Sarah Huckabee Sanders Contradicts Trump, Says He Talked Sanctions With Putin

WASHINGTON, DC — White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday contradicted President Trump's previous avowal that he did not discuss sanctions with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Did President Trump discuss sanctions with Russian President Putin at the G20 Summit?" a reporter asked.

"I do know that it was mentioned," Huckabee Sanders said. "Specifically, when you ask about sanctions I know there is a little bit of a question there, and there were sanctions specific to election meddling that I believe were discussed, but not beyond that." (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

But these comments were in direct conflict with Trump's tweet Sunday, which read: "Sanctions were not discussed at my meeting with President Putin. Nothing will be done until the Ukrainian & Syrian problems are solved!"

The White House did not explain this discrepancy.

The press briefing was held off-camera Monday afternoon. This continued a pattern from the Trump administration of reduced transparency; the last on-camera press briefing was held June 29.

Trump has also been relatively shielded from public questioning by reporters in recent weeks. Trump declined to take questions at his last two public statements at the White House with world leaders. He did take questions before his remarks in Poland on Thursday, when he made headlines by attacking CNN, criticizing the intelligence community and doubting reports of Russia's attempts to influence the election.

While the White House increasingly relies on these press reports to make public its statements on important issues, the president and his staff continue to refer to legitimate news outlets such as CNN as "fake news" and attacking their credibility.

At the beginning of the briefing, reporters received a handout excoriating Democrats for obstructing Trump's appointments:

Reporters also pressed Huckabee Sanders on reports that contrary to prior statements, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort all met with a Russian lawyer during the campaign who said she had dirt on Hillary Clinton.

"I think the point is that we’ve tried to make every single time, today and then, and will continue to make in those statements is that there was simply no collusion that they keep trying to create that there was," Huckabee Sanders said.

Later, she was more specific: "Don Jr. did not collude with anybody to influence the election."

However, she would not address the fact that the administration has repeatedly denied that anyone in the campaign had contact with Russians during the campaign, which is now known to be false.

Multiple outlets said Monday that the eldest Trump son was retaining a criminal lawyer.

Following up on previous questions about whether Trump accepted Putin's denial that Russia was involved in the cyberattacks tied to the 2016 election, Huckabee Sanders didn't directly answer the inquiry.

"He heard Putin’s denial, and he knew that at the end of the day the important part was them being able to have that conversation, him to directly ask him," she said. "He heard his answer, and he moved forward with places that they thought they could work together. The president has been clear from his statements back in January and even in his tweets over the last couple of days, his opinion on that matter."

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