National Security and Foreign Affairs

WikiLeaks on Tuesday began publishing what it claims is the CIA's secret "hacking arsenal" that reveals how the intelligence agency transforms smartphones, computers and internet-connected televisions into spying devices.

The cache allegedly comes from the agency's Cyber Intelligence Center, potentially spilling into the public domain an unprecedented amount of information about the CIA's electronic snooping. WikiLeaks called it the "largest ever publication of confidential documents" about the agency.

WikiLeaks on Tuesday dumped thousands of documents it said came from the CIA's cyber espionage department, a catastrophic breach that exposes sophisticated covert tools for hacking everything from computers to TVs to popular social apps.

The release is the first in a series called "Year Zero" that involves 8,761 documents and files from the spy agency's Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Va., the group said.

President Trump launched new attacks on his predecessor and Democrats on Sunday, suggesting Barack Obama also has shady Russian ties.

At 6:40 a.m., Trump insinuated that Obama acted improperly in March 2012 when the then-president told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that the US would have more "more flexibility" in talks about a missile defense treaty after November elections.

The "more flexibility" remark was picked up on a hot mic that Obama and Medvedev apparently did not know was on.

A US congressman has given a withering response to Donald Trump's claims that Barack Obama had his offices in New York "wiretapped".

Ted Lieu, the member of the House of Representatives from California's 33rd district, called the President "paranoid like Nixon".

The Democrat also suggested that he was "in trouble" and that danger was posed by Mr Trump.

Donald Trump's unreadiness to be president was dramatically highlighted this morning when he went off on a tweetstorm accusing President Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower.

On Thursday afternoon, Attorney General Jeff Sessions held a press conference to announce that he was recusing himself from any possible investigations into connections between Donald Trump's campaign and Russia. It was a dissembling performance that demonstrated why his recusal is not enough.