there were some news organizations with all that was just said that were so professional, so incredibly professional, that i ve just gone up a notch as to what i think of you. okay? nbc s ken dilanian joins us now with the latest on what we know about those reports. i get from trump, it s not anger, it s righteous indignation playing that card pretty well, he s accusing cnn who introduced the notion of this story without giving any of its contents. it was not delivered to him in person as you and i talked about but delivered to his office in a classified manner, appropriate manner. but they were somehow in basketball terms using an alley-oop play, somehow cnn was setting up buzzfeed to do the dirty work. that seems to be what s driving donald trump. or is he simply trying to smear cnn be the behavior of what is right? accusing cnn or alley-oop play,
it was a louszsy leak, they didn t get the whole story out. they made it look like this was intelligence when it was, in fact, described by the sbenls x intelligence experts as disinformation which unfortunately got out in the public uncorrectly labeled. anyway, that s what it was. kristen welker, great reporting. president-elect donald trump refuted information reported on media outlets that suggested russia had compromising information about him. let s watch him. when i lead our country, i m a very high-profile person, wouldn you say? i am extremely careful, i m surrounded by bodyguards, i m surrounded by people and i always tell them anywhere, but i always tell them, if i m leaving this country, be very careful because in your hotel rooms, and no matter where you go, you re going to probably have cameras. you better be careful or you ll be watching yourself on nightly television. does anyone really believe that story? i m also very much of a
incomplete leak. incomplete leak. it s a shame because there are legitimate questions about trump s connections to russia, alleged ker ed connections, he there aren t any, that members of congress have been investigating. could this be obscured because of this? journalists go by what they know and what they can discover and usually with two sources that s credible. is there any reason to believe that this packet of stuff, this so-called dossier, distributed around for obvious political purposes is true? at this point, there s to reason to believe that and we re told, actually, by intelligence sources that most of it s been debunked. when who do you think put it out? do we know who was pushing this story? pushing this 35-page memo around that got to buzzfeed? yeah. we confirmed that a former mi-6 british intelligence officer who worked for a private firm was involved and was hired to do this and was talking to russian sources and repeating stories that he heard from russian
andrew and hugh and we re joined by rick stagle. mr. secretary, thank you for joining us. once said to edit is to choose. it seems to me when you are given a pile of stuff that is salacious and could be career destroying or at least anybody, including a r president-elect, you decide whether it s true or not. you don t act in reckless disregard. yes. i wouldn t reckless disregard. i would not have published it. it wasn t a news story. i d like to know why that was included in the intelligence briefing. it was included as a an addendum described in the papers as disinformation. which is another reason not
reputation destroying for anybody, including a president-elect, you decide whether it s true or not. you don t act in reckless disregard. yes. i wouldn t reckless disregard. i would not have published it. it wasn t a news story. i d like to know why that was included in the intelligence briefing. it was included as a an addendum described in the papers as disinformation. which is another reason not to publish it. but what reasons me more is what some of the panelists have said already. the president-elect has talked about narrowing liable laws in this country. it is very hard under the first amendment to liable a public figure. it is almost impossible to liable a president. the reason that speech is protected is because we have to speak truth to power. is this truth? this is not necessarily, but this is what he might do to the press during his presidency, which is worrying.