WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump dismissed many unidentified sources as phony and said leaks from the White House were “fake news” on Sunday, following reports his son-in-law Jared Kushner tried to set up a secret channel of communications with Moscow before Trump took office.
Trump returned to the White House after a nine-day trip to the Middle East and Europe that ended on Saturday to face more questions about alleged communications between Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington.
“It is my opinion that many of the leaks coming out of the White House are fabricated lies made up by the #FakeNews media,” Trump wrote in a series of Twitter posts on Sunday.
Shortly after the tweets, Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary, John Kelly, made the rounds of Sunday television news shows to praise any so-called back channel communications, especially with Russia, as “a good thing.”
The White House faces mounting questions about potential ties between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign, which are also the subject of criminal and congressional investigations.
Trump officials were preparing to establish a “war room” to address an issue that has begun to dominate his young presidency.
Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, had contacts with Moscow in December about opening a secret back channel of communications, according to news reports published while Trump was away on his trip.
The 36-year-old Kushner, a real estate developer with no previous government experience, had at least three previously undisclosed contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, seven current and former US officials said.
“Whenever you see the words ‘sources say’ in the fake news media, and they don’t mention names,” Trump wrote, “it is very possible that those sources don’t exist but are made up by fake news writers. #FakeNews is the enemy!”
Contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials during the campaign coincided with what US intelligence agencies concluded was a Kremlin effort through computer hacking, fake news and propaganda.
White House officials defended the concept of secret communications channels without commenting specifically on the Kushner case. National security adviser H R McMaster told reporters on Saturday that so-called back-channeling was not unusual.
Homeland Security Secretary Kelly carried the same message in a series of television appearances on Sunday.
“It’s both normal, in my opinion, and acceptable,” he said on ABC’s “This Week” programme. “Any way that you can communicate with people, particularly organisations that are maybe not particularly friendly to us, is a good thing.”
— Reuters
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