Trump Aides: No Summit With Putin

Two top aides to US president-elect, Donald Trump, denied a published report on Saturday that he is planning to hold a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin weeks after taking office.

The Sunday Times of London reported that Trump had told British officials that such a summit was being planned, possibly to be staged in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik, Reuters reported.

“The story is a fantasy,” one Trump aide said on condition of anonymity. Another said the report was not true.

Trump, who takes office on January 20, has spoken of seeking warmer relations with Russia. He told the Wall Street Journal on Friday that he would “at least for a period of time” maintain sanctions against Russia put in place by President Barack Obama for cyber hacking.

But Trump suggested to the newspaper that he might lift the sanctions if Russia proved helpful in the fight against the self-styled Islamic State terrorist group and on other US objectives.

Moscow’s “Compromising Material” on Trump

Trump has said intelligence insiders have confirmed to him that the much-hyped dossier, alleging that Moscow has compromising evidence on him, was a fake.

“Intelligence insiders now claim the Trump dossier is “A COMPLETE FRAUD!” Trump wrote on his Twitter page.

On Tuesday, CNN and BuzzFeed reported on a secret dossier, compiled by an unidentified former UK intelligence officer, which, the outlets claimed, contained proof that Trump was groomed and supported by Russian intelligence for at least five years and that he was a target of potential blackmail by the Kremlin.

On Thursday, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released a rare statement, saying that he met with Trump to express his “profound dismay” over the dossier.

“This document is not a US intelligence community (IC) product and … I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC,” Clapper said.

Moscow reacted to the unverified report on Friday by saying that what was published by BuzzFeed and CNN “didn’t merit to be called a report”.

“We have finished the discussion of this fabrication,” Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

“This is far from being the first such falsehood published, and it is, moreover, really quite base. One simply shouldn’t pay any attention to it, as it is now appealing to the emotional frenzy that is dominating in America at the moment.”