NEW YORK -- President-elect Donald Trump acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that he believes Russian operatives hacked the Democratic Party during the election, but he continued to dispute intelligence reports that Russia acted to help him win.
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"I think it was Russia," Trump said at a news conference in New York when asked who was responsible for the public leaks of Democratic emails during the campaign.
But Trump emphasized that he believes Russia also would have released damaging information about him had it obtained such information. He angrily denounced news reports that U.S. officials had obtained an unsubstantiated dossier of potentially compromising personal information Russia purportedly has gathered about him, citing denials from the Kremlin that it has any such intelligence.
U.S. officials reportedly included a two-page summary of the dossier in classified briefings of Russia's meddling in the election to President Barack Obama and, separately, to Trump last week. Trump and his aides, including Vice President-elect Mike Pence, called the leaks of the information a smear campaign that aimed to damage Trump politically.
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"It's a disgrace that that information would be let out," Trump said. "I saw the information; I read the information outside that meeting. It's all fake news -- phony stuff. It didn't happen."
Trump also addressed questions about his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he has expressed a desire to improve bilateral relations.
"If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what, folks? That's an asset, not a liability," Trump said. "I don't know if I'll get along with Vladimir Putin ... but even if I don't, does anyone in this room think Hillary Clinton would be tougher on Putin than me? Give me a break."
Trump announced that he has tapped David Shulkin, a physician who is serving in the Obama administration as Veterans Affairs undersecretary, to lead the VA.
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Trump also said he would move quickly to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. He said he had been interviewing candidates and seeking input from conservative groups and planned to name someone about two weeks after the inauguration.
He again resisted the idea that he should release his tax returns, saying "the only ones that care about my tax returns are the reporters" and suggesting the public does not care about the issue.
The news conference was Trump's first as president-elect and his first since July. An estimated 250 journalists were crowded into the lobby of Trump Tower, where Trump aides had set up 10 U.S. flags in front of a blue curtain.
CNN singled out
Earlier in the day, Trump had said on Twitter that his "crooked opponents" are trying to undermine his electoral victory. He accused the intelligence community of leaking the information to get in "one last shot at me," saying, "Are we living in Nazi Germany?"
At the news conference, Pence and Sean Spicer, who has been tapped to be White House spokesman in Trump's administration, also denounced news organizations for their reports on the unsubstantiated dossier.
Trump and his aides took particular aim at CNN, which broke the story that intelligence officials had included it in their briefings, and BuzzFeed News, which published a copy of the dossier in full. Trump refused to allow a CNN reporter to ask a question.
"You are fake news," Trump said to the reporter, Jim Acosta, who had shouted out in an attempt to be called upon.
The president-elect called BuzzFeed "a failing pile of garbage."
"It's a disgrace what took place, and I think they ought to apologize to start with," he said.
U.S. officials said that intelligence agencies have not corroborated the allegations contained in the dossier but believed the sources involved in the reporting were credible enough to warrant inclusion of their claims in the highly classified report on Russian interference in the presidential campaign.
Later Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr. spoke with Trump and said he told the president-elect that the intelligence community "has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable."
Clapper said in a statement that he "expressed my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press" and told Trump that they likely came from sources outside the intelligence community.
Earlier Wednesday, a spokesman for Putin called the allegations that Russia has collected compromising information about Trump an "absolute fantasy."
Soon after, Trump tweeted: "Russia just said the unverified report paid for by political opponents is 'A complete and total fabrication, utter nonsense.' Very unfair!"
Speaking Wednesday on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Trump adviser Reince Priebus called the BuzzFeed report "phony baloney garbage." He denied that Trump had engaged in compromising behavior in Russia and that Trump aide Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague to meet with Russian officials. Both allegations were contained in the document published by BuzzFeed.
"There was no craziness in Russia. There was no meeting in Prague," Priebus said. "It is not an intelligence document. Cohen has never been in Prague. And all of this stuff isn't even fit to print in The New York Times."
