Biden: Obama and I were told about Trump dossier ahead of leaks

Vice President Joe Biden has revealed that U.S. intelligence officials had informed him and President Obama about the existence of an unsubstantiated dossier on Donald Trump.

According to the Associated Press, he told journalists on January 12 that "I think it's something that obviously the agency thinks they have to track down."

And he eventually said, "It surprised me in that it made it to the point where the agency, the FBI thought they had to pursue it."

The vice president indicated that Obama questioned the relevance of the agency's disclosure to them but was told it may preempt a possible leak of the information.

Biden also spent time criticizing Trump's verbal attacks against the U.S. intelligence community; just the day before, the president-elect had tweeted, "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?

Bloomberg quotes Biden as saying in response, "It is really very damaging, in my view, to our standing in the world for a president to take on the crown jewels of our national defense and denigrate it."

He then added, "It plays in, particularly now the Russian narrative, that America doesn't know what they're doing, you don't want to hang out with those guys, you better look our way."