Putin slams those responsible for leaking dirty dossier about Trump

Fox News:

In a speech that one-upped even some of the president-elect’s colorful Twitter commentary, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday called Donald Trump’s political enemies “worse than prostitutes” for disseminating a dubiously-sourced dossier last week alleging a relationship between Trump and the Kremlin.

Speaking during a news conference, Putin said last week’s leak of the 35-page report -- written by a private investigator as a series of memos and eventually passed on to the intelligence community -- was a last-ditch attempt on the part of President Obama’s outgoing administration to “undermine the legitimacy of the president-elect.”

“Prostitution is an ugly social phenomenon . . . but people who order such fakes, which are now used against the elected president of the United States, fabricate information and use it in the political struggle, they are worse than prostitutes,” Putin said, according to a translation by Sputnik News. “They have no moral limits.”
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“Trump, when he came to Moscow a few years ago, was not a politician,” Putin said. “We did not even know about his political ambitions,” Putin said. “He was just a businessman, one of the richest men in America. Is someone really thinking that our intelligence agencies are chasing every American billionaire, or what? Of course not. It’s just a complete nonsense.”
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Putin cited two goals he believed were behind the leaking of the allegations: (1) to undermine Trump’s “legitimacy” and (2) “to tie the hands and legs of the newly-elected president related to the implementation of his pre-election campaign promises to the American people and the international community.”
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This is an interesting analysis.  It seems pretty clear that he is disavowing any attempt to blackmail Trump.