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Trump blasts US intelligence for 'fake' Russia dossier

By Web Desk
January 12, 2017

WASHINGTON: US President-elect Donald Trump has angrily denied reports that Russia had obtained compromising personal and financial about him, calling it a "tremendous blot" on the record of the intelligence community if it had released such material.

In his first media conference since winning the November 8 election, Trump called the unconfirmed allegations "phony" and attacked news organisations that published the reports.

"It's all fake news," Trump said on Wednesday. "It didn't happen," he added.

"I think it was disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so fake and so false out ... that's something that Nazi Germany would have done, and did do."

The dossier that emerged late on Tuesday was first reported by CNN. BuzzFeed published the full document.

Two US officials said the allegations, which one called "unsubstantiated", were contained in a two-page memo appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that was presented last week to Trump and to President Barack Obama.

"Trump responded as you would expect him to do," Al Jazeera's James Bay, reporting from New York, said.

"He went on the attack against the intelligence community and against the news media, in particular two parts of the news media that were responsible for publishing more detailed stories on this."