Podesta suggests Trump allies colluded with Russia on hacking

Hillary Clinton's former campaign chairman John Podesta suggests that President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign might have worked with Russian hackers to win the presidential election.

In his first TV interview since the Democratic candidate's loss on November 8, Podesta said he did not believe Trump was personally involved in the hacking offensive targeting Democrats, but did not rule out the possibility of collusion by his associates.

"It's very much unknown whether there was collusion," Podesta said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"What did Trump Inc. know? When did they know it? Were they in touch with the Russians?" he asked.

Podesta, whose personal emails were also hacked and released during the presidential campaign, said that members of the Electoral College have the right to know the facts before they cast their votes on Monday.

"The Russians were trying to elect a lap dog," Podesta said, referring to a recent article by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

When he was asked whether the election was “free and fair,” Clinton’s former campaign chief said he thought “it was” but added “it was distorted by the Russian intervention.”

Incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus strongly denied any hacking-related contact with Russia by the Trump campaign during the race.

“Of course, we didn't interface with the Russians. I mean, this whole thing is a spin job. And I think what the Democrats ought to do is look in the mirror and face the reality that they lost the election,” he said on Fox News Sunday.

After weeks of internal bickering, the consensus view within the US intelligence community now is that Russia interfered in the election through cyber attacks not just to destabilize the electoral system but to help get Trump elected.

The Kremlin has denied the allegations while calling for Washington to provide evidence of the Russian involvement.

Senators call for select committee probe

On Sunday, Senators John McCain and Chuck Schumer called for a bipartisan select committee to investigate Russia’s alleged role in hacking emails related to Democratic organizations and operatives.

“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,” McCain, Republican of Arizona, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“There’s no doubt they were interfering, and no doubt there was a cyberattack,” the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee added.

In separate remarks, Schumer, the incoming Senate minority leader, also called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to form a select committee to investigate the hack attacks.

“The fact that the Russians used cybersecurity to hack our infrastructure, our economics, our countries is well-known,” the Democrat from New York said. “The fact that they’re hacking our political system and trying to influence the outcome as it seems to be, that is serious, serious stuff.”

Washington first publicly accused Moscow of a campaign of cyber operations against American political organizations in October but did not attribute motives at the time.

At a year-end press conference on Friday, President Barack Obama all but named Russian President Vladimir Putin as behind Moscow's alleged attempts to influence the election and vowed retaliations.

"Not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin," he said. "This happened at the highest levels of the Russian government."