President Donald Trump slammed intelligence officials and the media Wednesday over what he called “very, very unfair” treatment of his ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn and for “illegally leaked” information about reported contacts between his campaign advisers and Russian officials.
Flynn was forced to resign this week after misleading Vice President Mike Pence and other Trump aides about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. before the inauguration.
In his first public comments on Flynn’s firing, Trump said it was “really a sad thing that he was treated so badly.” He spoke during a White House news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump didn’t directly address the veracity of the report, but lashed out at what he called the “criminal act” of leaking information.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange backed up Trump’s attacks on the intelligence community with a tweet stating: “Amazing battle for dominance is playing out between the elected US govt & the intelligence community who consider themselves to be the ‘permanent government.” Wikileaks have also suggested the Russians didn’t interfere with the 2016 election, stating that the leaked DNC emails they received came from an internal leak and not from Russian hackers.
So far there is no public evidence to back up either side’s claims.
(NTD staff, Reuters contributed to this report)
