In June 2016, the Democratic National Committee announced that it had been hacked, and several cybersecurity-research firms concluded that Russia was likely to blame. Then, five days before the press conference, on July 22, WikiLeaks released a tranche of emails hacked from the DNC, and suspicion immediately fell on Russia. Trump had already been making favorable comments about Putin and Russia throughout the campaign, and reporters were curious to hear his take on the stolen emails. Setting the template for his response up to the present day, Trump cast doubt on the idea that Russia was behind the hacking. But he also pulled a neat trick: If it was Russia, he suggested, that was just a sign of how bad Barack Obama was.

“If it is Russia—nobody even knows this, it’s probably China, or it could be somebody sitting in his bed. But it shows how weak we are, it shows how disrespected we are,” he said. “Assuming it’s Russia or China or one of the major countries and competitors, it’s a total sign of disrespect for our country. Putin and the leaders throughout the world have no respect for our country anymore and they certainly have no respect for our leader.”

Yet Trump refused to tell Russia to stay out of the election.

“I’m not going to tell Putin what to do,” he said. “Why should I tell Putin what to do?”

In fact, he didn’t seem to have any problem at all with Putin, even if he had been behind the hacks. Trump also declined to say that he would defend America’s NATO allies in the Baltic states if Putin attacked them. “I hope that we get along great with Putin because it would be great to have Russia with a good relationship,” he said. “President Trump would be so much better for U.S.-Russian relations. You can’t be worse.” This has not proved true; both sides have acknowledged that the relationship has been at a low ebb recently.

Trump also noted that he had no business in Russia.

“No, I have nothing to do with Russia, John. How many times do I have to say that?” he said, addressing a reporter. “What do I have to do with Russia? You know the closest I came to Russia, I bought a house a number of years ago in Palm Beach, Florida.”

This was another lie. Americans now know that Trump had spent years trying to build a tower in Moscow, and that his company had signed a letter of intent and was in active talks about a project at the time Trump made the denial. The former Trump lieutenant Michael Cohen revealed to Mueller that conversations continued until the middle of 2016, and Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani told The New York Times that the project only ended once he won the election. Trump’s son, son-in-law, and campaign manager had also met in June 2016 with Russians promising damaging information about the Clinton campaign, though there’s no evidence that Trump knew of the meeting at the time. (He later dictated a dishonest statement about the meeting for release to the press.)