'Fake news, it's phony stuff'
President-elect Donald Trump yesterday flatly denied "phony" explosive allegations about ties with Russia and lurid behavior on a trip to Moscow that have tainted his election victory and threatened to engulf his presidency.
Just over a week before Trump takes office, the United States has been rocked by unsubstantiated claims that his aides colluded with the Kremlin to win the election -- and that Russia has compromising sexual material on Trump.
"I think it's a disgrace that information would be let out," Trump said, training fire on media outlets that published the allegations and the intelligence agencies who he suggested may have leaked it.
"It's all fake news. It's phony stuff. It didn't happen," he said in his first press conference in nearly six months.
"It was a group of opponents that got together, sick people, and they put that crap together."
On Twitter, he decried a political "witch hunt" against him and asked: "Are we living in Nazi Germany?"
The US intelligence community has concluded Moscow interfered in the November election in a bid to tip the race in Trump's favor.
Intelligence chiefs last week also presented America's incoming 45th president, as well as current President Barack Obama, with a two-page synopsis on the potentially embarrassing but unsubstantiated allegations involving Russia, according to CNN and The New York Times, who cited multiple unnamed US officials with knowledge of the meeting.
The Kremlin has dismissed the dossier -- drawn up by a former British intelligence agent hired to do "opposition research" on Trump during the presidential campaign and published by US media outlet BuzzFeed -- as a "total fake" aimed at damaging bilateral ties.
The issue threatens to sap legitimacy from the Trump administration before it even enters the Oval Office.
Trump fanned the flames by again downplaying Russia's influence in the outcome of the election and defended his openness towards Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"As far as hacking, I think it was Russia, but I also think we've been hacked by other countries, other people."
"If Putin likes Donald Trump, I consider that an asset, not a liability, because we have a horrible relationship with Russia," Trump said.
"I don't know that I'm going to get along with Vladimir Putin. I hope I do. But there's a good chance I won't."
Without corroborating its contents, BuzzFeed published a 35-page dossier of memos on which the synopsis presented to Trump is based.
The memos, which had been circulating in Washington for months, describe sex videos involving prostitutes filmed during a 2013 visit by Trump to a luxury Moscow hotel, supposedly as a potential means for blackmail.
They also suggest Russian officials proposed lucrative deals in order to win influence over the real estate magnate.
Trump was reportedly informed of the existence of the dossier -- and its salacious details -- last Friday when he received a briefing from US intelligence chiefs on alleged Russian interference in the presidential election.
The classified two-page synopsis reportedly included allegations that there was a regular flow of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and Russian government intermediaries, which a Trump aide denied.
Comments