SLIPPERY SLOPE

Trump: Probe NBC for Secret Info Leaks

Says he’s asked chairs of congressional committees to investigate.

Donald Trump requested on Friday that the House and Senate investigate leaks to the media regarding the Obama administration’s evidence of Russian influence in the U.S. elections.

"I am asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing it," the president-elect tweeted Friday morning.

Trump is scheduled to be briefed on the intelligence community's assessment of Russia's actions later today. But even before had he been briefed, he called the inquiry a "political witch hunt" carried out by opponents who were embarrassed by his campaign victory.

Trump is not the only one who believes the leaks are politically motivated. Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast that the leaks do “make it feel political.”

Corker said his committee was told that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FBI would not make an individual available to brief them but then read about the secret information in the press soon afterward.

"I can't get an intelligence person, but I can read one of your publications this morning, who is leaking out this information," Corker said. "I believe the Russians have done very nefarious things. I want to understand to what extent and what the intent is… But then I read in one of your publications what it says, or what portions of it say, it does make it feel political. This shouldn't be happening."

Trump's remarks come as Wikileaks, the organization which released many of the hacked documents during the election campaign, made a similar point just hours before he did.

"The Obama admin/CIA is illegally funneling TOP SECRET... information to NBC for political reasons before PEOTUS even gets to read it," the group Tweeted.

—Tim Mak

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