Washington, Jul 25 (EFE).- The next meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Donald Trump will be delayed until after the conclusion of the investigation of alleged Kremlin interference in the 2016 US election, the White House said Wednesday.
“The President believes that the next bilateral meeting with President Putin should take place after the Russia witch hunt is over, so we’ve agreed that it will be after the first of the year,” National Security Adviser John Bolton said in a statement.
The expression “witch hunt” is regularly used by Trump to refer to the investigation being headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
On July 16, Trump and Putin held a bilateral summit in Helsinki after which the White House announced that the US leader wanted a second summit before yearend.
That meeting was to have taken place in Washington in the last quarter of 2018.
Trump received a landslide of criticism in the US – from Democrats and some Republicans – after saying in Helsinki that he believed Putin’s denial of Kremlin interference in the US 2016 presidential election.
Later, the president backtracked by affirming that he had “misspoken” and said he believed reports that Moscow tried to interfere in the 2016 balloting in which he defeated his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.