Trump gets brief on sex romp claims
Intel: Moscow has incriminating info
U.S. intelligence agency chiefs gave Donald Trump and President Obama a classified, unsubstantiated, two-page summary of reports that claim Russia holds compromising material about the presidentelect, including alleged Moscow sex romps and efforts to influence him financially, according to several published accounts of last week’s meeting.
The claims were reportedly collected by a former British intelligence operative now providing commercial opposition research services first to GOP rivals of Trump and then to the Hillary Clinton campaign. They have not been corroborated by U.S. intelligence, the news accounts say.
The former MI6 agent, once based in Moscow, has been considered reliable based on his past reports, the news organizations stated.
The memos were first reported yesterday by CNN, and later by The New York Times and The Washington Post, all citing multiple U.S. officials familiar with the classified documents.
The New York Times reported that the memos describe sex videos of Trump with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel in 2013, purportedly shot with the idea of potentially blackmailing him.
The Times said the memos also suggest that Russian officials may have offered lucrative deals to win influence over the real estate magnate.
And they claim that Trump representatives and Russian officials discussed the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. CNN and The Washington Post did not detail the alleged content of the memos.
In an apparent reference to the growing scandal, Trump tweeted last night without elaboration: “FAKE NEWS — A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!”
The memos reportedly claim that the Russian government has been trying to compromise Trump for years during his frequent visits to Moscow on business.
The information reportedly was circulating in political and press circles in Washington, and is so potentially explosive that the intelligence chiefs decided to inform Obama, Trump and top congressional leaders that they are investigating it.
The news organizations indicated they had not been able to substantiate the claims of the compromising material, known by the Russian term “kompromat” in intelligence circles.
In a pre-recorded interview with NBC’s “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway said of the claims, “He has said he is not aware of that.”
The reports raise the alarming possibility that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his intelligence agencies hoped to influence or even blackmail the next occupant of the White House, in addition to attempting to sway the presidential election by releasing embarrassing emails from Podesta and the DNC that showed them colluding to sideline populist Democratic primary contender Bernie Sanders.