2:45 P.M. UPDATE:
President Donald Trump says he gets along "very, very well" with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But he said the Russian leader would have preferred to have his 2016 rival Hillary Clinton in the White House.
Trump told Christian broadcast station CBN in an interview taped Wednesday that Clinton would have weakened the U.S. military and driven up energy prices — two things Putin would have welcomed.
U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Russian government meddled in the 2016 election to bolster Trump and to hurt Clinton.
Trump also said in his first interview after a lengthy face-to-face meeting with Putin that he thinks the two "get along very, very well." But he said Putin will always want "what's good for Russia, and I want what's good for the United States."
Read Thursday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.
EARLIER:
President Donald Trump on Wednesday defended son Donald Trump Jr. in regards to the Russia investigation, writing on Twitter that his son was "open, transparent and innocent."
The president again called the investigation the "greatest Witch Hunt in political history."
Trump took to Twitter in the aftermath of his son's defense of a meeting he had last June with a Russian lawyer. According to emails released by Trump Jr., he appeared eager to accept information from the Russian government that would have damaged Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign.
The incident has raised questions of whether members of Trump's campaign coordinated with Russia to hurt Clinton and help Trump.
The Kremlin denied reaching out to the Moscow-based property developer and his son who arranged the meeting.
The emails published by Trump Jr. show publicist Rob Goldstone telling Trump that singer Emin Agalarov and his father, developer Aras Agalarov, had "helped along" the Russian government's support for Trump. In his email, Goldstone said that the "Crown prosecutor of Russia" offered to provide the information on Clinton to the Trump campaign in a meeting with Aras Agalarov.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, insisted that the Kremlin has not spoken to Agalarov and has no ties to the Russian lawyer who was at the meeting.
On ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today on Wednesday, the president's lawyer said Trump Jr. he did not violate any laws.
Attorney Jay Sekulow said that the president was not aware of Trump Jr.'s June 2016 meeting and didn't find out about his son's email exchange until "very recently."
House Speaker Paul Ryan deflected questions about the meeting and told reporters Wednesday that it's important to get to the bottom of what happened, but that's a job for special counsel Robert Mueller and the congressional intelligence committees.
Ryan said it is "absolutely unacceptable" that Russia meddled in the presidential election. He said it was "very important that these professionals do their jobs" in the investigations.