President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday morning in New York is holding his first full news conference since winning the 2016 presidential election.
In his opening remarks, Trump said he’ll be the “greatest jobs producer that god ever created. I’m very proud of what we’ve done, and we haven’t even gotten there yet,” referring to his upcoming inauguration on Jan. 20.
“We have a movement. It’s a movement like the world has never seen before. It was a beautiful scene on Nov. 8 as those states started to pour in,” Trump said of election day. “Those states are going to have a lot of jobs and a lot of security.”
Shortly before Trump took the stage, his incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer, told reporters that news reports that surfaced Tuesday night about Russia potentially spying on the president-elect were “outrageous and highly irresponsible . shameful and disgraceful.”
Vice-president elect Mike Pence then took to the podium in New York to call the reports “fake news” before introducing Trump.
The last time Trump held a news conference, he was plunging into a heated general election campaign with Hillary Clinton and suggested Russia could help dig up some of his rival’s emails.
Nearly six months and a presidential campaign victory later, Trump will finally step before reporters again Wednesday to face questions about what role he believes Russia played in the election year hacking of Democratic groups — interference the intelligence community says was intended to help the Republican defeat Clinton.
Trump is criticizing U. S. intelligence agencies over the leak of an unsubstantiated report that Russia had compromising personal and financial information on him .
Trump tweeted Wednesday that “Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to ‘leak’ into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?”
The tweet was part of an early morning Trump firestorm denouncing the reports, in which he said he has “nothing” to do with Russia. Various news outlets reported late Tuesday that U. S. intelligence officials briefed Trump last week on the unverified information Russia was said to have on him.
Trump insisted that the media reports were “very unfair” and payback for defeating other Republican presidential hopefuls and Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“I win an election easily, a great “movement” is verified, and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS. A sorry state!”
The Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee says he received sensitive information last year and turned it over to the FBI, an apparent reference to news that President-elect Donald Trump was told by intelligence officials about an unsubstantiated report that Russia had compromising personal and financial information about him.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona said in a statement Wednesday that he examined the contents of the material, was unable to make a judgment about the accuracy and delivered the information to the director of the FBI, James Comey.
McCain said: “That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue.”
The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee says allegations that Russia has collected damaging personal and financial information on Donald Trump “shakes our democracy to its very core” and should be investigated by Congress.
In a brief interview, New York Rep. Eliot Engel says if the unsubstantiated charges that the Russians have compromising material on the president-elect are true, “It’s a scary thing to have Putin in the driver’s seat.”
Trump and a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin have denied the allegations.
Engel says Trump needs to “come clean.” He says simply denying the charges is insufficient and says Trump must “tell us everything he knows.”
A U. S. official told The Associated Press on Tuesday that intelligence officials told Trump last week about the unproven report.

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Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday that President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson is “the right person at the right time” to be America’s top diplomat, particularly when it comes to navigating the increasingly complex relationship between Washington and Moscow.
“This new administration must thread the needle between pushing back against Vladimir Putin’s aggressions, meddling, interventionism and bullying and at the same time, stop a dangerous downward spiral in our relationship with Russia,” Mr. Gates said at the start of Mr. Tillerson ’s Senate confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill.
“I believe Mr. Tillerson is the right person at the right time to help accomplish both of those goals,” Mr. Gates said.
He and a small group of others, including Texas Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and former Sen. Sam Nunn, a Democrat from Georgia, introduced Mr. Tillerson at the opening of Wednesday’s hearing before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Issues relating to Russia were expected to dominate the proceedings, with lawmakers likely to push Mr. Tillerson , who was CEO of ExxonMobil from 2006 through earlier this year and has a long history of relations with high-level Russian officials, to explain his views on the way forward between Washington and Moscow.
He’s expected to get a grilling from Democrats on the question of how he plans to prevent the interests of Exxon — a multibillion-dollar oil giant that works in more than 50 countries — from influencing his decision-making as secretary of state.
In a version of Mr. Tillerson ’s opening statement, released Tuesday night, the nominee said he believes Russia “poses a danger” and is a cause for alarm among many American allies. But he also said it was the U. S. retreating from the world stage that left an opening for Mr. Putin’s resurgent policies.
The nominee said it will take careful analysis and diplomacy to handle the ambitious nation.
“Where cooperation with Russia based on common interests is possible, such as reducing the global threat of terrorism, we ought to explore these options. Where important differences remain, we should be steadfast in defending the interests of America and her allies,” his statement said. “Russia must know that we will be accountable to our commitments and those of our allies, and that Russia must be held to account for its actions.”
Mr. Tillerson also said China poses both opportunities and challenges, and said the world must be “honest” about the threat from radical Islam, and said defeating the Islamic State is more important than settling simmering issues in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
“There are competing priorities in this region which must be and will be addressed, but they must not distract from our utmost mission of defeating ISIS,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. Defeating ISIS must be our foremost priority in the Middle East.”
Democrats are also expected to grill Mr. Tillerson over his views on climate change and the incoming Trump administration’s plans to change or renounce the 2015 global Paris Climate Accord. Outgoing Secretary of State John F. Kerry spent years pushing for the agreement and made the battle against climate change a central thrust of his tenure as America’s top diplomat.
A smattering of about 100 protesters snaked through the park outside the Dirkson Senate Office Building prior to the start of Wednesday’s hearing. Some wore dinosaur costumes. Others carried signs reading “Investigate Exxon.” The entire group chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, Tillerson must go.”
As Mr. Gates later worked his way into the hearing room, a man dressed in a flashy suit with green dollar bills printed on it snorted, “war criminal,” loud enough for everyone to hear.
Later, as the hearing got underway, a chant could be heard from the hallway outside, where protesters shouted, “reject Rex , reject Rex , reject Rex .”
• Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.
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