The country’s senior intelligence officials last week provided Donald Trump and President Barack Obama with a document containing allegations that Russian operatives have “compromising personal and financial information” about the President-elect, CNN reported Tuesday.
The report cited multiple anonymous U.S. officials with “direct knowledge” of the briefings given to Trump and Obama about the intelligence community’s report on Russian interference in the U.S. election, which concluded the intent of those Russian actors was to help Trump win the White House.
The new allegations were contained in a “two-page” annex that was not included in the full intelligence community report released to the public in declassified form last week. By CNN’s description, the document was primarily a synopsis of memos “compiled by a former British intelligence officer whose past work U.S. intelligence officials consider credible.”
CNN reported that the addendum also contained allegations that there was a “continuing exchange of information during the campaign from Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.”
The FBI was working to verify the credibility and accuracy of that information, according to CNN.
CNN reporters said they reviewed a 35-page compilation of the memos that served as the source material for the two-page synopsis that intelligence officials presented to Trump and Obama, but would could not verify the allegations contained in those memos.
BuzzFeed News later Tuesday published a 35-page document that the news site claimed was that same dossier. It contained explosive but unverified and unsubstantiated information about the President-elect, and contained some errors, according to the news site.
CNN said it was able to confirm with its sources that the addendum was among the documents presented to the current and future presidents at their briefings last week, but was not able to confirm that its contents were discussed aloud.
Last week’s confidential briefings were presented by the nation’s four most senior intelligence officials: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan and NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers.
The Trump transition team told CNN it was working on a statement responding to its report.
