MOSCOW _ Russian President Vladimir Putin said he doesn't believe that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump met with prostitutes in Russia, calling the accusations part of a campaign to undermine the election result.
Unsubstantiated allegations made against Trump are "obvious fabrications," Putin told reporters in the Kremlin on Tuesday. "People who order fakes of the type now circulating against the U.S. president-elect, who concoct them and use them in a political battle, are worse than prostitutes because they don't have any moral boundaries at all," he said.
Putin said that Trump wasn't a politician when he visited Moscow in the past and Russian officials weren't aware that he held any political ambitions. It's "complete nonsense" to believe that Russian security services "chase after every American billionaire," he said.
The Kremlin has denied that it holds any compromising material on Trump after U.S. intelligence officials informed the president-elect about unsubstantiated reports that Russia had compiled potentially damaging personal information on him.
Trump in a news conference on Jan. 11 lashed out at some media organizations for publishing the unverified material about alleged Russian intelligence gathering on him and Democrat Hillary Clinton. The Russian aim was to leverage the information to shift U.S. policy toward Russia, including by potentially blackmailing Trump, according to memos shown to the president-elect and President Barack Obama by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Trump said it was "disgraceful" that intelligence agencies had allowed "fake" information out, comparing this to the actions of Nazi Germany.
The U.S. tycoon-turned-politician was last in Moscow in 2013 for the staging of the Miss Universe contest that he owned. He hoped unsuccessfully to meet Putin, tweeting in June that year about the possibility the Russian leader would attend the beauty pageant.
Trump is "a grown man, and secondly he's someone who has been involved with beauty contests for many years and has met the most beautiful women in the world," Putin said. "I find it hard to believe that he rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world."
