Trump stresses Russian Federation never tried to use leverage over him

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told President-elect Donald Trump that he does not believe leaks of a document detailing unsubstantiated claims of Trump’s connections to Russian Federation originated from the intelligence community in a phone call Wednesday evening.

A summary of the allegations was included as an add-on to a classified assessment of Russia’s suspected election- interference efforts.

Last week, U.S. intelligence published a report stating that the Russian government conducted a covert campaign aimed at swinging the presidential election in Trump’s favor, including hacking the emails of the Democratic National Committee. The FBI will now delve into the accuracy and credibility of the allegations from the memos, which contain information coming from Russian sources, but CNN notes “many essential details” in the memos have not yet been confirmed.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made the assertion at a January 10 hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The reporter asked, “Can you stand here today, once and for all, and say that no one connected to you or your campaign had any contact with Russian Federation leading up to or during the presidential campaign?”

Trump, of course, has denied the allegations.

And the documents, remember, are unsourced. But BuzzFeed News published a document supposedly created by a former British intelligence official.

“It was gotten by opponents of ours”, Trump declared in his first news conference since late July.

Alexander Lebedev, a Russian multimillionaire businessman who served as a KGB officer posted to London in the waning years of the Cold War, also dismissed the newly released Trump file as a poorly executed fake.

The sense of a rapprochement between Trump and the nation’s media was shattered, however, when Trump deliberately side-lined CNN reporter Jim Acosta.

CNN’s Jim Acosta then exploded that Trump was “attacking” his news organization.

Trump replied that he would not, adding, “Your organization is bad”.

But the real argument broke out a few minutes later, when CNN’s Jim Acosta attempted to ask the president-elect a question.

“First of all, these meetings as you know are confidential, classified, so I’m not allowed to talk about what went on in a meeting, but we have many witnesses in that meeting, many of them with us”.

When asked if he meant to take any action against BuzzFeed over their report, he said, “I’ll take it under advisement”.

It’s all fake news, it’s phony stuff, it didn’t happen: Trump.