{"id":283916,"date":"2017-01-11T14:58:01","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T14:58:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=283916"},"modified":"2017-01-11T14:58:01","modified_gmt":"2017-01-11T14:58:01","slug":"furious-trump-denies-russian-leverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=283916","title":{"rendered":"Furious Trump denies Russian &#8216;leverage&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>US President-elect Donald Trump has reacted furiously to allegations that Russia has compromising material on him, saying Moscow has &#8220;never tried to use leverage on me&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Trump condemned US intelligence agencies for allowing &#8220;fake news&#8221; to &#8220;leak&#8221; into the public, asking: &#8220;Are we living in Nazi Germany?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The claims say his election campaign communicated with Moscow and also contain suggestions of prostitute use.<\/p>\n<p>Russia also angrily denied the claims.<\/p>\n<p>Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s spokesman, said the allegations were &#8220;pulp fiction&#8221; and a &#8220;clear attempt to damage relations&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ten questions to ask Trump at his press conference<\/strong><br \/>\nIn a series of tweets, Mr Trump said: &#8220;Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA &#8211; NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!<br \/>\n&#8220;I win an election easily, a great &#8220;movement&#8221; is verified, and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS. A sorry state!<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to &#8220;leak&#8221; into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?&#8221;<br \/>\nMr Trump is due to hold his first news conference as president-elect later on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, US intelligence agencies reportedly presented the new claims &#8211; in the form of a two-page synopsis &#8211; to the president-elect, to President Barack Obama and to congressional leaders, CNN said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>The 35-page dossier of memos was published in full by Buzzfeed.<\/p>\n<p>Also last week, US intelligence agencies released another unclassified report saying Russia ran a hacking campaign to influence the US presidential elections.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lawyer&#8217;s denial<\/strong><br \/>\nThe latest allegations say Russia has damaging information about the president-elect&#8217;s business interests, and salacious video evidence of his private life.<\/p>\n<p>Among the claims included in the 35-page dossier are that Trump aides were involved with the alleged Russian hack of the Democratic Party of his rival Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n<p>Michael Cohen, a lawyer to Mr Trump named in the memos, has denied a specific claim that he went to Prague in August or September 2016 to meet Kremlin representatives to talk about the hacking.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve never been to Prague in my life. #fakenews,&#8221; he tweeted.<\/p>\n<p>Reince Priebus, Mr Trump&#8217;s chief of staff, called the dossier report &#8220;phoney baloney garbage&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>US media suggest the videos were prepared as &#8220;kompromat&#8221; &#8211; compromising material collected about a politician or public figure in order to create a threat of negative publicity, if needed.<\/p>\n<p>The allegation that Mr Trump was vulnerable to blackmail and was being manipulated financially or otherwise is astonishing, says the BBC&#8217;s Paul Wood in Washington.<\/p>\n<p>In a campaign that was unprecedented, this goes to new extremes, our correspondent adds.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How this came to light<\/strong><br \/>\nThe allegations began circulating in political and media circles in recent months.<\/p>\n<p>The BBC understands they are based on memos provided by a former British intelligence officer for an independent organisation opposed to Mr Trump in Washington DC. Sources say the CIA regards them as &#8220;credible&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The original intention was to derail Mr Trump&#8217;s candidacy, reports say.<\/p>\n<p>The BBC first saw the documents in October but has been unable to verify the claims included. Several material inaccuracies have been highlighted in them.<\/p>\n<p>However past work by the British operative was considered by US intelligence to be reliable, US media say.<\/p>\n<p>The existence of the documents was first reported by Mother Jones in October.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What we know already about Russia hacking claims<\/strong><br \/>\nUS spy agencies say Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic Party emails during the presidential campaign.<\/p>\n<p>They say the order came from the Kremlin to sway the election for Mr Trump and away from Mrs Clinton.<br \/>\nBut so far Mr Trump has failed to explicitly agree with the conclusions of the intelligence services.<\/p>\n<p>And he has condemned those who oppose good relations with Russia as &#8220;fools&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Russia has denied any involvement in the hacks and accused the US of conducting a witch-hunt.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US President-elect Donald Trump has reacted furiously to allegations that Russia has compromising material on him, saying Moscow has &#8220;never tried to use leverage on me&#8221;. Mr Trump condemned US intelligence agencies for allowing &#8220;fake news&#8221; to &#8220;leak&#8221; into the public, asking: &#8220;Are we living in Nazi Germany?&#8221; The claims say his election campaign communicated [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[109],"class_list":["post-283916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=283916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=283916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=283916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=283916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}