WASHINGTON — President Trump lashed out at the nation’s intelligence agencies again on Wednesday, saying
that his former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, was brought down by illegal leaks to the news media, on a day of new disclosures about the Trump camp’s dealings with Russia during and after the presidential campaign.
The Times also disclosed broader contacts between Russian intelligence officials
and people with ties to the Trump campaign and Mr. Trump’s business empire during and after the campaign, and other news organizations followed with similar reports.
Mr. Trump used a similar strategy during the transition, after disclosures
that the intelligence agencies presented him with a dossier containing potentially compromising — but unsubstantiated — information that Russian officials had collected on him during his travels to Russia.
But on Wednesday, the president said that Mr. Flynn had “been treated very, very unfairly by the media,” undercut by “documents and papers
that were illegally — I’d stress that, illegally — leaked.”
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“From intelligence, papers are being leaked, things are being leaked,” Mr. Trump said at
a White House news conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel.
The White House has said that Mr. Trump demanded Mr. Flynn’s resignation on Monday night, after it was revealed
that Mr. Flynn, a retired three-star Army general, had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about his conversations with a Russian diplomat.
The president declined to address that revelation and, as he has at other times in recent days, took questions at his news conference only from conservative news organizations
and ignored more challenging questions shouted to him as he left the podium.