 Trump may look to blame Putin for interference in the 2016 US election. Former President Donald Trump may look to blame Vladimir Putin for interference in the 2016 US election if it can keep him out of prison according to a legal filing reported by Politico. According to Newsweek, Trump still leads the PAC in the Republican primaries but faces 91 felony counts across two state courts and two different federal districts, any of which could lead to a prison sentence. He also faces a civil suit in New York that could hurt his business empire. Trump has repeatedly avoided agreeing with US intelligence assessments that Putin had interfered on his behalf during the 2016 presidential election. In Helsinki in 2018, Trump said he didn't see any reason to disbelieve the Russian leader's assurance Moscow did not interfere. Trump's false claims that the next election in 2020 was stolen from him spurred some of his supporters to try to overthrow the Electoral College vote and sparked rioters to storm the capital. It triggered a federal indictment obtained by special counsel Jack Smith, focused on his attempt to subvert his loss. Despite Trump's insistence that Putin had nothing to do with his 2016 victory, which he had termed the Russia hoax, Politico has flagged an excerpt of his attorney's filing disputing Smith's claims that the ex-president had damaged Americans faith in the electoral system because Putin did it first. Trump wants people to know that it was Russia not him who caused Americans to distrust the election system, wrote Politico's Kyle Cheney on X, next to a screen grab of the legal filing.