Republicans reject reports Russia helped Trump win election

Republicans on Saturday rejected reports about a secret CIA assessment finding that Russia sought to tip the US presidential election in Donald Trump's favor, as a Democratic Senate leader called for an investigation. "The intelligence is wrong," Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer told CNN. "It didn't happen." He was referring to a New York Times report saying US intelligence agencies had "high confidence" that Russian hackers infiltrated the Republican National Committee's computer systems as well as Democratic Party's, but released information taken only from Democratic computers.  News about the CIA report, first reported by The Washington Post on Friday, drew an extraordinary rebuke from the president-elect's camp on Friday. "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," Trump's transition team said, launching a broadside against the spy agency. "The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again.'" Democrats in Congress pushed back against Republican denials on Saturday, with Senator Chuck Schumer, set to become Democratic minority leader in January, calling for a congressional investigation. "That any country could be meddling in our elections should shake both political parties to their core," he said in a statement on Saturday. "It's imperative that our intelligence community turns over any relevant information so that Congress can conduct a full investigation." - 'Help Trump get elected' - The reports come after President Barack Obama ordered a review of all cyberattacks that took place during the 2016 election cycle, amid growing calls from Democrats in Congress for more information about the extent of Russian interference in the campaign. The Washington Post cited officials briefed on the matter as saying individuals with connections to Moscow provided anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks with emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign chief and others. WikiLeaks steadily released those emails in the months before the election, damaging Clinton's White House run. The Russians' aim was to help Donald Trump win, not just undermine the US electoral process, the paper reported. "It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected," the newspaper quoted a senior US official briefed on an intelligence presentation to key senators last week as saying. "That's the consensus view." CIA agents told the lawmakers it was "quite clear" that electing Trump was Russia's goal, according to officials who spoke to the Post, citing growing evidence from multiple sources. Russian hackers did not limit their hits to the Democrats, The New York Times reported. "We now have high confidence that they hacked the D.N.C. and the R.N.C., and conspicuously released no documents" from the Republican organization, the Times cited one senior administration official as saying, referring to the Russians. The Times also questioned when Russia had started supporting Trump. "It is... far from clear that Russia's original intent was to support Mr Trump, and many intelligence officials -- and former officials in Mrs Clinton's campaign -- believe that the primary motive of the Russians was to simply disrupt the campaign and undercut confidence in the integrity of the vote," it said.