US president-elect Donald Trump and current US president Barack Obama were informed last week by top US intelligence officials that Russians claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Trump, according to Jan. 10 reports in CNN, Buzzfeed, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
US president-elect Donald Trump and current US president Barack Obama were informed last week by top US intelligence officials that Russians claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Trump, according to Jan. 10 reports in CNN, Buzzfeed, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
The information has not been independently confirmed by US intelligence officials. Some reports suggested US intelligence consider the source of the information, a former British intelligence official, to be credible enough to distribute it to Obama and Trump, as well as the heads of Congressional intelligence committees, who reportedly received a two-page dossier last week. Other reports suggested the briefing was meant simply to prepare the incoming and outgoing administrations in case the unsubstantiated information were to be made public.
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Indeed, a 35-page report the dossier was based on, which has been circulating through intelligence and media circles for weeks, was published by Buzzfeed on Tuesday night (Jan. 10) with the disclaimer that it includes “unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives, and graphic claims of sexual acts documented by the Russians.”
The compromising information allegedly includes details of “perverted” acts conducted in a Ritz-Carlton in Moscow, which may have been recorded, Buzzfeed reported.
A British former MI6 intelligence agent who worked in Russia, “whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible,” is how CNN identified the source. He or she is a “former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence,” Mother Jones said in an October report on the alleged Russian intelligence, which contained few details.
The former British spy, who runs a private intelligence agency, was hired first by US Republicans and then by Hillary Clinton supporters to research Trump’s Russia ties, CNN reports.
While the Trump transition team declined to comment on the CNN report, Trump tweeted after CNN’s story came out, calling it “fake news.”
Obama made no mention of the report in his farewell address, delivered from Chicago within hours of Buzzfeed publishing the dossier. He reiterated a promise for a smooth transition to Trump’s administration and extolled the virtues of a democracy that values peaceful transfers of power.
