WASHINGTON (AP) — A new book’s claim that former President Donald Trump has had as many as seven private phone conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin since leaving the White House has refocused attention on their politically charged relationship and the ongoing Trump’s dialogue with world leaders. as he seeks a return to power.
It is not surprising in itself that an ex-president would maintain ties with foreign colleagues. But the details in journalist Bob Woodward’s book “War” raised eyebrows in light of a special counsel investigation during the Trump presidency that examined possible ties between Russia and the 2016 Republican campaign, as well as more recent criticism of Trump on US aid to Ukraine as it fends off. The invasion of Russia – statements that have suggested there may be a review of US policy if he is elected.
“I would caution any world leader against trusting Vladimir Putin with anything,” said Emily Harding, who led the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian election interference in 2016 and is now a national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Both Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin, which U.S. officials say is working to influence the 2024 election in Trump’s favor, denied the reports.
Asked at a news conference Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the administration would have “serious concerns” if the reported calls were true.
“We are not aware of these calls. I certainly cannot confirm these calls from here,” she said. “But if it is indeed true, are we (concerned)? Do we have serious concerns? Yes.”
It’s no secret that Trump has had several meetings with major world leaders over the past year: he hosted Hungarian nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while last April he sat in New York with Polish President Andrzej Duda and Volodymyr Zelenskyy met. during the Ukrainian president’s trip to the US last month.
The meetings offer Trump a chance to differentiate his foreign policy approach from that of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, and to strengthen ties if he wins back the White House. During Netanyahu’s visit in July, Trump boasted of a “great relationship,” providing a tacit contrast to the more tense dynamic between the Israeli leader and Biden.
Although these meetings were publicly known, Woodward’s book quotes an unnamed aide as saying that Trump and Putin had as many as seven private conversations. That adds to long-running questions about their relationship and what Trump may be trying to accomplish, said Robert Orttung, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University.
As president, “we never really understood why he liked Putin so much and why he tried to develop such a close relationship with someone who is clearly an opponent and against everything the United States stands for,” Orttung said.
Some claims about Trump’s ties to allies and Russia have proven overheated or faded over time, but the topic continues to attract significant public attention even after Trump left office.
The FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller have spent years investigating whether Russia conspired with the 2016 Trump campaign to influence the outcome of the election. While investigators did not establish a criminal conspiracy, they did find that the Trump campaign actively welcomed Russian help during the election and that the Russian government believed it would benefit from a Trump presidency.
In 2018, after meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Trump memorably and publicly questioned his own intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia had interfered in the election.
“I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and forceful in his denial today,” Trump said at the time. He added: “He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why that would be the case.”
More recently, Trump called Putin “pretty smart” for his invasion of Ukraine and praised Russia’s military record in historic conflicts, saying last month: “As someone told me the other day, they beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon. That’s what they do. to fight. And it’s not pleasant.”
The book, which also says Trump secretly sent Putin COVID-19 testing machines during the height of the pandemic, does not describe the content of their conversations.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung denied that this happened and called the famous Watergate journalist’s book the “work of a truly demented and disturbed man who suffers from a debilitating form of Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Trump complained at a campaign event on Wednesday that “I had to go through years of Russia, Russia, Russia, and they knew it was fake.”
A Kremlin spokesman also denied that the calls had taken place.
The book’s details have revived debate over the Logan Act, a 1799 statute that prohibits private U.S. citizens from attempting to intervene in “disputes or controversies” between the United States and foreign powers without government permission.
The statute has produced only two criminal cases, none since the 1850s, and neither has resulted in a criminal conviction. Former presidents, from Richard Nixon to Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton, have held conversations with international figures after leaving the White House.
“Trump could be technically liable, just as I think dozens of prominent figures have been technically liable,” said Daniel Rice, a law professor at the University of Arkansas and an expert on constitutional law.
One possible reason for the law’s languishing, Rice said, is that prosecutors are reluctant to “turn offenders into martyrs” or be seen as targets of a sitting president’s political opponents.
Trump himself was briefed on the Logan Act by then White House adviser Don McGahn after a highly publicized episode involving his first national security adviser. In a phone call during the presidential transition period in 2016, Michael Flynn urged Russia’s ambassador to the US to be “balanced” in response to sanctions imposed by the Obama administration over election interference, assuring him that “we then be able to have a better conversation’. Trump became president.
Flynn was interviewed by the FBI about that conversation and pleaded guilty to lying to agents about it, although Trump pardoned Flynn in the final weeks of his presidency.
Trump later called for former Secretary of State John Kerry to be prosecuted for violating the Logan Act over his talks with Iran after he left the Obama administration. Kerry was never charged.
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Associated Press writer Will Weissert in Washington contributed.
