Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton said Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin "looked Donald Trump directly in the eye and lied to him" when he denied Moscow's involvement in last year's election.
"That's the single most important takeaway coming out of the meeting," Bolton, who served under former President George W. Bush, told Laura Ingraham on Fox News.
"Vladimir Putin denied Russian interference of the election," he explained. "Everyone who has looked at the classified information says there's no doubt the Russians tried to affect the election.
"That's something that should be unacceptable to all Americans.
"Vladimir Putin looked Donald Trump directly in the eye and lied to him," he said, later adding: "You can't trust them at face value."
Bolton said that President Trump bringing up the meddling issue with the Kremlin leader at the start of their meeting also settled any possible questions of collusion with the Republican's campaign.
"The fact that President Trump opened the meeting by talking about Russian interference in our election and pressed it several times, should be the end of the allegations of that Russian collusion with the trump campaign."
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters after the meeting that Trump and Putin had a "robust and lengthy" discussion about the hacking issue.
On the Syrian cease-fire that was announced, Bolton said that the most-likely winner was President Bashar al-Assad's regime because "it gives them some calm to enable them to move forward on another front.
"It sounds exactly like the Obama administration," he added, referring to Tillerson telling reporters in Hamburg that Assad must go.
"We expect Assad to leave, we will have a transition period," he told Ingraham. "The Russians it will never support Assad leaving."
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