Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Trump: ‘Sick people’ after me
He slams unverified reports of Russian blackmail material
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump amplified his already heated war with the intelligence community Wednesday, accusing agents of disseminating a salacious and unsubstantiated report about him while comparing the leak to Nazi tactics.
The showdown threatens to further undermine trust between the next commander in chief and America’s spies amid heightened threats to national security from terrorist groups and adversaries around the world with powerful new cyberweapons.
Trump, for the first time, acknowledged intelligence findings that Russia hacked Democratic Party files in an effort to interfere with the election, but he denied that Moscow tried to help him win, while praising President Vladimir Putin and even suggesting that the hack ultimately helped American voters.
“Hacking’s bad and it shouldn’t be done,” he told reporters. “But look at the things that were hacked, look at what was learned from that hacking.”
The claim was one of several bizarre moments at a wide-ranging news conference, Trump’s first since July, that also touched on his business conflicts, his biggest campaign promises and another of his main foils, the media. Trump briefly argued with a CNN correspondent, refusing to take his question.
Trump was asked to rule out the possibility of contacts between his associates and Russian intelligence agents during the campaign and would not do so.
But he lashed out against media organizations that published unverified allegations Tuesday from a report that claimed that Russians had gathered blackmail material against him and that people in his orbit had met with Russian agents during the campaign.
The unsubstantiated information was contained in a 35-page file released Tuesday by BuzzFeed, which said it was publishing the material in the interest of “transparency.”
No news organization has been able to verify any of the material in the report, which CNN reported was prepared by an outside source. Media reports conflict about whether it was disclosed to Trump and President Obama in intelligence briefings last week.
Trump said it was “sick people” who “put that crap together,” including unproven assertions that he encountered prostitutes at a Russian hotel.
“I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way,” he said. “Believe me.”
“It was disgraceful — disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake out,” Trump said. “That’s something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do.”
Intelligence officials and their allies have stewed over Trump’s broadsides and were angered by his latest declarations of distrust.
“Kill the messenger and divert attention: That is the only trick Donald Trump has, and he does it viciously,” said Glenn Carle, a former senior CIA officer who spent more than two decades as a spy. “… The relationship is essentially damaged beyond the possibility of repair before it has even begun.”
Trump continued to dismiss criticism of Russia, much of it waged by members of his own party, over the hacking of Democrats. He noted that China also has breached U.S. government systems and insisted it is not getting the attention it deserves, one of several instances when he was asked about Russia and invoked China instead in his answer.
He insisted that Russians would have released damaging information about him during the campaign if they had it, ignoring the possibility that Putin could hold onto it as leverage and contradicting intelligence officials’ conclusions that the Kremlin was specifically trying to aid Trump.
“If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what, folks? That’s called an asset, not a liability,” Trump said.
Trump spoke positively of improving relations with Russia during his presidency, praising Putin and saying Moscow “can help us fight (Islamic State), which, by the way, is, No. 1, tricky.”
Some of those views not only put him at odds with some U.S. intelligence officials but also many Republican members of Congress who call Putin an autocrat who violates human rights and unlawfully invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea.
CIA leaders in the seventh-floor suites of the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., are bracing for a confrontation when Trump’s team enters the White House. Trump said he has ordered his national security team to launch a 90-day review of the nation’s cyber defenses as soon as he takes office. And he roiled intelligence officials in December when his transition team issued a statement knocking down the CIA’s assessment that Putin had ordered the hacks in a deliberate effort to damage Clinton and bolster Trump’s election prospects.
During the news conference, Trump said he recently wanted to test whether U.S. intelligence officials were telling reporters about their briefings with him, so he claimed to have met with intelligence officials without anyone in his tightly knit organization knowing.
“Nobody knew, not even Rhona, my executive assistant for years, she didn’t know — I didn’t tell her,” he said. “The meeting was had, the meeting was over, they left, and immediately the word got out that I had a meeting,” he said.
“It’s pretty sad when intelligence reports get leaked out to the press,” Trump said at another point.
He also issued a veiled threat, pointing out that releasing classified information would be a crime.