Trump continues attacks on Senate intelligence panel, US media

US President Donald Trump on Thursday said the Senate panel investigating alleged collusion between his campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential race should instead devote its efforts to probing what he termed "biased" and "untruthful" reporting by major US news outlets.

Trump again used his Twitter account to level his latest criticism against the Senate Intelligence Committee and mainstream media outlets such as NBC News, Efe news agency reported.

Why isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the "Fake News Networks in our country to see why so much of our news is just made up-fake", Trump said in a tweet after the committee chairman, Richard Burr (Republican) and vice chairman, Mark Warner (Democrat), on Wednesday provided an update on their investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The senators said they agreed with a previous assessment by the US intelligence community indicating the Kremlin carried out a "determined" attempt to influence the campaign via cyberattacks and propaganda.

They said the investigation currently was focused on determining if there was some type of coordination between the Kremlin and members of a campaign -- supposedly the Trump camp -- to hurt the electoral chances of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

"The issue of collusion is still open," Burr told reporters.

Trump also continued his attacks on the media over a report by NBC News the day before indicating that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was on the verge of resigning this summer due to policy disputes with the President.

Tillerson never threatened to resign, this is fake news by NBC News, he said. "Low news and reporting standards. No verification from me," Trump tweeted.

--IANS

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