said the government needed to pursue reforms “with greater urgency” and to increase defense spending.

But some analysts (and officials) who acknowledge there’s validity in Trump’s complaints also criticize the U.S. President for his inflammatory negotiating tactics.

That they say is adding to Western discord and risks eroding transatlantic goodwill and weaken the ties between America and Europe.

“The President has identified important issues that need to be resolved but the way to do it is working with our allies,” said Anthony Gardner, a former U.S. ambassador to the European Union. He fears Trump undervalues the alliance and is too ready to play out disagreements in public rather than reserving them for private negotiation. “He isn’t the first President to say spend more, but the way he is doing it is counter-productive,” he added.

Speaking to MSNBC, Gen. Ben Hodges, who served as Commanding General of the United States Army in Europe, says Trump has left NATO allies angry and worrying about whether they can rely on the U.S..

That might well, though, be what Trump has as a goal. On the campaign trail he deemed NATO “obsolete.” In the White House he has affirmed his support for the security organization and at various times acknowledged the importance of America’s long-standing alliance with Europe. He did so again in Brussels at a press conference before flying off for his four-day visit to Britain, which also saw controversy over a Trump newspaper interview in which he criticized Prime Minister Theresa May over her handling of Brexit negotiations.

But Trump hasn’t disguised his distrust of multilateral organizations and his wanting a return of powerful, independent nation states that deal with each other bilaterally rather than via international organizations.

European NATO officials say they take comfort that the Pentagon is shifting more resources to Europe in the face of a resurgent Russia. And they were this week relieved when Trump signed on to a robustly worded common statement which reaffirmed the military alliance’s core collective defense principle — “any attack against one ally will be regarded as an attack against us all.”

The statement also rebuked Russia for its 2014 annexation of Crimea and a nerve-agent assassination attempt in England that the British blame on the Kremlin.

Nonetheless, European defense officials say they are left wondering what the shape of the Western security alliance will be this time next year, when NATO celebrates its 70th anniversary.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday he would “firmly” ask Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin about his country’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election that has triggered a U.S. federal investigation Trump claims is a “rigged witch hunt.”

“I think it really hurts our country,” Trump said at a news conference in Britain after meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May. “It really hurts our relationship with Russia. I think that we would have a chance at a very good relationship with Russia and a very good chance, a very good relationship with President Putin. I would hope so.”

Trump said he does not anticipate a “Perry Mason” moment when he confronts Putin on the issue, a reference to a decades-old U.S. television courtroom drama, and he predicted Putin would continue to deny the allegations.

“I don’t think you’ll have any ‘gee, I did it, I did it, you got me,”’ Trump said. He added, “There won’t be a Perry Mason here, I don’t think, but you never know what happens, right?”

Mueller indictments

Just days before the meeting, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russians, alleging Friday they hacked into the Democratic National Committee to undermine the election.

They are the most recent charges in the special counsel probe that already has resulted in guilty pleas from three of Trump’s campaign aides.

When asked if he has given Putin the advantage going into the meeting by challenging long-standing Western alliances, Trump said his administration has been “far tougher on Russia than anybody.”

“When you look at what we’ve done in terms of Russia, I guarantee whoever it is in Russia, they’re saying ‘oh gee, we wish that Trump was not the victor in that election?”

Prime Minister May said Trump is well-positioned as he prepares to meet with Putin, saying “what is important is that the president goes into this as he is doing from a position of strength and also from a position of unity in NATO.”

NATO skepticism

NATO allied leaders, who Trump met with in Brussels earlier this week, are skeptical about whether he will be firm enough with the Russian leader, who has denied the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the election with the intent of helping Trump win.

Trump reiterated Friday that he is not going into the meeting with high expectations, but he said the two leaders would also discuss “a number of things,” including cuts to nuclear weapons arsenals.

He said the U.S. has been “modernizing and fixing” its nuclear weapons program and added “it’s just a devastating technology and they [the Russians] likewise are doing a lot. And it’s a very, very bad policy.”

Trump has not disclosed details about what nuclear arms control treaties he would propose to Putin, but they may discuss the extension of the “New Start” treaty, a pillar of arms control. They also may discuss the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to try to reduce the possibility of a nuclear rivalry between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

Trump cautioned it was difficult to reach substantive agreements with Putin because his critics would accuse him of being a proponent of Russia.

“We have this stupidity going on, pure stupidity, but it makes it very hard to do something with Russia, because, anything you do, it’s like: ‘Russia, oh He loves Russia.'”

Symbolic summit

The two leaders are scheduled to meet Monday in Helsinki.

Finnish National Defense University security policy expert Lt. Col. Jyri Raitasalo told VOA the Trump-Putin summit will be largely “symbolic.”

“It could open up new negotiations on a lower level that could actually achieve something,” Raitasalo said. He also said any real progress on issues the leaders discuss “could take time.”

“In most cases, a couple of hours between heads of states that haven’t seen each other for a time and discussed things properly — you can’t achieve much in several hours. But it could be a good start,” said Raitasalo.
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