Two other lawmakers, Sens.

But Trump has largely shrugged off the criticism and took aim at the "fake news media" Thursday for failing to recognize his achievements. Further, the lack of a public explanation of what Trump and Putin may have agreed to during more than two hours in private has left all USA policy toward Russian Federation unclear. In exchange, U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller could send members of his team to watch Russian questioning of 12 Russian intelligence agents indicted by a U.S. grand jury last week in connection with hacking Democratic Party email accounts before the 2016 election. Republicans have blocked the move. She said at the Aspen Forum that Russian Federation is attempting to "cause chaos on both sides".

How did Trump respond to Putin's suggestion?

Trump's director of national intelligence, Dan Coates was informed of the announcement by MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell during an onstage interview at the Aspen Security Form in Colorado.

What happened in the reported briefing meeting?

President Trump is being increasingly vocal about his annoyance at this resistance to his diplomatic overtures, despite avoiding a war with Russian Federation seemingly being an obvious part of long-term United States strategic interests.

Hours after Trump had equated his own intelligence community's long-held assessment that Russian Federation interfered in the 2016 election and Putin's denial thereof, Coats issued a statement reasserting the USA government's position. With confusion still swirling around what the two men discussed behind closed doors in Helsinki earlier this week, Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said it's important to "deal with the results" of their first summit before jumping too fast into a new one.

In comments on Twitter early Thursday, President Trump faulted his critics, saying he believes they "badly want to see a major confrontation with Russian Federation, even a confrontation that could lead to war".

The idea of allowing a foreign power to quiz US citizens sparked outrage and the US Senate voted 98-0 against it. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said it was "not going to happen".

What else has happened since the Trump-Putin summit?

Michael Dwyer APSen. Ed Markey speaks during the 2018 Massachusetts Democratic Party Convention

This comes a few days after Trump and Putin held a one-day summit in Finland.

But he said he believed that "Russia's actions had no impact at all on the outcome of the election".

Trump himself has also put a positive spin on the summit.

"I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed", Trump said. "There are many answers, some easy and some hard, to these problems ... but they can ALL be solved!"

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House press secretary.

Coats also appeared to be caught by surprise on a major White House announcement: that Trump had invited Putin to visit Washington in the fall - the first such visit in almost 13 years.

Just minutes later, the State Department offered its own take on the Helsinki meeting, saying that no agreements were reached; just general proposals on matters mainly related to economic and strategic cooperation.

The invitation was announced hours after the president tweeted that he looked forward to "our second meeting" as he defended his widely-criticised Helsinki summit on Monday in which the two leaders conferred on a range of issues, including terrorism, Israeli security, nuclear proliferation and North Korea.

"You know, these are certainly all modest proposals", she said.

At the Pentagon, officials were still waiting to see if their marching orders in Syria would change as a result of the summit.