Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that top intelligence leaders told him and President Barack Obama they felt obligated to inform them about uncorroborated allegations about President-elect Donald Trump out of concern the information would become public and catch them off-guard. In an interview, Biden said neither he nor Obama asked U.S. intelligence agencies to try to corroborate the unverified claims that Russia had obtained compromising sexual and financial allegations about Trump. "I think it's something that obviously the agency thinks they have to track down," Biden said. He added later, "It surprised me in that it made it to the point where the agency, the FBI thought they had to pursue it." In the hourlong session with The Associated Press and other news outlets, the vice president was sharply critical of Trump for publicly disparaging intelligence officials, saying Trump was damaging U.S. standing and playing into Russia's hands. He also took umbrage at Trump's comments accusing intelligence agencies of allowing the information to leak publicly and drawing a comparison to "living in Nazi Germany." "The one thing you never want to invoke is Nazi Germany, no matter what the circumstances," Biden said. "It's an overwhelming diversion from the point you're trying to make." Biden said that in the briefing he and Obama received from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and others, there were "no conclusions drawn" from the uncorroborated dossier, which was produced in August and then released publicly this week by the media. Biden said it was "totally ancillary" to the purpose of the meeting, which was to brief Obama on a report he ordered documenting Russian interference in the U.S. campaign.
