Trump told a reporter off the record Russia was falsely accused of interfering in US election: report

The New York Times is reporting on President Donald Trump's five "mystery" meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the wide-ranging and lengthy article, several odd and disturbing events stand out.

First, video of President Trump in July of 2017 at a G-20 dinner, the one where First Lady Melania Trump sat next to Putin and President Trump later went to speak with Putin without any U.S. officials present.

What was especially odd about that dinner was, aside from there is no record of what the two world leaders said to each other, this video that was not widely reported on.

Here's how The Times describes it:

"Videotape later made public showed Mr. Trump pointing at Mr. Putin, who was seated across and down a long table, then pointing at himself and then making a pumping motion with his fist."

Here is that video. It's hard to make out and the quality is poor but President Trump can be seen in the lower left corner of the image:

Also disturbing is that President Trump, according to The Times, a day after that G-20 Summit, called a Times reporter and told them that Russia was wrongly accused of interfering in the U.S. election.

Again, direct from The Times:

"The day after the two meetings, as Mr. Trump was on Air Force One taking off from Germany heading back to Washington, he telephoned a Times reporter and argued that the Russians were falsely accused of election interference. While he insisted most of the conversation be off the record, he later repeated a few things in public in little-noticed asides."

One more aspect of the Times article that has received the most attention.

President Trump "said that he raised the election hacking three times and that Mr. Putin denied involvement. But he said Mr. Putin also told him that 'if we did, we wouldn’t have gotten caught because we’re professionals.' Mr. Trump said: 'I thought that was a good point because they are some of the best in the world' at hacking."