Nikki Haley: ‘We can’t trust Russia, and we won’t ever trust Russia’

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is offering a remarkably different account of President Trump’s meeting at the G-20 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin than other U.S. and Russian officials, claiming Trump told Putin that the United States believes that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election and that the Kremlin needs to quit interfering in the U.S. democratic process.

“What he did was bring up right away the election meddling, and he did that for a reason,” Haley said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “One, he wanted to basically look him in the eye, let him know that, yes, we know you meddled in our elections. Yes, we know you did it, cut it out. And I think President Putin did exactly what we thought he would do, which is deny it. This is Russia trying to save face. And they can’t. They can’t. Everybody knows that Russia meddled in our elections.”

Haley’s description runs counter to the versions offered by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Trump himself.

While Trump said Sunday that he “strongly pressed” Putin about Moscow’s meddling, the president has also expressed doubt about who was behind it.