Russian President Vladimir Putin echoed President Donald Trump’s argument against the investigation into his country’s possible collusion with Trump’s campaign and associates, calling it Democrats’ excuse for losing the presidential election.

In an exemplary tweet Tuesday morning, Trump wrote that the federal and congressional Russia investigations were “a lame excuse for why the Dems lost the election.”

Hours later, the French newspaper Le Figaro published an interview with Putin, which had taken place Monday, in which the Russian leader called allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election “fiction,” driven by “desire of those who lost the U.S. elections to improve their standing by accusing Russia of interfering.”

“[P]eople who lost the vote hate to acknowledge that they indeed lost because the person who won was closer to the people and had a better understanding of what people wanted,” he added.

Also on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times published a recording of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) using similar language at an April 7 fundraiser. Nunes had by then claimed to have recused himself from the House Intelligence Committee’s own investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign.

“The Democrats don’t want an investigation on Russia. They want an independent commission,” Nunes said. “Why do they want an independent commission? Because they want to continue the narrative that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are best friends, and that’s the reason that he won, because Hillary Clinton could have never lost on her own; it had to be someone else’s fault.”