President Donald Trump became convinced Ukraine tried to stop him from winning the White House because Russian President Vladimir Putin told him so, The Washington Post reported.
Trump's insistence grew after meeting privately in July 2017 with Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, the Post reported.
According to the Post, one unnamed former senior White House official said Trump explicitly sourced his belief that Ukraine was the election interference culprit, saying "Putin told me."
"He would say: 'This is ridiculous. Everyone knows I won the election. The greatest election in the world. The Russians didn't do anything. The Ukrainians tried to do something,'" the source told the Post, adding Trump never offered proof to prove his assertion.
"We spent a lot of time . . . trying to refute this one in the first year of the administration," Fiona Hill, a former senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council, told impeachment investigators in October.
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