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Newsweek.com<\/p>\n
VIDEO:\u00a0http:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/trump-russian-spies-infamous-golden-shower-memos-541315<\/a><\/p>\n Updated | <\/em>The story began making the rounds at Washington dinner parties late last summer: Donald Trump had been caught in a compromising sexual position by Russian intelligence agents during a business trip to Moscow. According to one version, told by a high-ranking Obama administration diplomat, Russian intelligence services, acting on Trump\u2019s well-known obsession with sex, had arranged an evening for him with a bevy of hookers, with hidden cameras and microphones recording all the action. The jaw-dropping detail that topped the story? Trump had somehow engaged in \u201cgolden showers,\u201d sex acts involving urine.<\/p>\n Now, according to a leaked annex to the combined U.S. intelligence agencies\u2019 report<\/a> on Kremlin intrigues in the American elections, Russian security agents watched Trump engaging in \u201cperverted sexual acts\u201d that were \u201carranged\/monitored by the FSB,\u201d the Kremlin\u2019s leading spy agency. The FSB, it said, \u201cemployed a number of \u00a0prostitutes to perform a golden showers (urination) show in front of him.\u201d Not only that, according to the report\u2019s anonymous Russian sources, Trump deliberately chose for his escapade \u201cthe Ritz Carlton hotel, where he knew President and Mrs. Obama (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia and defiling the bed where they had slept.\u201d<\/p>\n The veracity of the report and its sourcing have not been verified. CNN reported<\/a> only that a two-page summary of the report \u201cwas presented last week to President Barack Obama and President-elect Trump [and] included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.\u201d It cited \u201cmultiple U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the briefings,\u201d and said the FBI was investigating. BuzzFeed published<\/a> what it said was the full\u00a0report<\/a> \u201dcompiled by a person who has claimed to be a former British intelligence official.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s all fake news,” Trump said<\/a> referring to the allegations on Wednesday. “It\u2019s all phony stuff.”<\/p>\n Former Acting CIA Director John McLaughlin also raised a yellow flag about the report, which he said he had not yet read. \u201cThe two things I’d like most to know are 1.) what is the chain of acquisition\u2014it was apparently circuitous. That always holds clues on whether someone has an agenda and what that might be,\u201d he tells\u00a0Newsweek<\/em> in an email. \u201c2.) Who is the author\u2014is it someone with experience and skill at vetting sources or someone less so. Without knowing these things, it’s impossible to judge.\u201d<\/p>\n If the report had merely added a fringe of kink to Trump\u2019s recorded \u201cbragging about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women,\u201d as described<\/a> by The Washington Post<\/em> when it unearthed a videotape last summer, the president-elect and his devoted followers might have been able to brush it off as just another eccentricity by their idol. Indeed, an earlier abbreviated version<\/a> of the newly reported allegations by Mother Jones <\/em>magazine Washington Bureau Chief David Corn in October, citing \u201ca former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence,\u201d roused only passing, titillating interest.<\/p>\n But repackaged and expanded on by U.S. intelligence, the new report adds heft to what some fear explains Trump\u2019s otherwise inexplicable fondness for the Kremlin, perhaps America\u2019s leading antagonist: According to the report\u2019s anonymous sources, \u201cTrump’s unorthodox behavior in Russia over the years provided the authorities with enough embarrassing material on the now-Republican presidential candidate to be able to blackmail him if they so wished.\u201d<\/p>\n Blackmail would elevate the story from tawdry sex to national security. And the report underscored what U.S. intelligence had been saying<\/a> for weeks, with far less effect: Trump \u201cand his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his democratic and other political rivals.\u201d<\/p>\n CNN’s\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0exploded like a star shell Tuesday night, throwing a blinding light on the Trump camp\u2019s Russian connections like no other previous revelation. The cable channel cautioned that \u201cthe allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work U.S. intelligence officials consider credible\u201d but had not been independently confirmed. “The memos originated as opposition research, first commissioned by anti-Trump Republicans, and later by Democrats,” CNN reported. But the channel\u00a0added that the FBI \u201cis investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources.\u201d<\/p>\n