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U.S. congressional leaders support bipartisan hacking probe during election despite Trump's opposition

Xinhua, December 13, 2016 Adjust font size:

Bipartisan leaders in the U.S. Congress on Monday supported an investigation into Russia's alleged interference in the U.S. election despite U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's strong dismissal of such accusation.

Calling resistance from some Republicans to an investigation "defies belief", Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, said he supported an inquiry of alleged Russian hacking during the 2016 U.S. election.

"This simply cannot be a partisan issue," said McConnell here at a press conference, before adding that the Senate Intelligence Committee "is more than capable of conducting a complete review of this matter."

McConnell also said that Senator John McCain, 2008 Republican presidential nominee and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, would be conducting his own review within his committee of the cyber attack threat.

Also on Monday morning, Senator Charles Schumer, the incoming Democratic Senate leader, and McCain appeared on CBS News one day after the two men issued a joint statement calling for a congressional probe in to alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. election.

"It's gotten worse, and a bipartisan investigation that's not aimed at one specific instance but looks at the broad scope of this is just what's needed," said Schumer during the interview with CBS News.

According to the U.S. daily The Hill, Jason Miller, spokesman for Trump, on Monday dismissed bipartisan push for investigating alleged Russian interference as coming from people "who are bitter their candidate lost."

"This overall narrative, this is clearly an attempt to delegitimize Trump's win," said Miller.

After calling the allegations by the U.S. intelligence agencies that the Russian government helped him win the White House via election-related cyberattacks as "ridiculous" on Sunday, Trump again on Monday expressed his disagreement on twitter.

"Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!"

The Obama administration accused in October that Moscow, in attempts to disrupt the U.S election, was behind hackings which infiltrated the Democratic National Committee and then Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign. Russia immediately denied these allegations. Enditem