Donald Trump criticises sources for story despite it being true and Mike Flynn resigning as a result

President says story was ‘made up’

Donald Trump has declared that a Washington Post story with nine sources that got Michael Flynn fired was "made up".

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the President accused the media of "fake news", continuing a conspiracy theory he has pedalled for months when faced with negative headlines.

"I want you to know we are all fighting the fake news. It’s fake, phony, fake," he said.

The Washington Post story in question cited nine sources, and exposed how the President’s former national security adviser allegedly misled Vice President Mike Pence about his phone calls with Russian ambassador Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak.

"They have no sources,” he added. “They just make ‘em up when there are none. I saw one story recently where they said ‘nine people have confirmed’ [Michael Flynn’s phone calls]. There are no nine people. I don’t believe there was one or two people. Nine people."

Despite Mr Trump knowing about the phone calls for three weeks and Mr Pence 11 days, Mr Flynn was forced to resign after the news leaked.

Mr Trump insisted that Mr Flynn was treated very unfairly by the media and was only fired due to an issue of trust. The President said he would have instructed Mr Flynn to phone Mr Kislyak himself and that he had done "nothing wrong".

At the CPAC conference, he called for media to only use sources if they are named.

The President explained how he had recently declared that the media was the "enemy of the people", and then accused the media for misreporting his statement - he said he had only declared the "fake news" was the "enemy", not the media overall.

He recently said that negative polls were fake news, too.

"I don’t mind bad stories if I deserve them," he said.

"I tell you, I love good stories. But I don’t get too many of them. But I am only against the fake news, media."

The Republican-led committee on oversight and government reform, under chairman Jason Chaffetz, is currently investigating media leaks about alleged ties between the US and Russian governments, rather than the ties themselves.