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Washington — US President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday again rejected the CIA’s conclusion that Russia manipulated the US election, as the hacking scandal expanded into a hefty foreign policy challenge just five weeks before he takes office.

Even as NBC News reported that US intelligence has concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin had a direct hand in the hacking plot, Trump took to Twitter to dismiss the issue, which has been roiling since before he defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton on November 8.

“If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House waite [sic] so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?” he tweeted.

But the 70-year-old billionaire-turned-president-elect appeared increasingly isolated in his stance as the scandal posed a deep challenge to his aim of resetting Washington’s strained relations with Moscow.

The conclusions by key intelligence bodies including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been accepted throughout the government, including among top members of Trump’s Republican Party.

On Wednesday, senior Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he was informed by the FBI in August that his own campaign had been hacked.

“My goal is to put on President Trump’s desk crippling sanctions against Russia. They need to pay a price,” he said.

Former CIA director Michael Hayden called Trump “the only prominent American that has not yet conceded that the Russians conducted a massive covert influence campaign against the United States.”

“On this particular event, what Mr Trump says about it is the same thing that Mr Putin says about it,” he said on Wednesday.

Concerns over the extent of the scandal mounted after NBC television reported that US intelligence officials now believe that Putin was personally involved in the election interference operation.

Meanwhile, US intelligence officials now believe that Putin was personally involved in hacking during the American election campaign as part of a vendetta against Clinton, NBC News reported late on Wednesday.

Putin personally instructed how material hacked from US Democrats was leaked and otherwise used, the US television network said, quoting two senior officials with access to this information.

The officials said they have a “high level of confidence” in this new assessment, NBC reported.

Last weekend The Washington Post reported a CIA evaluation that Russia had hacked the emails of US persons and institutions as a way to sway the election in favour of Republican Donald Trump, who eventually did beat Clinton on November 8.

Putin is said never to have forgiven Clinton – then secretary of state — for publicly questioning the integrity of parliamentary elections in 2011 in Russia, and accused her of encouraging street protests.

The intelligence officials told NBC that Putin’s goals in the alleged hacking began as revenge against Clinton.

But they transformed into a broader effort to show that the world of US politics was corrupt and to, in the words of one official, “split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn’t depend on the US to be a credible global leader anymore”.

In preparation for possible retaliation, US intelligence agencies have intensified probing of Putin’s personal wealth, NBC said, citing US officials.
Trump, who has spoken warmly of Putin, has dismissed as “ridiculous” the allegation that Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and people close to Clinton.

Leading US lawmakers have called for a formal congressional investigation into the hacking.

— AP