REUTERS-U.S. President-elect
Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Russia had never tried to sway his actions
and furiously blamed U.S. intelligence agencies for news reports that
Moscow
had compiled compromising information on him.
In a series of
Twitter posts, Trump accused intelligence agencies of taking "one last
shot" at him by leaking the information. "Are we living in Nazi
Germany?" he asked.
Trump slammed as
"fake news" the reports that classified documents presented to him last
week by the heads of four U.S. intelligence agencies included claims that
Russian intelligence operatives have compromising information about him.
"Russia has
never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA - NO
DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!" Trump wrote in one of the Twitter posts.
Two U.S. officials
said Tuesday evening that the allegations on the Russian dossier, which one
called "unsubstantiated," were contained in a two-page memo appended
to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that was presented
last week to Trump and to President Barack Obama.
Trump, due to hold
his first news conference in nearly six months on Wednesday, pointed to the
Kremlin's denials of the reports on the dossier that emerged late on Tuesday,
first reported by CNN.
"Russia just
said the unverified report paid for by political opponents is 'A COMPLETE AND
TOTAL FABRICATION, UTTER NONSENSE.' Very unfair!" he wrote on Twitter.
The Kremlin said on
Wednesday it was "total nonsense" that Russian officials had
assembled a file of compromising information on Trump.
Reince Priebus, who
will be Trump's White House chief of staff, called the Russian dossier report
"phoney baloney garbage." He told NBC's "Today" show he had
raised the matter with Trump. "He said it was 'total garbage and I'm
keeping it clean,'" Priebus said.
Even before the
reports, Russia had been likely to take center stage during Trump's first
formal session with reporters since he won the Nov. 8 presidential election.
The news conference was scheduled for 11 a.m. ET (1600 GMT) at his New York
offices.
The Republican
president-elect has long said he hopes to improve ties with Moscow, but this
effort will come under intense scrutiny after U.S. intelligence agencies
concluded that Russia used cyber attacks and other tactics to try to tilt the
presidential election in his favor over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
At the same time in
Washington, Trump's nominee for secretary of state, former Exxon Mobil chief
executive Rex Tillerson, will likely be grilled at his Senate confirmation
hearing over his long business relationship with Russian officials including
President Vladimir Putin.
There was an
unpredictable element to Trump's news conference, given his repeated criticism of
the U.S. news media and his belief that many news organizations favored Clinton
in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump, a New York
real estate developer, has been under pressure to separate himself from his
global business operations to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest
once he succeeds Obama on Jan. 20.
BUSINESS OPERATIONS
After initially
declaring there was no law that prohibited him from maintaining control of his
business while serving as president, Trump switched gears in December and said
legal documents were being crafted "which take me completely out of
business operations."
Trump has said his
two adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, will manage his businesses and
no new deals will be done during his time in office, but has offered few
details.
He has not said he
would divest from his companies, a step some ethics experts say he should take.
His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, announced plans on Monday to divest much of his
own business holdings in preparation for taking a senior advisory role in the
White House.
While North Korea,
Syria, Iran, China, tax reform and border security could well come up at the
news conference, questions about Russia are likely to dominate the session.
Trump has faced
persistent questions about Russia throughout the past year given his reluctance
to criticize Putin and his desire to improve U.S. relations with Moscow,
including working together to defeat Islamic State militants.
His stance has
rattled traditional U.S. allies such as NATO countries and many U.S. foreign
policy experts who consider Russia a geopolitical adversary.
Trump has left open
how he would respond to the Russian hacking that U.S. intelligence agencies
said was aimed at disrupting the presidential campaign.
U.S. intelligence
chiefs briefed him on Russian involvement in the election last Friday and he
has accepted the fact that it happened.
Apparently referring
to the Russian dossier on Trump, Republican U.S. Senator John McCain said in a
statement on Wednesday that he had received "sensitive information that
has since been made public." He said he could not make a judgment about
its accuracy and had passed it to the FBI director.
REUTERS
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