Trump lashes out over 'phony' Russia dossier claim
NEW YORK: Donald Trump attacked US intelligence agencies
and the media on Wednesday as he denied explosive allegations about his ties to
Russia, but admitted for the first time that Moscow had likely
meddled in the US election.
Just over a week before he takes office, Trump said he had
ceded “complete” managing control of his global property empire to his two
adult sons but stopped short of making a full divestment, earning a swift
rebuke from an ethics watchdog and Democratic Party opponents.
“It doesn’t
meet the standards that the best of his nominees are meeting and that every
president in the last four decades has met,” said Walter Shaub, director of the
Office of Government Ethics. “He needs to get rid of his business interests and
he needs to put them in what’s called a blind trust,” Democratic Senator
Elizabeth Warren told Bloomberg TV.
But the hour-long press conference, his first in six
months, focused firmly on the unsubstantiated claims that his aides colluded
with the Kremlin to win the US election, and that Russia has compromising
information on Trump.
The
president-elect accused CNN of
generating “fake news” and slammed BuzzFeed as “a
failing pile of garbage” after it published a dossier with the allegedly
incriminating material, drawn up by a former British intelligence agent hired
to do “opposition research” on Trump.
“It’s all fake news. It’s phony stuff. It didn’t happen,”
he said, referring to allegations of lurid behavior in a Moscow hotel room.
The 70-year old Republican billionaire suggested it may
have been released by the intelligence agencies, which would be a “tremendous
blot on their record.”
Trump dodged questions about whether his campaign had
contacts with Russian intelligence, instead tearing into reporters whose
outlets reported on the allegations of the existence of compromising material.
“I’m not
going to give you a question. You are fake news,” he told a CNN reporter, igniting a fresh raft of questions
about his respect for constitutional guarantees about the free press.
The US
intelligence community concluded Moscow interfered in the November election in
a bid to tip the race in Trump’s favor. But intelligence chiefs last week
presented Trump, as well as 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.
US intelligence chief James Clapper late Wednesday
expressed his “profound dismay” to Trump over the leaks. “This evening, I had
the opportunity to speak with President-elect Donald Trump to discuss recent
media reports about our briefing last Friday,” Clapper said.
“I expressed my profound dismay at the leaks that have
been appearing in the press, and we both agreed that they are extremely
corrosive and damaging to our national security,” he said, adding that he did
not believe that the US intelligence community was the source.
Even before the new allegations became public, Democrats
and Trump’s Republican allies had become increasingly uneasy about Russia’s
role in the election, with calls for an independent investigation growing.
The Kremlin Denies
The Kremlin has dismissed the dossier as a “total fake”
aimed at damaging bilateral ties.
Trump began the press conference muted and disciplined,
but became increasingly agitated as questions piled up. “I have no dealings
with Russia. I have no deals in Russia. I have no deals that could happen in
Russia, because we’ve stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia,” Trump
said.
The president-elect finally admitted for the first time
that he believes Moscow likely meddled in the US election. But while secretary
of state-designate Rex Tillerson, also seen as close to Moscow, called Russia a
“danger” during his confirmation hearing, Trump may have fanned the flames by
downplaying Moscow’s role.
“As far as hacking, I think it was Russia, but I also
think we’ve been hacked by other countries, other people,” he said. Trump aides
bristle at the suggestion that Russia weighed in behind Trump, seeing it as an
effort to de-legitimise his election victory.
Trump again refused to back away from his openness towards
Russian President Vladimir Putin. “If Putin likes Donald Trump, I consider that
an asset, not a liability,” 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 reportedly 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.
“The Kremlin does not have compromising information on
Trump,” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told
journalists.
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