Trump to warn Putin against election meddling in upcoming summit: Bolton

Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, Bolton said the meeting was going to be “unstructured” but Trump was going to discuss "a full range of issues," including Russia’s influence on the 2016 US presidential vote and the midterm Congressional elections later this year.

“I expect it will be somewhat unstructured, but it will give them a chance to go over some of these issues free of the pressure of immediate deadlines or crises,” Bolton said.

“In establishing that line of communication the president has very much in mind he wants to understand the Russian position and perhaps more importantly he wants Vladimir Putin to understand our positions,” he added.

Russia has time and again rejected accusations by US intelligence officials that hackers backed by the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 US election to assist Trump.

Trump is also accused by Democrats of “colluding” with Putin’s government and is currently under investigation.

Trump and Putin met briefly on the sidelines of last year’s G-20 summit. However, their upcoming meeting scheduled for July 16 in the Finnish capital Helsinki will be the first formal one-on-one meeting between the two leaders since Trump took office in January 2017.

Last week, Bolton traveled to Moscow to hammer out details for the highly-anticipated summit. While in Moscow, he met with Putin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other Russian officials.

Trump said Friday that he intended to raise the issue of Russian interference in America’s democratic process when he speaks with Putin.

Bolton echoed that on Sunday, adding that Trump believes Russia indeed meddled in US elections.

“What president Putin said to me, through the translator of course, that he said there was no meddling in the 2016 election by the Russian state,” Bolton said on Fox News Sunday.

“So I think it still raises the question, I think the president will want to have a conversation about this and say we don’t want to see meddling in the 2018 election,” he added.

After their G20 meeting with Putin, Trump raised eyebrows back at home by saying he believed Putin when he said Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election.