In an interview Tuesday night with NBC News, Obama said that he had not seen the reports and declined to comment on classified information.
Looking ahead, Trump used his news conference to urge Congress to move quickly to replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and insisted anew that Mexico will pay the cost of a border wall.
He promised that a replacement for the health care overhaul would be offered "essentially simultaneously" with a congressional vote to repeal the measure. He said his team would send a plan to Congress after Rep. Tom Price, his pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is confirmed.
On immigration, Trump insisted he will build a wall -- not a fence -- along the southern U.S. border with Mexico, reiterating that Mexico will "reimburse" the United States for the cost after it is initially funded by taxpayers. Republican leaders in Congress have been working with Pence and other Trump aides to develop legislation to start the process, which is projected to cost billions of dollars.
"Mexico, through some form ... will reimburse us," Trump said. "That will happen. Whether it's a tax or whether it's a payment."
"What's the difference" if the payment is a reimbursement, Trump added. "I want to get the wall started. I don't want to wait a year and a half until I make my deal with Mexico."
After Trump's remarks, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said his country "of course will not pay" for a border wall.
Business plan
Wednesday's news conference was initially billed as a chance for Trump to answer questions about his plans for distancing himself from his sprawling, family-owned real estate and licensing business.
Lawyer Sheri Dillon, an attorney with the firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius, stepped to the lectern midway through the event to announce that the president-elect was relinquishing control of the Trump Organization to his adult sons and an executive, as well as putting his business assets in a trust.
Trump's lawyer said it would be impractical for Trump to sell off his company.
Doing so, Dillon said, would create its own ethical questions about whether he was receiving a fair price. And moving too quickly could create a "fire sale" environment that devalued the company to which he has dedicated his adult life.
"President-elect Trump should not be expected to destroy the company he built," Dillon said.
While new international business deals will be banned, the company will be allowed to start new projects in the U.S.
The steps are to assure Americans that he is "not exploiting the office of the presidency for his personal benefit," she said.
The decision to stop new ventures abroad was one of Trump's few concessions to ethics experts who have warned that the real estate development and licensing company's international footprint could expose him to conflicts of interest. They have warned that foreign governments might try to curry favor with him or influence U.S. policy by cutting deals with his company and speeding approval for his projects.
The Office of Government Ethics, which advises incoming presidents and their administration officials but is not an enforcement agency, on Wednesday urged Trump to go much further to distance himself. Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub said Trump should sell off his businesses and put the proceeds in a blind trust overseen by an independent manager.
"I don't think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be the president of the United States of America," said Shaub, during a blistering 15-minute critique.
Explaining why presidential appointees, nominees and presidents themselves typically sever all business ties, Shaub said:
"Their basic patriotism usually prevails as they agree to set aside their personal interest to serve their country's interests."
Shaub praised some of Trump's Cabinet nominees for making a "clean break" from business entanglements, singling out Rex Tillerson, whose Senate confirmation hearing to become secretary of state was held Wednesday as Trump was speaking in New York.
Wrapping up the news conference, Trump pointed to a work table piled with a towering stack of folders bursting with papers that was set up next to the lectern.
The documents related to his business holdings, Trump said, and they represented some of the assets he would turn over to his sons Donald Jr. and Eric to oversee under the new arrangement in which he will not be involved in management decisions.
"I hope at the end of eight years I'll come back and say, 'Oh, you did a good job,'" Trump said, before falling back on a catchphrase he made famous on his television show, The Apprentice: "Otherwise, if they do a bad job, I'll say, 'You're fired.'"
Information for this article was contributed by David Nakamura, Abby Phillip, Drew Harwell, Jena McGregor and John Wagner of The Washington Post and by Julie Pace, Ken Thomas and Jonathan Lemire, Bernard Condon, Julie Bykowicz, Jon Gambrell, Chad Day and Stephen Braun of The Associated Press.
A Section on 01/12/2017