Fox News Channel's Tucker Carlson hosts former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein to respond to reports that the Russia investigation is looking into her for attending a conference with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. She was photographed at a table with Mike Flynn and the Russian president but she says no words were exchanged with Putin.



The host begins the interview: "Are you or have you ever been an agent of Russia? Do you speak Russian? How often do you talk to Vladimir Putin?"



She replied: "Like, not at all."











"Even when briefly he sat at this head table, at a conference! I was in Moscow for a conference. Attended by the BBC, Canadian broadcast system, by the state TV networks for China, India, Telesur. This was an actual legitimate conference."



"No backroom deals, no secret meetings in oligarchy towers, or anything like that. All very transparent and public."



"The dinner at the end of the conference" where she was photographed with Putin "was really a non-event," Stein said. "At one point, Putin came in with a couple of guys that assumed were his bodyguards. Turns out they were actually his inner circle. You would never have known it. Nobody was introduced to anybody. There was no translator, not a word exchanged. At one point, Putin made a very rapid turn around the table and shook everybody's hand, but without any exchange of names. That's about how significant this was."



Hillary Clinton advocates have pointed out that Trump's margin of victory in the Midwestern states he won was smaller than Stein's vote total in enough states to have tipped the balance. Carlson follows up with: "Can we move on to your real crime, which is running for president as a third party candidate? In the view of a lot of people in Washington, you got Donald Trump elected. Do you see this as punishment for the crime of running for president?"



"Yes, in many ways," she replied. "But it is not just Democrats. This is a bipartisan commission, led by Republicans, and yeah, they have it in as well. It is very inconvenient to have an opposition political party that is not taking orders from the same suspects."



"Interference in our elections is much bigger than the Russians," Stein added. "I would like to see the proof of Russian culpability here. When John Kennedy was facing the Cuban missile crisis, he declassified the photographs of the missiles in Cuba. Aren't we owed that as the American public?"



"We didn't get to see the real evidence before the Iraq War and we are still paying the price, $5 trillion and counting," she warned. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me a thousand times, shame on all of us."