Trump angry over leaks

President Donald Trump yesterday blamed the media and “illegally leaked” intelligence information for bringing down his national security adviser Michael Flynn, one day after the White House said Trump had asked Flynn to resign because he misled Vice-President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russia.

Flynn’s ouster has sparked a new swirl of controversy over Trump’s potential ties to Moscow. Flynn resigned Tuesday — at the behest of Trump, the White House later said — after reports that he had discussed sanctions with Russia’s ambassador to the US before the inauguration, despite previously denying those conversations to Pence and other top officials.

But in Trump’s first public comments on Flynn, he appeared to side with his former aide, saying it was “really a sad thing that he was treated so badly”.

The questions about Russia only deepened on Wednesday when the New York Times reported that US agencies had intercepted phone calls last year between Russian intelligence officials and members of Trump’s 2016 campaign team.

Trump didn’t directly address the veracity of the report during a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but lashed out at what he called the “criminal act” of leaking information. Earlier yesterday, Trump tweeted that “classified information is illegally given out by ‘intelligence’ like candy. Very un-American!”

The President ignored shouted questions about whether his advisers were in touch with Russian officials. His spokesman, Sean Spicer, said he wasn’t aware of any such contacts and panned the Times report for relying on “unnamed sources”. — AP