Putin rejects Trump dossier claim
RUSSIA: Russian President Vladimir Putin has called reports that Donald Trump has been compromised by Russian intelligence ‘‘total nonsense’’ and says the allegations were fabricated to ‘‘undermine the legitimacy’’ of Trump’s presidency.
It was Putin’s first direct denial of the contents of an uncorroborated dossier written by a former British intelligence agent hired to compile opposition research. The dossier claimed that Trump was compromised by Russian intelligence agents during a 2013 visit to Moscow to hold the Miss Universe pageant.
‘‘The people who are ordering this kind of false information, who are now disseminating it against the president-elect of the United States, who fabricate it and use it in a political fight, are worse than prostitutes,’’ Putin said yesterday. ‘‘They have no moral boundaries.’’
In a moment of levity, Putin addressed some of the more salacious rumours in the dossier.
‘‘You know, it’s difficult for me to imagine that he ran to the hotel to meet with our women of lower social responsibility. Even though they’re the best in the world, of course. But I doubt that Trump went after them.’’
Putin’s remarks were just part of a larger indictment of the American establishment and Trump’s political opponents, as Russia awaits a new administration that may give the Kremlin greater influence in international affairs.
In a nationally televised news conference earlier in the day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov railed against the ‘‘messianism’’ and export by the West of ‘‘post-Christian values’’ that embrace ‘‘permissiveness’’, a nod toward the conservative ethos that has found increasing support in the Kremlin.
Once an exporter of democracy, the West was now trying to export values that were anathema to society in Russia, Lavrov complained.
Lavrov said he was looking forward to co-operating with the incoming administration in the war on terrorism and bringing peace to Syria, and he took a shot at the Obama administration for what he called ‘‘double standards’’.
Lavrov also criticised US spy agencies for what he described as numerous efforts to recruit Russian diplomats, and attempts by US diplomats to disguise themselves to conduct reconnaissance in Russian.
Lavrov’s spokeswoman made headlines in Russia on Monday when she said US officials had tried to recruit a Russian diplomat who was arrested while trying to procure medicine for a leading Russian politician.
During the news conference, Putin said Russia did not even know that Trump had political ambitions when he was in Moscow in 2013. ‘‘What do you think, our intelligence services are chasing after every American billionaire? Of course not. It’s total nonsense,’’ Putin said.
Despite criticism, Trump has stood by his calls for a reset in relations with Russia, setting him potentially at odds with cabinet picks who have described Moscow as a global adversary.
Meanwhile, one of about a dozen women who previously accused Trump of making unwanted sexual advances filed a lawsuit against him in New York yesterday, alleging he had made false and defamatory statements about her in rejecting the accusation, causing her emotional and economic harm.
The lawsuit filed by Summer Zervos, a one-time contestant on Trump’s reality TV show The Apprentice, is focused on a stream of denials Trump aimed at her and other women accusers last October, after they came forward to accuse the then-candidate of making unwanted sexual advances to them.
– Washington Post, Reuters