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Trump calls CIA chief ‘fake news leaker’ after Brennan warns him about ‘talking & tweeting’
CIA
Director John Brennan © Reuters / Reuters
Donald
Trump branded outgoing CIA chief Brennan “the leaker of fake news”
after he told Trump to grasp the “Russia threat” instead of
“talking and tweeting,” stirring up another feud between the
incoming administration and the intelligence community.
Tensions
between US President-elect Donald Trump and the intelligence
community escalated once again this weekend as outgoing CIA Director
John Brennan fiercely attacked Trump’s views on US-Russia
rapprochement.
Trump
slams BuzzFeed as 'failing pile of garbage,' rejects CNN question
over 'fake' report
With
just several days to go until his inauguration, Trump “has
to recognize that his words do have impact,” the
CIA chief said.
“He’s
going to have the opportunity to do something for national security
as opposed to talking and tweeting.
“Spontaneity
is not something that protects national security interests,” Brennan
said in an apparent reference to the widespread perception of Trump
as an inexperienced and impulsive politician.
In
a matter of hours, Trump responded with a two-tweet outburst
questioning whether the CIA director had leaked a recent
unsubstantiated dossier to the media. The dossier claims that Russia
had gathered compromising personal information about Trump.
“Just
look at Syria (red line), Crimea, Ukraine and the build-up of Russian
nukes,” Trump
wrote on Twitter. “Not
good! Was this the leaker of Fake News?”
On
January 11, the day after the dossier was released by BuzzFeed, Trump
also said on Twitter that intelligence agencies “should
never have allowed this fake news to ‘leak’” before
asking, “Are
we living in Nazi Germany?”
Donald J. Trump
.@FoxNews "Outgoing CIA Chief, John Brennan, blasts Pres-Elect Trump on Russia threat. Does not fully understand." Oh really, couldn't do...
The
BuzzFeed publication triggered a week of finger-pointing between
Trump and intelligence leadership. On Fox News, Brennan said Trump’s
reference to Nazi Germany was an insult to US intelligence officers.
Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to "leak" into the public. One last shot at me.Are we living in Nazi Germany?
“What
I do find outrageous is equating an intelligence community with Nazi
Germany,” he
said. “I
do take great umbrage at that, and there is no basis for Mr. Trump to
point fingers at the intelligence community for leaking information
that was already available publicly.”
The
credibility of the file has been questioned by various top-tier
officials. Last Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper said after a meeting with Trump that US spy agencies had “not
made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable.”
Last
week, UK Prime Minister Theresa May commented on
BuzzFeed’s statement that the dossier was compiled by a person who
is understood to be a former UK intelligence agent. Speaking at a
press conference in Downing Street, May said: “It
is absolutely clear that the individual who produced this dossier has
not worked for the UK government for years.”
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