The Kremlin on Wednesday denied a Bob Woodward's reporting that former US President Donald Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin as many as seven times since leaving office, the RBC daily reported.
When asked by RBC if Putin and Trump had spoken on the phone, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "No, that's not true."
Woodward’s revelations were made in the famed Watergate reporter's latest book, “War."
Trump also denied the reporting in an interview with ABC News' Jonathan Karl. “He’s a storyteller. A bad one. And he’s lost his marbles,” Trump said of Woodward.
Trump had previously spoken to Woodward for the journalist's 2021 book, “Rage.” Trump later sued over it, claiming Woodward never had permission to publicly release recordings of their interviews for the book. The publisher and Woodward denied his allegations.
Here is more from the new book:
Trump has had multiple calls with Putin since his White House term ended. Woodward reports that Trump asked an aide to leave his office at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, so that the former president could have a private call with Putin in early 2024. The aide, whom Woodward doesn’t name, said there have been multiple calls between Trump and Putin since Trump left office, perhaps as many as seven, according to the book, though it does not detail what they discussed.
Trump senior adviser and longtime aide Jason Miller told Woodward that he had not heard Trump was having calls with Putin and said, “I'd push back on that.” But Miller also said, according to the book, “I’m sure they’d know how to get in touch with each other."
Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, said none of the stories in Woodward’s books are true. In a statement on Tuesday, he called them “the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
