WASHINGTON —
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump Tuesday evening took to his favorite platform for public communication – Twitter – to rebut reported claims Russia compiled information to attempt to compromise him.
“FAKE NEWS, A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT,” Trump tweeted in all capital letters.
Media reports say a briefing document prepared by U.S. intelligence officials includes allegations that Trump campaign officials colluded with Russian intelligence. It is also said to discuss alleged sexual activities by Trump.
The president-elect’s attorney, Michael Cohen, told reporters the allegations in the document are false and were invented to malign Trump.
The president-elect was told last week by the heads of U.S. domestic intelligence agencies that Russian operatives claimed to have compromising personal and financial information about him, government sources confirmed, stressing that the information in the documents is still unsubstantiated and originated with a private company.
Trump was given a two-page synopsis of the unsubstantiated information last Friday, when he also was given a classified briefing on alleged Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election
President Barack Obama was reportedly given the same information on Thursday.
“There must be a reason for Trump’s unrelenting defense of Russia and adoration of (President) Putin. Perhaps this is it,” tweeted former CIA operative Evan McMullin.
After Trump’s tweet calling the dossier “fake news,” McMullin said the president-elect needs to explain his “bizarre affection for a foreign adversary that is actively undermining our democracy.”
FILE – Evan McMullin talks to the press in Salt Lake City, Utah.
McMullin was on the Utah presidential election ballot in November as an independent candidate, capturing 21.5 percent of the vote behind Republican Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Clinton made one of her few post-election public appearances at the State Department’s new Diplomacy Center Tuesday as news reports about the dossier were emerging. But she made no reference to the election or to Trump in her brief remarks.
Such materials, known in Russian as “kompromat,” are frequently prepared by some intelligence agencies to create negative publicity for purposes of blackmail and to ensure loyalty.
“It should not be a surprise to anyone that the Russians are always looking for dirt on any politician,” House of Representative intelligence committee chairman Devin Nunes told reporters.
“I would not jump to any conclusions. This seems maybe taken a little out of context,” added Nunes, a Republican who has worked with the Trump transition team.
CNN, which first reported the story Tuesday, did not give details of the compromising information. But the BuzzFeed digital media site posted online what it said was the full dossier alleging Russia’s government had been “cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump” for years.
The document, allegedly written by a former MI6 British intelligence official, mentions “various sweetener real-estate deals offered him in Russia” and states Trump “and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.” The document says Trump has not accepted any of the offered deals.
FILE – The Spasskaya Tower and the Kremlin wall in central Moscow.
The 35-page private intelligence report contains spelling mistakes and mistaken references. But some elements predict events that indeed occurred after the dates listed on the reports – from June 20 to October 20 of last year.
BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith defended the full disclosure, telling his staff in an e-mail that “our presumption is to be transparent . . . and to share what we have with our readers,” while noting that the information has “circulated at the highest levels of the US government.”
After the BuzzFeed posting, Twitter exploded with reaction to the most salacious memo excerpt, alleging “perverted sexual acts” involving prostitutes that Russia’s FSB intelligence agency had “arranged/monitored,” including specifically during a 2013 visit to a Moscow hotel by Trump.
Some of the information, attributed in the dossier to “several knowledgeable sources,” is said to have circulated for weeks among some journalists and politicians in Washington.
The allegations against Trump came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence agent with extensive Russian contacts, and whose previous work for the U.S. has been considered credible, according to media reports.
FILE – A part of the declassified version Intelligence Community Assessment on Russia’s efforts to interfere with the U.S. political process is photographed in Washington.
The FBI was given the information in August, months before the November election, CNN reported.
“What has changed since then is that U.S. intelligence agencies have now checked out the former British intelligence operative and his vast network throughout Europe and find him and his sources to be credible enough to include some of the information in the presentations” to Trump, CNN said.
The operative works for a company reportedly hired by both Republican and Democrats to investigate Trump.
FBI Director James Comey, who was testifying at a Senate hearing regarding Russian election hacking Tuesday, refused to say whether his bureau is investigating any possible ties between Russia and the Trump presidential campaign, citing policy not to comment on what the bureau might be doing.
Senator John McCain passed documents to Comey alleging secret contact between the Trump camp and Russian officials, several media outlets reported.
McCain heads the Senate armed services committee, which last week launched an inquiry into cyber-attacks by Russia during the U.S. presidential election campaign.
In late October, Comey angered Democrats when he announced 11 days before the election the FBI was looking at more emails as part of its investigation of Clinton, who then lost the presidential election to Trump.
The rumors about the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia were seemingly supported when former U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid directed a letter to Comey regarding the Clinton investigation. In the letter, he said, “It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information.”
Trump previously has denied Moscow had any influence in the election and he has defended closer ties with that country.
U.S. intelligence agency chiefs last week testified to the Senate that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an operation to meddle with the U.S. election with the aim of hurting Clinton’s campaign and boosting that of Trump who won the decisive electoral college count but lost the popular vote to Clinton.
The latest news reports linking Trump and Moscow came on the eve of the president-elect’s planned news conference and of the Senate confirmation hearing on his nominee to run the State Department, former chairman and chief executive officer of ExxonMobil Rex Tillerson, who has enjoyed close ties with Russia.
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