The spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday confirmed a Kremlin envoy met with members of the Trump campaign during the election to discuss “bilateral relations” – but he also contacted people linked to the Clinton camp.
Dmitry Peskov, who denied Moscow meddled in the 2016 presidential election, said Ambassador Sergey Kislyak huddled with the campaign staffers as part of his diplomatic duties.
“This is his job. He was talking about bilateral relations. He was talking about what is going on in the United States so we have a better understanding in Moscow,” Peskov told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “This is what is being performed by every ambassador of Russia abroad, every ambassador of the United States abroad, including in Moscow.”
Asked about Kislyak’s meeting with the staffers for Hillary Clinton, Peskov said, the ambassador met with “people working in think tanks advising Hillary or advising people working for Hillary.”
“Well, if you look at some people connected with Hillary Clinton during her campaign, you would probably see that he had lots of meetings of that kind. But there were no meetings about elections – electoral process,” Peskov said.
Kislyak’s contacts with Trump officials before the election has remained a point of controversy for the White House.
In February, Michael Flynn resigned as national security director after reports revealed he met with Kislyak during the election and kept White House officials in the dark about those meetings.
And Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from any investigations into Russian interference in the election after reports surfaced that he met with Kislyak but did not disclose talking to him during his Senate confirmation hearing.
Peskov also rejected allegations that Russian colluded with Trump officials to disrupt the election, saying the US is “self-humiliating” itself by even raising such claims.
“The answer is very simple, no. And the fact that Russia is being demonized in that sense comes very strange to us,” Peskov said. “We – quite unexpectedly – we faced a situation when Russia all of a sudden became, let’s say, a nightmare for the United States. And we sincerely cannot understand why American people and American politicians started the process of self-humiliation. You’re self-humiliating yourself, saying that a country can intervene in your election process.”