Stung by reports of an intelligence briefing on unsubstantiated claims of Trump campaign cooperation with Russia going back years and salacious sexual allegations against the President-elect, Donald Trump fired off a series of tweets late Tuesday and Wednesday morning, culminating in "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?"
Trump has challenged the intelligence agencies' general agreement that Russia intervened in the U.S. election in an effort to favor the Republican candidate.
CNN reported Tuesday that Trump and President Obama had been briefed about allegations that Russian operatives had "compromising personal and financial information" about Trump.
BuzzFeed published the entire report and its salacious and unverified details, saying it was letting the public judge for themselves what was in the report that intelligence agencies had reportedly summarized for the President and President-elect.
The story came on the eve of Trump's first press conference, scheduled for Jan. 11 at 11 a.m.
As the story was breaking, Trump took to Twitter with the all caps: "FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!" That was followed by "'BuzzFeed Runs Unverifiable Trump-Russia Claims' #FakeNews," "Russia just said the unverified report paid for by political opponents is 'A COMPLETE AND TOTAL FABRICATION, UTTER NONSENSE.' Very unfair," "Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA - NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING," and "I win an election easily, a great 'movement' is verified, and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS. A sorry state," then the reference to Germany.
