The White House postponed a Washington summit this fall with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the State Department delivered America’s toughest denunciation to date of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, as the Trump administration took steps Wednesday to back up claims it has been harder on Moscow than recent presidents.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, testifying to Congress, ticked off hundreds of Russians who currently face sanctions, said the administration would welcome stronger sanctions to punish future election meddling, and pointed to dozens of accused spies expelled from the U.S. as evidence of the get-tough approach.
And facing lawmakers upset with what they see as presidential bungling, loose rhetoric and inconsistency on foreign policy, Mr. Pompeo urged senators to look beyond Mr. Trump’s own words and instead pay attention to what the administration does on the ground.
“Here’s what the world needs to know: With respect to Russia, this administration has been tougher than previous administrations,” Mr. Pompeo said. “Somehow there’s this idea that this administration is free-floating. This is President Trump’s administration. Make no mistake who’s fully in charge of this.”
Mr. Pompeo was on clean-up duty following Mr. Trump’s poorly-reviewed summit with Mr. Putin last week in Helsinki, in which the president at times seemed to be challenging his own intelligence services’ evaluation of Russian meddling in the U.S. political system.
Many Republicans have said they were disappointed in the one-on-one meeting between the two leaders, followed by Mr. Trump’s solicitous attitude toward Mr. Putin in a follow-up press conference. Democrats have gone further, with some suggesting the meeting and Mr. Trump’s words amounted to “treason” for accepting Mr. Putin’s claims Russia didn’t interfere in the 2016 election.
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Mr. Pompeo assured lawmakers, based on his own personal briefings of the president, that Mr. Trump accepts U.S. intelligence findings that Russia did meddle.
Democrats have demanded access to Mr. Trump’s translator from the Helsinki summit, hoping to glean details about what was discussed in two hours of one-on-one talk between the U.S. and Russian leaders, repeatedly pressing Mr. Pompeo for details on possible secret deals or agreements. Several lawmakers suggested the president had even kept his own security and intelligence aides in the dark about what he had agreed to with Mr. Putin.
“I really don’t believe, Mr. Secretary, you know what happened during the president’s two-plus hour conversation with President Putin, and I really don’t know much more about the summit after sitting here for three hours than I did before,” said New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Mr. Pompeo said he has been given a read-out of the meeting, though he declined to give many details, saying it was the president’s prerogative to have private negotiations with fellow world leaders.
Seeking clarity
Wednesday’s hearing is the first in a series designed to try to force more clarity on the administration at a time when Mr. Trump is engaged in high-stakes diplomacy on trade, North Korea’s nuclear program, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Syria and ongoing tension with Russia.
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Republicans called Mr. Trump inconsistent in those negotiations, saying his off-the-cuff remarks contradict U.S. policy and leave officials scrambling to defuse verbal landmines.
“Why does he do those things? Is there some strategy behind creating doubt in U.S. senators’ minds?” asked committee Chairman Bob Corker, Tennessee Republican. “What is it that causes the president to purposely create distrust in these institutions and what we’re doing?”
Democrats went further, questioning whether Mr. Trump was striking deals to surrender hard-won U.S. positions.
Several Democrats pointed to a Russian readout of last week’s meeting that suggested he reached a deal to cooperate on security in Syria, where the Russian government is backing the regime of President Bashar Assad, while the U.S. has been backing rebels.
“You seem to be giving a great deal of credit to the Russian Ministry of Defense,” Mr. Pompeo shot back.
Sen. Tim Kaine, Virginia Democrat, said it was Mr. Trump who appeared to side with Russia over the U.S. intelligence community, or who made promises without consulting his military and diplomatic leaders.
Democrats also said they were stunned to hear Mr. Pompeo suggest the president’s words don’t amount to official government policy.
The secretary said he “misspoke,” and said when Mr. Trump speaks he is delivering official policy — though Mr. Pompeo said the president is often using shorthand in informal situations, and not always “covering the full gamut of things.”
Mr. Pompeo also forcefully defended the president’s diplomatic outreach to North Korea, rejecting criticism that there had been little concrete progress following the landmark summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last month. He told lawmakers there was no ambiguity about the demands Mr. Trump laid down that Pyongyang give up its nuclear and missile programs if it wants a peace deal.
Mr. Pompeo hailed a recent apparent North Korean move to start dismantling a key weapons site, but acknowledged the process still had a long way to go.
“There remains a great deal of work to do. It will be highly contested – that is, the modalities, the means, the timing of this will be things that I’m confident we’ll be discussing for a period of time,” he said.
Senators on both sides of the aisle did praise the White House for announcing it was delaying Mr. Trump’s invitation to Mr. Putin to visit Washington this fall.
National Security Adviser John R. Bolton said they want to hold the next meeting without the cloud of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
“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,” Mr. Bolton said.
Mr. Putin had not formally accepted the invitation for a fall summit, and no hard date had been set. The two leaders could still meet on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Argentina this November, Russian officials said.
• Dave Boyer contributed to this article.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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