A dossier containing allegations about President-elect Donald Trump's activities in Russia is "totally phony," New York Rep. Pete King said Tuesday, but at the same time, he doesn't want to take Russian President Vladimir Putin's word for it.
"I do think Putin is an enemy of the United States, and I understand why Donald Trump tries to reach out," said King, a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, during an interview on Fox News' "America's Newsroom" after Putin complained the document was fake and the Obama administration is trying to delegitimize Trump's election.
The dossier, he continued, was floating about for at least four or five months, but the media would not release it without rationale to do it, and the document was made public on BuzzFeed after a two-page document outlining it was given to Trump during his intelligence briefing.
"Nobody knew that except the Trump people and the intelligence community," King said. "Once that was leaked, the two-page document was turned over, that gave the media or certain elements of the media the excuse to release it.
As King is sure the Trump camp did not release the document, "it had to be somebody in the intelligence community," said King.
The same kind of thing happened in December, when someone in the intelligence community leaked a finding that Putin favored Trump in the election, King said.
"We had been told that wasn't the case," King said. "Suddenly there was no meeting with Congress, no formal set of conclusions. Instead you had The Washington Post getting a leak from somebody in the intelligence community."
Meanwhile, King said, "99.9 percent of the intelligence community does an outstanding job" and is patriotic, and by appointing Kansas Sen. Mike Pompeo as CIA director, Trump showed confidence in the agency, as is appointing San. Dan Coates as Director of National Intelligence.
Outgoing CIA Director John Brennan, though, is acting too politically, King said, and "is the one who is hurting the image of the CIA by attacking the president-elect. That's not his job."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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