It took until Thursday. It took until Thursday for the Trump White House to finally pipe up with a weak-tea statement "disagreeing" with a Russian proposal to hand over a former U.S. ambassador and other Americans to the Putin government for questioning.
“It is a proposal that was made in sincerity by President Putin, but President Trump disagrees with it,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “Hopefully President Putin will have the 12 identified Russians come to the United States to prove their innocence or guilt.”
Sanders's statement comes roughly 24 hours after she could not rule out the Putin proposal that he be provided access to "question" some of his most-hated critics, including British financier Bill Browder and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, both key figures in exposing and condemning widespread corruption, money laundering and murder in the Russian oligarchy. It was these revelations that led to the Magnitsky Act, a set of sanctions against top Putin-connected Russian billionaires that has curtailed their ability to launder their money through U.S. and allied nations; the Putin government has remained obsessed with overturning those sanctions since they were introduced, and it was identified as a core topic of the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting between top Trump election officials and agents dispatched by the Russian government.
This new statement, allowing only that the Trump White House has after several days of pondering come to the conclusion that they "disagree" with Russian government requests to be allowed access to those they have identified as among their top world enemies—on the immediate heels of another British death from exposure to a Russian government-developed nerve agent—continues to be shamefully weak and pathetic, but that is who Donald Trump is, and that is who the people that surround him are.
In fact, the White House statement came only as the United States Senate was rushing to consider a non-binding proposal opposing the Russian request to be given "access" to McFaul and others; that resolution has now passed by a vote of 98-0.