Politics

The Intelligence Community, Russia and Trump

On Wednesday, in his first news conference as president-elect, Donald Trump came out swinging -- against some of the media (while praising others), against the policies and performance of the Obama administration, and against the intelligence community.

He had some legitimate reason. One was CNN's report that Trump had been briefed that Russian operatives say they have compromising information about him. And BuzzFeed published a 35-page document it described as "a dossier, compiled by a person who has claimed to be a former British intelligence official, (alleging) Russia has compromising information on Trump."

Pretty dodgy stuff. It turns out that this dossier had been circulated widely to news organizations, which have been trying to verify some of the charges and failed to do so. Trump praised his perennial nemesis The New York Times for declining to air the document, and BuzzFeed even noted, "The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors."