Russia-Hack Probe Urged by Senators

Republican John McCain and three other senators called for a congressional inquiry into allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election, according to Bloomberg. 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 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.“ In a letter to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the senators called for a panel that will look specifically at hacking of elections and other areas by Russia and other governments, including China and Iran.

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. “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.