WASHINGTON: US spy chiefs have informed Donald Trump that Russian operatives claim to possess deeply compromising personal and financial information about him, US media reported Wednesday on the eve of the president-elect\u2019s first press conference.
\nTrump denounced a “political witch hunt” after CNN reported that intelligence officials briefing him last week on allegations of Russian meddling in the US election had also given him a synopsis of the explosive and unverified claims.
\nIntelligence chiefs last week presented America\u2019s incoming 45th president, as well as current President Barack Obama, with a two-page synopsis on the potential embarrassment, according to CNN and The New York Times, who cited multiple unnamed US officials with direct knowledge of the meeting.
\nObama delivered his farewell address Wednesday evening as the bombshell report was reverberating in political and diplomatic circles with just 10 days to go until Trump\u2019s inauguration.
\nThe outgoing US leader had little to add publicly to the bombshell revelations.
\n“You know I hadn\u2019t seen the reports, we were on the plane together, and I hadn\u2019t read the news since then and as a matter of principle and national security I don\u2019t comment on classified information,” the president said in an interview with NBC News late Wednesday.
\nHe added however that he hopes Congress and the Trump administration will continue to work toward finding answers about who is responsible for hacking scandals that have roiled American politics in recent months.
\nCNN gave no details of the allegations but US media outlet Buzzfeed published, without corroborating its contents, a 35-page dossier of memos on which the synopsis is based, which had been circulating in Washington for months.
\nThe memos describe sex videos involving prostitutes filmed during a 2013 visit by Trump to a luxury Moscow hotel, supposedly as a potential means for blackmail.
\nThey also suggest Russian officials proposed lucrative deals in order to win influence over the Republican real estate magnate.
\nThe dossier was originally compiled by a former British MI-6 intelligence operative hired by other US presidential contenders to do political “opposition research” on Trump in the middle of last year, according to CNN.
\nTrump 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.
\nThe classified two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a regular flow of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and Russian government intermediaries.
\n“Nothing\u2019s been confirmed,” Trump senior aide Kellyanne Conway told NBC about the material. “They\u2019re all unnamed, unspoken sources.”
\nThe incendiary allegations come on the eve of Trump\u2019s first press conference since his election — at which he was already set to face intense scrutiny over his relationship with Russia and myriad other controversies.
\nThe 70-year-old billionaire directly assailed Buzzfeed, re-tweeting an article that blasted the online publication for publishing the “unverifiable” dossier.
\nBuzzfeed said it posted the material in the interest of transparency, but its editor in chief Ben Smith acknowledged that “there is serious reason to doubt the allegations.”
\nBut Democrats were left stunned by the developments.
\n“If these allegations are true, allegations of coordination between Trump campaign officials and Russian intelligence officials, and allegations that the Russians have compromised President-elect Trump\u2019s independence, that would be truly shocking,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons said on CNN.
\nHouse Democrat Jared Polis took it further.
\n“If the reports of Trump being compromised are not true they must be refuted,” Polis posted on Twitter. “If true he should not be president.”
\nThe Federal Bureau of Investigation was provided with the information in August, more than two months before the November 8 election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: US spy chiefs have informed Donald Trump that Russian operatives claim to possess deeply compromising personal and financial information about him, US media reported Wednesday on the eve of the president-elect\u2019s first press conference. Trump denounced a “political witch hunt” after CNN reported that intelligence officials briefing him last week on allegations of Russian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5087,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n