President Donald Trump resumed his steady-drumbeat attacks against the White House press corps on Thursday, claiming on Twitter that political reporters fabricate sources in order to cripple him but ultimately won't succeed.

'FAKE NEWS media, which makes up stories and "sources," is far more effective than the discredited Democrats - but they are fading fast!' Trump tweeted.

A Trump administration official told DailyMail.com late Thursday morning that the president was reacting to a Wall Street Journal story that alleged the U.S. Intelligence Community has been withholding information from his classified briefings – specifically details about intelligence operations targeting Russia.

'It all looks stupid,' the source said, requesting anonymity so he could speak freely. 'No one is going to withhold intelligence on Russia from the Oval Office just because this president has moved past the Cold War.'

President Donald Trump claimed Thursday that reporters are fabricating source and stories in order to hurt him – a move that an administration official said was a direct response to a Wall Street Journal story

Trump's tweet, the source said, was his pushback against a story that claimed intelligence briefers were withholding some information from him because they weren't confident he was sufficiently skeptical of Russia

The official blasted the Journal for 'rushing with a sloppy story about how the PDB [President's Daily Brief] doesn't include every detail about where intelligence came from.'

'What else is new? The president gets analysis, not raw data,' he said.

A spokesman for the Office of Director of National Intelligence issued a statement Thursday morning claiming that '[a]ny suggestion that the U.S. intelligence community is withholding information and not providing the best possible intelligence to the president and his national security team is not true.'

Also high on Trump's list of aired grievances this week is a New York Times report that his campaign aides were in frequent contact with Russian officials before the November 8, 2016 election.

That followed a tumultuous Monday drama ending in the resignation of Gen. Michael Flynn, who was Trump's national security advisor.

Flynn was blamed for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about contact he had with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in late December immediately after then-President Barack Obama leveled sanctions against Moscow related to election-year computer hacking in the U.S.

He was also accused inside the White House of lying to Pence about efforts he undertook after the election to help his son get a security clearance, according to a White House aide who spoke to DailyMail.com.

'The Kislyak thing wasn't the first time the vice president had to clean up after Flynn,' the aide said Wednesday. 'It was just the one that no one knew how to explain away.'

By Wednesday Gen. Flynn, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and less than 48 hours after leaving the White House, found his own security clearance suspended.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Tuesday that Flynn resigned following Trump's conclusion that an 'eroding level of trust' between the two men had made his employment unsustainable.

Gen. Michael Flynn was Trump's national security advisor until Monday night, when news reports fueled by intelligence leaks to newspapers – likely illegal – brought him down

The Times and Journal stories, and follow-on pieces appearing in The Washington Post and elsewhere, relied on information leaked to reporters from intelligence agencies – a move that Trump said Wednesday was the product of 'criminal actions.'

'I think it's very, very unfair what happened to General Flynn, the way he was treated,' he declared during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 'and the documents and papers that were illegally – I'd stress that – illegally leaked.'

'The real scandal here,' Trump tweeted on Wednesday, 'is that classified information is illegally given out by "intelligence" like candy. Very un-American!'

'We'll find the leakers. We're gonna find the leakers,' the president told reporters on Thursday. 'They're going to pay a big price for leaking.'

The president has leveraged a hate-hate relationship with much of the political Fourth Estate since before he launched his improbable White House run two summers ago.

Trump blasted The New York Times – and other media outlets, by extension – for relying on intelligence leaks to form the basis of hostile stories

Many reporters and editors initially treated his potential candidacy as a self-promoting stunt. Large numbers turned the customary adversarial relationship between office-seeker and scribe into full-blown war as he picked up momentum.

Trump has clobbered newspaper reporters and editorial boards, TV journalists and the occasional radio broadcaster for bias, declaring them 'fake news' purveyors and siding with a 'silent majority' base of voters whom he believes regard the press with equal suspicion.

He specifically called out the Times on Thursday morning, giving the storied paper a high-profile spanking before 25 million Twitter followers.

'Leaking, and even illegal classified leaking, has been a big problem in Washington for years,' the president wrote.

'Failing @nytimes (and others) must apologize.'