The US Senate’s top Republican has backed a probe into allegations the Kremlin engaged in a hacking campaign to influence November’s election in the most serious break yet between president-elect Donald Trump and his party’s traditional Washington leaders.
Mitch McConnell, Senate majority leader, said Congress would investigate the allegations following the disclosure of a Central Intelligence Agency report which concluded that Russia hacked into Democratic National Committee servers in an effort to sway the election outcome in Mr Trump’s favour.
The president-elect, who has dismissed claims of Russian interference and belittled the CIA after the conclusions became public, took to Twitter yesterday to insist it was “hard to determine who was doing the hacking”.
“Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card,” he wrote. “It would be called conspiracy theory!”
Until now, many Republican leaders on Capitol Hill who openly broke with Mr Trump during the campaign have fallen into line behind their new standard-bearer. After the CIA disclosure on Friday, John McCain and Lindsey Graham joined Democratic colleagues to call for a bipartisan inquiry, but both have long been seen as mavericks.
Mr McConnell’s move to back the investigation is the first sign of open disagreement between the congressional leadership and the president-elect. The Kentucky senator said he supported two bipartisan investigations – by the Senate intelligence and armed services committees – saying he “strongly condemns” any foreign hacking and that “the Russians are not our friends”.
Critics question why Mr Trump is so reluctant to blame Russia despite US intelligence conclusions. His stubbornness risks creating wider tensions with some on Capitol Hill even before his inauguration; he also faces Republican resistance over his consideration of Rex Tillerson, the ExxonMobil chief executive with close ties to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, as secretary of state.
Mr McConnell also appeared to challenge the president-elect on his assessment of the CIA, which Mr Trump’s team initially ridiculed as “the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction”.
Mr McConnell said: “I have the highest confidence in the intelligence community and especially the Central Intelligence Agency.”
His support follows a steady build-up of bipartisan pressure for a probe into Russian hacking activity.
Mr McCain, chairman of the Senate armed services committee that will lead one of the probes, said there was “no doubt” Russian intelligence had hacked Democratic party emails, describing the effort as “another form of warfare”.
