Donald Trump Blasts Allegations In Dossier Claiming He Has Close Ties To Russia

Here’s What’s Happening

• President-elect Donald Trump said the allegations contained in an unverified dossier — published by BuzzFeed News and alleging Russia has compromising information on the President-elect — “didn’t happen” and are “a disgrace.”
• Trump didn’t answer whether he or anyone on his team had communications with Russian officials during the campaign.
• When asked about specific allegations in the dossier concerning a Moscow hotel room, Trump said that he is always cautious when he travels overseas and added, “I’m also very much of a germophobe.”
• Trump, Mike Pence, and a spokesman strongly criticized BuzzFeed News for publishing the dossier. Trump congratulated other news outlets for not running it, and said it would be a “tremendous blot” on intelligence agencies if they leaked it.
• Here’s what you need to know about the dossier. The author was reportedly revealed on Wednesday.
• The comments came at Trump’s first news conference since July, and was meant to describe how he will handle his many business interests to avoid conflicts of interest as president.
• A lawyer for Trump, Sheri A. Dillon, said he would put his business assets in a trust, but not divest. His company, now run by his sons, will still go after deals in the US — but not abroad — while he is president. “The conflicts of interest laws simply do not apply to the president,” Dillon said. “He will only know of a deal if he reads it in the paper or sees it on TV.”
• Also, the lawyer said, Trump will “donate all profits from foreign government payments made to his hotels to the United States Treasury.”
• The head of the US Office of Government Ethics, however, said Trump’s plan “doesn’t meet the standards” that every president in the past four decades has met.