WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump met Tuesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov just hours after House Democrats announced articles of impeachment against him for his dealings with Ukraine, a U.S. ally that is battling against Russian aggression.
Central to the impeachment inquiry is whether Trump withheld military aid and a White House meeting for Ukraine's president as leverage to get Kyiv to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.
Trump's critics say he is too friendly with the Russian government and take issue with his public praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin -- particularly given that country's interference in the U.S. presidential election in 2016. Trump insists he needs to engage with Moscow and says the two nations can cooperate on many fronts, including countering terrorism.
The Trump-Lavrov meeting also came just a day after the Justice Department's watchdog said the FBI was justified in opening its investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia. Trump has long slammed the investigation as a witch hunt and says the FBI never should have started it.
Former special counsel Robert Mueller, who took over the Russia investigation from the FBI, determined that Russia interfered in the election in an effort to help Trump beat his 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
The White House said after the Trump-Lavrov meeting that Trump warned against any Russian attempts to interfere in United States elections and urged Russia to resolve the conflict with Ukraine. At a news conference later at the Russian Embassy in Washington, Lavrov acknowledged talking about election interference with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, but said it didn't come up in his meeting with Trump. "We haven't exactly even discussed elections," Lavrov said.
"I was clear: It's unacceptable, and I made our expectations of Russia clear," Pompeo said of election interference. "The Trump administration will always work to protect the integrity of our elections. Period. Should Russia or any foreign actor take steps to undermine our democratic processes, we will take action in response."
Lavrov derided the "wave of suspicions that has overcome Washington" related to election interference, renewing demands that evidence of such activity be given to Moscow.
"All speculation about our alleged interference in domestic processes of the United States is baseless," Lavrov said.
Pompeo said the U.S. had already published its conclusions. "We don't think there is any mistake about what transpired," he said.
Pompeo and Lavrov also discussed arms control agreements, Ukraine, Syria and Venezuela. Pompeo said that he and Lavrov "spent a fair amount of time talking about Ukraine" and that the U.S. would not relent on its stance that Crimea, the peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014, "belongs to Ukraine."
Lavrov arrived in Washington after a meeting in Paris on Monday between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, along with the French and German leaders, at which they agreed to revive the peace process on the bloody separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine and exchange all their prisoners.
But they failed to resolve crucial issues such as a timeline on local elections and control of the borders in the rebel-held region. Still, Russian and Ukrainian officials on Tuesday described the talks as a step toward peace and pledged to continue negotiations.
A Section on 12/11/2019