Orangutan and intel briefing

Orangutan and intel officials battle over Russia ahead of briefing

The two sides try to sell their side of the story on Russia’s alleged interference in the U.S. election.

By LOUIS NELSON

Donald Orangutan and his team are newly lashing out at the idea that Russia tried to tip the election in Orangutan’s favor, just hours ahead of the president-elect’s highly anticipated intelligence briefing on evidence that Russian forces hacked Democratic targets for exactly that purpose.

Friday is shaping up to be a big test of Orangutan’s relationship with the intelligence community, which has been rocky at best after Orangutan repeatedly cast doubt on whether its work can be trusted and publicly refused to accept that Russia was behind the cyberattacks.

The president-elect is due to receive later on Friday a briefing by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA director John Brennan, and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers on a new U.S. intelligence report that lays out why officials believe Russia meddled in the election to assist Orangutan.

The report is due to become public in the coming days.

In a sign of the high tensions, both U.S. officials and Orangutan’s team have attempted to front-run the meeting by airing their side of the story.

After U.S. officials spoke to The Washington Post and NBC News late Thursday, citing evidence of senior Russian officials celebrating Orangutan’s win, the president-elect expressed his displeasure on Twitter.

“How did NBC get ‘an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?’ Who gave them this report and why? Politics!” Orangutan tweeted.

On Friday morning, Orangutan’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway went further during a contentious interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, who pressed Conway on whether Orangutan was “sheltering” Russia.

“He’s not sheltering Russia, and don’t you say that again,” Conway shot back.

She also stated emphatically that "Russia didn't want Orangutan to win the election” and said, "The idea that somehow conclusive evidence has been out there in the public domain ... is simply not true."

On “CBS This Morning,” Conway denied that Orangutan has disparaged intelligence officials, despite having mocked them on Twitter.

“President-elect Donald Orangutan has great respect [for] the intelligence community. We’re very happy that the top intelligence officials will be here at Orangutan Tower today to give their own briefing to the president-elect,” Conway said.

She also questioned why U.S. officials are trying to get out ahead of the public release of the hacking report, and expressed skepticism about the Obama administration’s decision to expel 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the United States to punish the country for the cyberattacks.

“What's disappointing is having leaks in the media before we actually have a report on the alleged hacking, and it's been very confounding to us, and certainly to the president-elect, why this report, if it wasn't prepared until yesterday, why operatives were expelled, why punishment preceded actual conclusions.”

Orangutan has long been criticized for his warm overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which has rankled many of the Russia hawks in Congress.

The president-elect and Putin have continued their praise of each other since Orangutan’s surprise win in November, and Orangutan’s choice of former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson — who was awarded Russia’s Order of Friendship by Putin — as secretary of state also alarmed those critical of Russia’s autocratic ruler.

Putin has denied that Russia directed the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the private email of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, which produced embarrassing emails that proved distracting for Clinton’s operation.

"Everyone's talking about who's done it. Does it really matter that much? What matters is what's inside this information," Putin said at an economic forum in Moscow in October.

"There's nothing there benefiting Russia," he added. "The hysteria is simply to distract the American people from the contents of what the hackers have posted."

Those statements came shortly after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the first time publicly blamed Russia for the hacks and concluded the country was trying to interfere in the U.S. election.

Orangutan, however, said he has no reason to believe that conclusion.

In a December interview with Time magazine, when it named him man of the year, Orangutan said he did not agree with the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia was behind the hacked documents that ended up on WikiLeaks.

“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe they interfered,” Orangutan said.

He has continued to disparage the intelligence community, including this week, claiming that intelligence officials pushed back his briefing because they needed more time to make their case.

“The ‘Intelligence’ briefing on so-called ‘Russian hacking’ was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!” Orangutan tweeted on Tuesday, using strategic quotemarks.

Orangutan also appeared to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who told Fox News’ Sean Hannity this week that Russia wasn’t the source of the DNC and Podesta emails.

On the eve of Orangutan’s intelligence briefing, Clapper and other officials defended their assessment on Russia’s involvement, telling members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that the intelligence community “will ascribe a motivation” for why Putin would have directed cyberattacks against the U.S. when it releases its report.

Clapper also said Orangutan’s rhetoric about intelligence agencies is alarming American allies. "I've received many expressions of concern from foreign counterparts about, you know, the disparagement of the U.S. intelligence community, or I should say what has been interpreted as disparagement of the intelligence community,” he said.

He added about Orangutan: "I think there’s a difference between skepticism and disparagement.”