President Donald Trump called reports about alleged ties between his associates and the Russian government "fake news." | AP Photo Trump tweets NBC, ABC broadcast 'biased and fake' Russia stories

President Donald Trump labeled reports from two major networks on alleged ties between individuals linked to his campaign and the Russian government as “totally biased and fake news” Thursday morning, continuing his tirade against allegations that his election team colluded with the Kremlin.

“Just watched the totally biased and fake news reports of the so-called Russia story on NBC and ABC. Such dishonesty!” Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday morning. He did not dispute any of the specifics of either report, which aired on NBC’s “Today” show and ABC’s “Good Morning America.”


The president's complaint comes one day after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) announced that he had been given information to suggest that members of Trump’s transition team, and potentially Trump himself, had been inadvertently surveilled after the election, a revelation that Trump said Wednesday made him feel “somewhat” vindicated.

But even as Nunes went public with his discovery – a move that was itself controversial not only because he did not share it first with the committee’s ranking Democrat but also because his committee is in the midst of an investigation into possible ties between the president’s campaign and Russia – the California lawmaker said there was still no proof of Trump’s claim that former President Barack Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower during last year’s election.

Beyond Nunes’s decision to go public with the information presented to him, the White House was also forced Wednesday to answer questions about former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who the Associated Press revealed had worked with a Russian oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in order to advance the interests of Putin and the Russian government.

Asked about Manafort, White House press secretary Sean Spicer insisted at his Wednesday press briefing that there is “zero evidence of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, and that’s not going to be changed by the former business dealings of a campaign staffer from a decade ago.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, slammed Nunes for going public with his revelation and for briefing the president on it. At a Wednesday afternoon press conference, Schiff said “The chairman will need to decide whether he is the chairman of an independent investigation into conduct which includes allegations of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians, or he is going to act as a surrogate of the White House, because he cannot do both.”

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“I think the actions of today throw great doubt into the ability of both the chairman and the committee to conduct the investigation the way it ought to be conducted,” he continued.

Both the NBC and ABC packages that aired Thursday recounted Nunes' statements and Schiff's reaction and matched similar to reporting from other major media outlets.