During a news conference in July in Helsinki, Trump said he believed Putin’s denials of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. His comments — with Putin at his side — generated a sharp backlash from Trump’s aides and congressional allies.

Those tensions flared again this month after The Washington Post and others reported that Trump attempted to hide notes from one of his meetings with Putin in 2017 from his own advisers.

Since then, the president has largely stopped expressing public confidence in Putin. Yet Trump has continued to downplay Russia’s election interference, even as the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller has repeatedly showed how extensive it was.

In October, the Justice Department brought its first charges against Russia for interfering in the 2018 midterm elections, releasing a joint statement from several of Trump’s top Cabinet officials decrying the attempts. Trump, however, was mostly silent on the indictment, and instead sought to paint himself as a protector of elections while also blaming the Obama administration for keeping quiet about election meddling during the 2016 presidential campaign.