Russian President Vladimir Putin has strongly denied he has any compromising material about US President Donald Trump during an at times combative televised interview.
"Well, this is just another load of nonsense," Putin said on NBC News' "Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly," when asked whether he had any damaging information on the Republican president.
The remarks were the latest in a series of denials from Moscow that have had little impact so far on a political crisis in the US over potential links between Russia and Trump's inner circle.
Later this week former FBI Director James Comey is due to testify on whether Trump tried to get him to back off an investigation into alleged ties between Trump's election campaign and Moscow.
Comey was leading the FBI's probe into alleged Russian meddling in last year's US presidential election when Trump fired him last month, four years into his 10-year term.
Putin also told NBC that regardless of Trump's previous travel to Russia as a businessman, he had had no relationship with him and had never met him. Putin noted that executives from perhaps 100 American companies were currently in Russia.
"Do you think we're gathering compromising information on all of them right now or something?" Putin asked, before saying: "Have you all lost your senses?"
Trump has offered contradictory accounts of his relationship with Putin over time but has also said the two never met. The two have spoken several times by phone since Trump's election.
Trump has called an FBI investigation into alleged ties between his campaign and Russia a "witch hunt" designed to undermine the legitimacy of his 2016 election win.
Trump's also disparaged a dossier of unsubstantiated allegations that purported to show Russian intelligence operatives had compromising information about him, but which he has described as a "hoax."
US intelligence agencies concluded in January that Moscow tried to tilt the election campaign in Trump's favour, including by hacking into the emails of senior Democrats, a charge the Kremlin denies.
"They have been misled," Putin told NBC, in an interview NBC said was recorded on Friday. "And they aren't analysing the information in its entirety. I haven't seen, even once, any direct proof of Russian interference in the (US) presidential election."
Trump has denied any collusion but the FBI and congressional probes into the Russia matter have dogged the early months of his presidency.
Former CIA director John Brennan said last month he had noticed contacts between Trump's campaign associates and Russia during the 2016 election and grew concerned Moscow had sought to lure Americans down "a treasonous path."
After Comey's dismissal, news reports emerged that Trump asked Comey to end the probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn during a February meeting in the Oval Office, the day after Flynn was fired for misrepresenting his contacts with the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak.
Flynn has declined to testify to the US Senate Intelligence Committee about his Russian ties, invoking his constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination.
Reuters has reported that Flynn and Trump's son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, discussed with Kislyak the idea of creating a back channel between Trump and Putin that could have bypassed diplomats and intelligence agencies.
