There’s one key figure who disagrees with the C.I.A. and F.B.I.’s assessment that Russia worked to interfere during the 2016 presidential election: Vladimir Putin. And, on Saturday, President Donald Trump said he believes him.

“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,” Trump said of the Russian president, in a conversation with reporters Saturday morning onboard Air Force One. “But he says, ‘I didn’t do that.’ I think he is very insulted by it, if you want to know the truth. Don’t forget. All he said was he never did that, he didn’t do that. I think he is very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country.”

“I can’t stand there and argue with him,” he continued, “I would rather have him get out of Syria, to be honest with you. I would rather have, I would rather him—get to work with him on the Ukraine rather than standing and arguing about whether or not—because that whole thing was set up by the Democrats. I mean, they ought to Look at Podesta, they ought to look at all the things that they have done with the phony dossier. Those are the big events.”

In something of a twist, Putin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told CNN the topic of election meddling did not come up during their meetings this week on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Vietnam.

U.S. intelligence groups are unanimous in their verdict that the Kremlin did, in fact, have a hand in influencing last year’s election, from meetings with Trump campaign staffers to an organized, online fake news and social-media influence campaign for political protests.

Though Putin himself has often denied that he ordered the interference campaign, he has occasionally allowed that Russian involvement was, at the least, within the realm of possibility. In June, Putin said that “certain patriotically minded” Russians may have taken part in hacking, likening such would-be vigilantes to artists who wake up and decide what to paint.

“If they are patriotically minded, they start making their contributions—which are right, from their point of view—to the fight against those who say bad things about Russia,” Putin said at the time.

In his Saturday gaggle with reporters, Trump went on to say that, if the U.S. had a relationship with Russia, it would be “a great thing because [Putin] could really help us on North Korea.” He also laced into former U.S. intelligence leaders whose agencies each concluded that Russia had, indeed, interfered in the 2016 election, despite the president’s protestations. “I mean, give me a break—they are political hacks,’ Trump said. “So, you look at it. I mean, you have [John] Brennan, you have [James] Clapper, and you have [Jim] Comey. Comey is proven now to be a liar, and he is proven now to be a leaker. So, you look at that, and you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently, says he had nothing to do with them.”

Brennan and Clapper hit back at Trump on Sunday, in a joint appearance on CNN’s State of the Union. “By not confronting the issue directly, and not acknowledging to Putin that we know you’re responsible for this, I think he’s giving Putin a pass,” Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, said. “I think it demonstrates to Mr. Putin that Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and try to play upon his insecurities, which is very, very worrisome from a national-security standpoint.” Clapper, the former national intelligence director, agreed. “He seems very susceptible to rolling out the red carpet and honor guards and all the trappings and pomp and circumstance that come with the office, and I think that appeals to him, and I think it plays to his insecurities,” Clapper said.

“I don’t know why there’s ambiguity about this,” Brennan said. “Putin is committed to undermining our system, our democracy, and our whole process. And to try to paint it in any other way is, I think, astounding and, in fact, poses a peril to this country.”