US president-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday blasted US intelligence agencies, blaming them for leaking unsubstantiated reports on his relationship with Russia and demanding: “Are we living in Nazi Germany?”
A US official said on Tuesday that intelligence officials had informed Trump about an unsubstantiated report that Russia had compromising personal and financial information about him. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not allowed to publicly discuss the matter. Trump and President Barack Obama were briefed on the intelligence community’s findings last week, the official said.
Trump angrily denounced the reports, citing Russia’s denials and suggesting anew that he’s being persecuted for defeating other Republican presidential hopefuls and Democrat Hillary Clinton in the election.
“I win an election easily, a great ‘movement’ is verified, and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS. A sorry state!” he tweeted on Wednesday. “Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to ‘leak’ into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?”
In excerpts of an interview with Lester Holt of NBC Nightly News scheduled to air on Friday, Obama said he wouldn’t comment on classified information. The president said he ordered a report by US intelligence agencies on Russian hacking during the 2016 campaign to help prevent it from happening again.
“My expectation and my hope is that this work will continue after I leave,” Obama said in the interview. “That congress in possession of both the classified and unclassified reports, that the president elect and his administration – in possession of both the classified and unclassified reports – will take it seriously and now get to work reinforcing those mechanisms that we can use to protect our democracy.”
Democrats began seizing on the memos on Tuesday.
“The intelligence dossier presents profoundly disturbing allegations; ones that should shake every American to the core,” Neera Tanden, a Clinton ally who is the president of the Centre for American Progress, a Democratic-aligned research group, said in a statement.
“They must be fully investigated. The charges levied in this dossier of, among other things, conspiring with a foreign power are extremely serious and call into question whether Trump can be trusted to defend America.”