'We’ve shared plenty of facts': Pompeo, Lavrov clash over election meddling before Trump meeting
WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo clashed publicly with Russia's top diplomat Tuesday over Moscow's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The contentious joint appearance between Pompeo and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov came after the two men met behind closed doors for three hours at the State Department.
Pompeo said he told Lavrov that Russia's election interference was "unacceptable" and the United States is prepared to respond if it happens again in 2020.
Lavrov called the accusations "baseless" and pressed Pompeo to release diplomatic cables from 2016 and 2017 that he claimed would clear Russia of such suspicions.
"Let's publish this cross-channel correspondence, so it would all become very clear," Lavrov said. "This administration refused to do so."
"We think we’ve shared plenty of facts," Pompeo shot back, when asked by a Russian reporter about the unpublished cables. "We don’t think there’s any mistake about what really transpired there."
President Donald Trump has cast doubt on Russia's role in trying to sway the 2016 presidential contest, despite documented evidence and briefings from U.S. intelligence officials.
The tense diplomatic exchange unfolded an hour before Lavrov met with Trump at the White House. After that closed-door meeting, Lavrov and Trump gave conflicting accounts about whether election meddling was discussed.
"President Trump warned against any Russian attempts to interfere in United States elections," the White House said in a summary of their discussion.
But Lavrov said the talks focused on arms control, Syria, Afghanistan and North Korea. "We did not discuss anything else," he said.
When a reporter told him about the White House account, Lavrov said he mentioned Pompeo's earlier allegations to Trump. But he did not say that Trump warned him or repeated Pompeo's admonition.
The last time Trump met with Lavrov, he faced questions about his 2016 campaign's ties to Moscow and a political furor over his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey.
This time, Trump is bracing for his all-but-certain impeachment by the House of Representatives over another election interference allegation.
Asked if they discussed impeachment, Lavrov said: "Honestly I was not interested."
Their tete-a-tete came a few hours after House Democrats unveiled two articles of impeachment against Trump.
Democrats in Congress slammed Trump's decision to meet with Lavrov, which comes amid allegations that Trump adopted Russian propaganda in claiming that Ukraine, not Moscow, interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. Trump’s effort to push Ukraine’s president to investigate that allegation is a central element of the charges leveled against him Tuesday by House Democrats.
"Trump, Lavrov and Pompeo are meeting in private this afternoon," tweeted Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "What conspiracy are they cooking up today?"
Trump's first meeting with Lavrov unfolded May 10, 2017, the day after he ousted Comey. That decision sparked the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Trump bragged about it during his meeting with Lavrov and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to media accounts at the time.
“I just fired the head of the FBI," Trump told his Russian guests on that occasion. "He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off."
According to the Washington Post, Trump also classified information to the Russian officials, revealing important intelligence collected by a U.S. ally about the Islamic State terrorist group.
During their joint conference before the White House meeting, Pompeo and Lavrov also tangled over arms control and the fate of an American detainee held by Russia, among other issues.
Pompeo said he pressed Lavrov on the case of Paul Whelan, a Michigan man who has held in a notorious Moscow prison for more than a year on charges of espionage. Whelan and his family dismissed the allegations as unfounded.
Pompeo said winning the release of Whelan and other American citizens held abroad is one of President Donald Trump’s “highest priorities.”
Whelan has said he is ill and not receiving proper medical attention in detention. Lavrov asserted that Whelan might be faking health problems as a “tactic” by his lawyers to make him look like a “martyr.”
The Russians want the Trump administration to renegotiate a landmark treaty designed to reduce Russian and American nuclear bombs and warheads, among other weapons. It expires in 2021.
The Trump administration wants to include China in any new nuclear arms treaty, arguing that Beijing is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal and represents a growing threat. China has rebuffed that plea, which Lavrov noted Tuesday.
"China spoke clearly that they will not take part in the negotiations," Lavrov said. Russia and the United States need to move forward, so there's not a "vacuum" that allows the treaty to lapse.
Pompeo said a renewal of the treaty could leave the world less safe.
After their meeting in 2017, Russia's state-controlled news agency distributed photographs of Trump smiling and shaking hands with his Russian guests in the Oval Office – an optic that fed the narrative of Trump as a pro-Russia leader unconcerned with Moscow's attack on American elections.
Mueller's report found no organized conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 election; investigators took no position on whether Trump engaged in obstruction of justice during the probe, including his decision to fire Comey.
Mueller concluded, as have U.S. intelligence officials, that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a widespread operation to sway the 2016 election in Trump's favor.
Pompeo said the United States will not budge from its position that Russia needs to return the Crimean Peninsula to Ukrainian control. Russia annexed that territory in 2014.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pompeo clashes with Lavrov on election meddling, Ukraine, arms control
