Donald Trump tweets ‘the spotlight has finally been put on the low-life leakers! They will be caught!’ as his war on intelligence agencies hots up
President tells 'fake news media' to apologise for reporting on leaked info
DONALD Trump has lashed out at "low-life leakers" in his own spy agencies briefing against the White House.
The President vowed that spooks tipping off journalists with embarrassing information like his team's alleged links with Russia "will be caught".
And he said newspapers and media organisations "must apologize" for reporting on what he called illegally obtained classified details.
His blast comes after National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was forced by Trump to resign.
Reports emerged showing he discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador before Trump's inauguration.
Despite Trump effectively firing the former General, he yesterday blamed the media saying it was "really a sad thing that he was treated so badly" by the press.
He later wrote on Twitter: "Classified information is illegally given out by 'intelligence' like candy. Very un-American!"
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And in a series of tweets on Thursday, the President wrote: "Leaking, and even illegal classified leaking, has been a big problem in Washington for years.
"Failing @nytimes (and others) must apologize!"
He added: "The spotlight has finally been put on the low-life leakers! They will be caught!"
And he claimed alleged Russian connections are a conspiracy dreamt up by Democrats to undermine him.
He said: "The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly (306), so they made up a story - RUSSIA. Fake news!"
Roger Stone, a former Trump campaign official, told NBC's Today programme that full-blown warfare between Trump loyalists and Republican party figures has opened up in the White House.
He said: "The leaking that is coming out of the White House is a manifestation of the fact" that some of the people Trump hired "are not loyal."
"I think it's healthier to have people in the administration who share the president's vision of where he wants to take the country", he added.
Trump is being besieged by allegations of alleged links with Russia, with the reporting on Wednesday that senior figures in his campaign team were in "regular contact" with Russian agencies.
American agencies thought to be the CIA, NSA and FBI intercepted several communications between "campaign officials", "associates" of Trump and senior Kremlin figures, the explosive report claimed.
Four current and former top US intelligence officials told the paper they were alarmed at the regularity of the contact between the Trump team and Russia.
The calls were intercepted while American agencies were investigating alleged Russian hacking of Democrat servers, later confirmed by the CIA and FBI.
These hacks gifted the Trump team by revealing an apparent Democrat plot to support Hillary Clinton's candidacy over her left-wing rival Bernie Sanders.
But there is no evidence of direct collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to hack their Democrat opponents.
The Trump-Russia intercepts included senior figures in Putin's government, according to the US officials interviewed by the paper.
Among those specifically named were Paul Manafort — Trump's campaign manager who resigned after being linked to Russia through his work as an adviser in Ukraine — as one of the senior aides in contact with Moscow.
He denied the US officials' claims, saying: "This is absurd".
He added: "I have never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers, and I have never been involved with anything to do with the Russian government or the Putin administration or any other issues under investigation today.
“It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian intelligence officer.’”
The Kremlin also denied the allegations. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "It's a newspaper report which is not based on any facts."
But Brian Fallon, Clinton's press secretary during her White House run, said the Times report revealed a "colossal scandal".
He wrote: "Everything we suspected during the campaign is proving true.
"The NYT story directly contradicts Trump and his staff who repeatedly said no contact occurred between his campaign and Russian officials".
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