Russia-Hack Probe Urged by Senators, Trump Aide Casts Doubt

Republican John McCain and three other senators called for a congressional inquiry into allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election, but a top adviser to President-elect Donald Trump said there’s no public consensus among intelligence agencies over Moscow’s role.

McCain told CNN on Sunday that Democratic President Barack Obama has no strategy for dealing with Russian cyber attacks.

“We need a select committee. We need to get to the bottom of this, and we need to find out exactly what was done and what the implications of the attacks were, especially if they had an effect on our election,” said McCain.

While U.S. intelligence officials have reportedly determined that Russian president Vladimir Putin directed the hack in an effort to buoy the Republican Trump’s candidacy, the president-elect has played this down by arguing that no one knows who was behind the leak of e-mails from senior staffers on Democrat Hillary Clinton’s election campaign and from the Democratic National Committee.

Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, called on Sunday for a special Senate investigation into the hack. Schumer and McCain were among four senior senators who issued a bipartisan statement a week ago warning that “our democratic institutions have been targeted.”

Focused Panel

In a letter on Sunday to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the senators -- Schumer and McCain, along with Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican, and Democrat Jack Reed of Rhode Island -- called for a panel that will look specifically at hacking of elections and other areas by Russia and other governments, including China and Iran.

“We share your respect for, and deference to, the regular order of the Senate, and we recognize that this is an extraordinary request,” the foursome wrote. “However, we believe it is justified by the extraordinary scope and scale of the cyber problem.”

Schumer said that to send the investigation to one committee or several committees “will leave things out, won’t reconcile contradictory information and because the existing committees are so busy in the new administration won’t get the focus that it needs.”

Reince Priebus, whom Trump has named White House chief of staff, dismissed reports that the intelligence community had concluded that Russia was the culprit, arguing that the chiefs of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the director of national intelligence, had yet to publicly state where they stood.

‘All Over the Map’

“These guys should be straight with the American people and come out and say it. I don’t think they’ve been clear about it. I think it’s been all over the map,” Priebus told Fox News Sunday. He was asked to comment on news reports that CIA Director John Brennan had informed intelligence insiders that Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper were in agreement. “We haven’t heard from Clapper. We haven’t heard from Comey,” Preibus said.

The issue is registering with the public. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds more than half of Americans say they are significantly bothered by the news that hackers working in connection with a foreign government were involved in trying to influence November’s vote. Forty-three percent of respondents say they are bothered a “great deal” about the interference, while an additional 12 percent were bothered “quite a bit.”

Those numbers mask a notable partisan divide: a combined 86 percent of Democrats are bothered a great deal or quite a bit by the interference, versus just 29 percent of Republican respondents.

‘Covert Operation’

James Woolsey, a Trump national security adviser who served as CIA director under President Bill Clinton, said on ABC’s “This Week” that “there’s strong chance the Russians are behind it.” Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who has served presidents of both political parties, told NBC the hacks were “a thinly disguised, covert operation to discredit the American election and to basically allow the Russians to communicate to the rest of the world that our elections are corrupt.”

But Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota told Fox News it remains to be seen what exactly motivated the attacks, and “it’s a little bit premature to start coming to conclusions about what the U.S. should do next.”

Priebus said the debate over Russia’s role in the election was a distraction. 

“Let’s assume it’s true. There is no evidence that shows the outcome of the election was changed because of a couple of dozen John Podesta e-mails that were out there,” he said. Priebus was referring to hacked e-mails of Clinton’s campaign chairman, which actually numbered in the tens of thousands and were released over a series of several weeks leading up to the election. “People didn’t like the product. That’s why Hillary Clinton lost.”

Podesta, speaking on NBC on Sunday, teased the idea of collusion between Trump’s advisers and Russia as an “open question,” something Priebus rejected as “insane.”

“Of course we didn’t interface with the Russians,” Priebus said. “This whole thing is a spin job.”

— With assistance by Ben Brody, and Terrence Dopp