WASHINGTON: US President-elect Donald Trump said on Thursday that US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called him to denounce the "false and fictitious" report about a dossier that makes salacious, unverified claims about him in Russia.
Clapper, in a statement on Wednesday, said he had spoken with Trump that evening and expressed "dismay" over media leaks about the report, while saying he did not believe the leaks came from intelligence agencies. In the statement, Clapper did not say the document was false.
He said he emphasized to Trump that it was not produced by the US intelligence community and that intelligence officials had not judged whether the information was reliable.
"James Clapper called me yesterday to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated. Made up, phony facts. Too bad!" Trump wrote on Twitter. Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, blamed US intelligence agencies for the leaks during a news conference on Wednesday, before he spoke to Clapper.
"I think it was disgraceful, disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake out. ... that's something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do," Trump told reporters.
In an interview on NBC's "Today" program on Thursday, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway declined to say whether Trump agreed with Clapper that the leak did not originate from intelligence agencies.
"The president-elect was very happy to receive the call from Mr. Clapper, very happy that Mr. Clapper agrees with him ... that there should be no leaks," Conway said.
Two US officials said the allegations about Trump, 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. CNN reported on Tuesday about the existence of the memo.
BuzzFeed published a fuller 35-page document produced by Christopher Steele, a former British foreign intelligence official, that outlined the allegations of compromising behavior by Trump and alleged links between him and people in Russia.
The claims were included in reports about Trump known as opposition research reports that were made available to Democrats and US officials last year.
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