NEW YORK, Jan. 11 (UPI) — President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to conduct his first news conference since the election at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Trump Tower.
The news conference comes the day after a 35-page document prepared by an unnamed British intelligence officer that includes unverified allegations about ties between the president-elect and the Russian government was published in full by BuzzFeed.
Other news organizations declined to publish the allegations, saying they could not be verified. Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, called the allegations “totally unsubstantiated.”
CNN was the first to run a story on the 35-page report on Tuesday, saying that intelligence officials had briefed Trump on Friday that the Russian government has “compromising personal and financial information” about him.
In Twitter posts Wednesday, he wrote: “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”
Then he posted, “I win an election easily, a great “movement” is verified, and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS. A sorry state!”
He also wondered how it was released. “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?”
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, called the report “pulp fiction” and said the Kremlin does not have information on Trump.
Trump originally said he planned to address how he will avoid conflicts of interests with his massive business holdings during a Dec. 15 news conference. But three days earlier he pushed the news conference back to sometime in January.
Other possible topics include his plans to repeal and/or replace the Affordable Care Act, the Senate hearings for his Cabinet appointees and his appointment of his son-in-law Jared Kushner as a top White House adviser.
