Senator John McCain has said there is “nothing ‘America First’” about "trusting’ President Vladimir Putin, following President Donald Trump’s meeting with the Russian leader at the APEC summit in Vietnam on Saturday.
The comments follow the recent Robert Mueller probe into the Kremlin's suspected "meddling" in the 2016 US presidential elections, which saw the first charges filed in the case but are sealed under order from a federal judge.
In a statement on his official website, McCain said: "There's nothing 'America First' about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community.
“Vladimir Putin does not have America's interests at heart. To believe otherwise is not only naive but also places our national security at risk," McCain said.
But Trump still gave his blessing to Putin, saying: “Every time he sees me he says, ‘I didn’t do that,’ and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it,” aboard Air Force One after the meeting in Vietnam, reported The Hill.
Senator McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also spoke of the Trump and Putin’s apparently "brief" discussions on the Syrian civil war.
Mr Mueller was appointed in May to determine if Mr Trump's campaign advisers colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election.
It is unclear what the charges are but the development suggests Mr Mueller and his team believe crimes were committed by at least one person in relation to last year’s election.
Meanwhile, Mr Putin branded the claims of interfering with the election as "absurd", and claimed that the accusations were "designed to hurt" the president.
