WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump acknowledged for the first time Thursday that Moscow helped him win the White House in 2016 — before retracting himself to launch a fiery attack on Robert Mueller and the Russia probe.

“Russia, Russia, Russia! That’s all you heard at the beginning of this Witch Hunt Hoax,” Trump tweeted, in an outburst against Special Counsel Mueller’s suggestion that Congress impeach him for obstructing the two-year investigation.

“And now Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected,” Trump said.

It appeared to be the first time that Trump accepted claims by US intelligence chiefs that Russian government meddling aided his stunning upset victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Although Trump did not remove the tweet, he shortly afterward sought to walk back the admission, telling reporters as he left on a trip to Colorado that Russia “if anything, helped the other side,” or Clinton.

“Russia did not get me elected. You know who got me elected? I got me elected,” he said.

“Russia didn’t help me at all.”

Trump has stridently rejected any suggestion his victory was illegitimate ever since US intelligence chiefs announced in January 2017 that Moscow interfered heavily in the election, hacking computers and manipulating social media largely to damage Clinton and boost Trump’s campaign.

His outburst came a day after Mueller — in his first public comments on the investigation he was named to lead in May 2017 — said the probe had established “multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election.”

“Russian intelligence officers who were part of the Russian military launched a concerted attack on our political system,” he said, with their hacking “designed and timed… to damage a presidential candidate.”

app