President-elect Donald Trump shakes hands with Martin Luther King III, son of Martin Luther King Jr. at Trump Tower in New York, Monday, Jan. 16, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) (Associated Press) 
 
 President-elect Donald Trump shakes hands with Martin Luther King III, son of Martin Luther King Jr. at Trump Tower in New York, Monday, Jan. 16, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) (Associated Press) 
 
 President-elect Donald Trump shakes hands with Martin Luther King III, son of Martin Luther King Jr. at Trump Tower in New York, Monday, Jan. 16, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) (Associated Press) President-elect Donald Trump shakes hands with Martin Luther King III, son of Martin Luther King Jr. at Trump Tower in New York, Monday, Jan. 16, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President-elect Donald Trump (all times EST): 
 
 8:39 a.m. 
 
 Russian President Vladimir Putin is accusing the Obama administration of trying to undermine President-elect Donald Trump by spreading fake allegations. 
 
 Putin, speaking at a news conference in Moscow Tuesday, described a dossier on Trump as part of efforts by the Obama administration to "undermine the legitimacy of the president-elect" despite his "convincing" victory. 
 
 Putin dismissed as "fake" the dossier's unverified allegations about Trump's sexual activities at a Moscow hotel. He added that people who ordered it are "worse than prostitutes." 
 
 Trump has rejected the allegations as "fake news" and "phony stuff." 
 
 ___ 
 
 8:10 a.m. 
 
 Donald Trump is shrugging off polls that show him with low approval ratings. 
 
 The president-elect tweeted early Tuesday, "The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before." 
 
 ___ 
 
 3:49 a.m. 
 
 A son of Martin Luther King Jr. says Donald Trump is talking unity. 
 
 Martin Luther King III said the president-elect spoke in a private meeting Sunday of representing all Americans. King III said he believes "that's his intent." 
 
 Trump met with King's son on the holiday marking the life of the assassinated civil rights icon, just days after the president-elect had gone on Twitter to strike back fiercely at Lewis for questioning the legitimacy of the billionaire businessman's election as president. Lewis and the elder King were among the Big Six civil rights leaders of the 1960s. ||||| REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin Russian President Vladimir Putin pushed back on Tuesday against unverified claims that Russia worked with Donald Trump during the US presidential election to undermine Hillary Clinton. 
 
 "We are witnessing an ongoing acute political struggle in the US, whose task is to undermine the legitimacy of the president-elect," Putin said, according to the Russian news agency Interfax. 
 
 He added that those behind the claims, included in a dossier made public last week, were "worse than prostitutes." 
 
 "I have an impression they practiced in Kiev and are ready to organize a Maidan in Washington, just to not let Trump take office," Putin said, referring to the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine that led to the ouster of the country's pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014. 
 
 "The media frenzy surrounding Trump speaks of the degradation of US political elites," Putin said, adding that he was "not acquainted with Trump" and therefore had "no reasons either to defend or attack him." 
 
 The dossier was part of an opposition-research project conducted by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, at the behest of anti-Trump Republicans and, later, Democrats. Steele was the former head of the Russia desk in Moscow for Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6. The memos he wrote made their way to US intelligence officials sometime last year. 
 
 A summary of his findings, collected from the network of Russian intelligence sources he had cultivated, was presented to Trump, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and the country's top lawmakers on intelligence matters earlier this month as part of a classified briefing about Russia's intervention in the US presidential election. 
 
 The dossier suggested, among other things, that Russian officials fed hacked Democratic documents to WikiLeaks in exchange for Trump sidelining Ukraine as a campaign issue; that Trump hired sex workers to perform lewd acts in a Moscow Ritz-Carlton presidential suite where President Barack Obama once stayed; and that what the dossier described as "Trump's unorthodox behavior in Russia over the years" provided Russians with information they could use to blackmail him. 
 
 Putin mocked the claims contained in the dossier, which he described as "an obvious fake" and "nonsense." 
 
 Russian intelligence services "don't chase every American billionaire," Putin said. He added that Trump "has been with the most beautiful women in the world, so why would he need prostitutes in Moscow?" 
 
 "Trump organized beauty contests," Putin continued. "I find it hard to believe that he rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world." 
 
 Putin also slammed the new sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration in late December, claiming that attempts were being made to tie Trump's "hands and feet" while he was performing his election campaign promises to try to improve relations with Russia. 
 
 "Some people leave without saying goodbye, and some say goodbye without leaving," Putin said. "The Obama administration belongs to the second category." 
 
 Throughout the campaign, Trump broke from traditional GOP orthodoxy and established himself as the most sympathetic Republican candidate toward Russia, stressing a need to work with the country on various geopolitical issues. 
 
 Trump has not commented on the dossier's specific claims, but has called the dossier itself "fake news" and "a complete fraud." 
 
 Watch Putin's remarks here: ||||| Tweet with a location 
 
 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| MOSCOW, January 17. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the outgoing US administration of trying to undermine the legitimacy of US President-elect Donald Trump. 
 
 "What we see is the continuing sharp domestic political struggle although the presidential elections are over and they ended with a convincing victory of Mr. Trump," Putin told reporters after talks with Moldovan President Igor Dodon. 
 
 This struggle has several goals, Putin said, adding that the first of them is to "undermine legitimacy of the US president-elect." 
 
 "Whether the people who have been doing that really wish it or not, they do cause harm to the interests of the United States and that harm is enormous," Putin said. "One has the impression that upon gaining the required experience they may go as far as staging Maidan type of protests in Washington in a bid to prevent Trump from taking office." 
 
 "Another aim they pursue is to bind the president-elect by hand and foot to not let him act on home and foreign policy election pledges," Putin said. 
 
 "Look, how can anything be done to improve the Russian-US relations if such hoax as the interference of some hackers in the election campaign emerges?" Putin said. He noted that hackers did not invent anything but they only got access to the materials of the US Democratic Party’s campaign headquarters. 
 
 Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama thanked each other for their joint work at their latest bilateral meeting in Peru in November and there are no other meetings in plans, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has added. 
 
 "They have thanked each other for their joint work, it was their concluding meeting [on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru] and they have bid farewells during that bilateral meeting," Peskov said. "There are no other contacts in plans.
– Donald Trump isn't the only person making recent claims of phony news stories. Vladimir Putin says an explosive dossier on Trump published by BuzzFeed last week, which included allegations Russia had compromising information on the president-elect, is an "obvious fake" and "nonsense," Russia's Interfax and TASS news agencies report, via Business Insider and the AP. Not only that, but any individuals behind the claims in the dossier are "worse than prostitutes," Putin said at a Tuesday press conference in Moscow. Speaking of prostitutes, Trump "has been with the most beautiful women in the world, so why would he need prostitutes in Moscow? Trump organized beauty contests. I find it hard to believe that he rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world." He further said that Russian spies "don't chase every American billionaire." Putin called Trump's win in November a "convincing victory" and added that the Obama administration is behind the "ongoing acute political struggle … whose task is to undermine the legitimacy of the president-elect." He also emphasized that he doesn't know Trump personally and so wouldn't have a motive to make moves for or against him.