There are longstanding questions about the president’s affinity for Russia, which intervened in the 2016 campaign to help Mr. Trump, according to American intelligence agencies, a special counsel investigation and the current Senate Intelligence Committee report. Mr. Trump has called it all a hoax, publicly accepted President Vladimir V. Putin’s word that Russia did not interfere and pushed policies helpful to Mr. Putin and his government. This month, Mr. Trump rejected warnings from the American intelligence agencies that Russia is trying to help him win re-election in 2020. “Collectively, the allegations raised a potential counterintelligence concern, that Russia might use compromising information to influence the then-presidential candidate’s positions on relations with Russia,” the report said. A dossier of largely unverified information compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia claimed that during Mr. Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow there was video of him with prostitutes in his Ritz-Carlton hotel room.

Source: New York Times August 19, 2020 00:00 UTC