On late Friday, The Washington Post broke the explosive story that the Central Intelligence Agency concluded that Russians intervened in the U.S. election to help Donald Trump win. This morning, President-elect Donald Trump was up tweeting indignantly—about the Celebrity Apprentice. 
 
 Trump hasn’t held a press conference in months and instead uses Twitter to issue statements and go after critics. Media analysts have long noted that Trump will go off on unrelated tweet storms after a major, and potentially damaging, news story breaks about him. For example, after Donald Trump agreed to pay $25 million to settle a Trump University fraud lawsuit, Trump tweeted attacks on the cast of the Broadway show, Hamilton. Distracting people from Trump’s fraud settlement was exactly the point, argued Jack Shafer in a Politico article entitled “Stop being Trump’s Twitter fool.” 
 
 This morning would seem to be another case in point. Yes, it was big news when Variety disclosed Thursday that Trump would continue to serve as executive producer of NBC’s reality-TV show and collect probably hundreds of thousands of dollars. But that was completely eclipsed by the bombshell report that Russia had an espionage operation to get Donald Trump elected president. Trump has been famously friendly to Russia’s strongman leader Vladimir Putin, calling him a better leader than President Obama, and Russia apparently concluded that Trump would more likely to relax economic sanctions than would Hillary Clinton. 
 
 The report of Russia’s meddling also included the revelation that Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell played a key role in keeping the explosive information under wraps during the election. According to The Post, which cited unnamed sources, McConnell voiced doubts about U.S. intelligence and threatened to publicly accuse the Obama administration of partisan politics if the White House challenged the Russians publicly. 
 
 After the election, Trump chose McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao to be secretary of transportation. Chao served as secretary of labor in George W. Bush administration. Her appointment requires approval by Congress; McConnell has rejected calls to recuse himself from the confirmation process. 
 
 Even more explosive, the New York Times reported that intelligence agencies have “high confidence” that Russians hacked the Republican National Committee but “conspicuously released no documents” related to Republicans. Which raises the disturbing question: Is Russia holding onto these materials to use as leverage, perhaps over the Trump administration? 
 
 Julian Assange of Wikileaks, which published the hacked Clinton emails, has denied that it received the materials from the Russian government. Russia also has denied the allegations. 
 
 The latest news, however, immediately set off a firestorm. Evan McMullin, a former CIA agent who was a Republican presidential candidate, tweeted: 
 
 Republican leaders knew Russia was undermining our democracy during the election and they chose to ignore it. — Evan McMullin (@Evan_McMullin) December 10, 2016 
 
 Donald Trump’s team issued a brief, stunning statement Friday—attacking the CIA’s credibility. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the transition team said in an unsigned statement. “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.'” (Note: Trump’s electoral victory was no landslide; he actually won by one of the slimmest margins in U.S. history.) 
 
 And here’s what Trump said on Twitter: 
 
 Reports by @CNN that I will be working on The Apprentice during my Presidency, even part time, are ridiculous & untrue – FAKE NEWS! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2016 
 
 I have NOTHING to do with The Apprentice except for fact that I conceived it with Mark B & have a big stake in it. Will devote ZERO TIME! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2016 
 
 (I won’t be Trump’s Twitter fool by explaining The Apprentice contretemps. You can read about it here and here. ) 
 
 Trump has said he’ll have a press conference on December 15th. It would be his first since July 27th. At the last conference, he told reporters that he hoped Russian intelligence agencies had hacked Hillary Clinton’s emails and would publish whatever they found. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” ||||| Make no mistake, yesterday’s Washington Post revelation that the CIA has concluded that Russia was actively trying to elect Donald Trump as opposed to just “meddling with” the election, is a nuclear bombshell. And if the Post piece is Hiroshima, then today’s New York Times story, which adds the detail that Russian actors also hacked email accounts at the Republican National Committee but did not release those publicly as they did Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign emails, is Nagasaki. 
 
 Hyperbole? Think again. A foreign government may have determined the outcome of a presidential election. And not Canada or Costa Rica, but Russia: the United States’ chief historic adversary and an oligarchy ruled by a tyrant who has systematically taken away rights. Bombshells don’t come much bigger. 
 
 Oh, wait; yes they do. On top of all the above, leaders of one of our two political parties—I’ll let you hazard a guess as to which one—argued against letting the American public know about all this before the election, reportedly saying it would be too partisan. That’s not hardball politics. That’s a hair’s breath away from treason. 
 
 So yes, this is major. But let’s catch our breath. We don’t know yet for a fact that these allegations are true. Both stories came from anonymous intelligence community sources, and in all such cases, the sources need to be considered. So the Obama administration and the CIA should put this information out there publicly. 
 
 And if the evidence is persuasive, what next? 
 
 It’s hard to say. It will be easy to prove to all but the most purblind partisans that Russia had the intent of electing Trump. But it will be much more difficult to prove that Russia did in fact elect Trump. That may never be provable. Unless evidence emerges that Russia specifically altered vote counts, Republicans will always be able to say it was something else and turn it back on Hillary. 
 
 Good luck getting Republicans to agree on anything here. Mitch McConnell? Please. He’s the one who said, at a hush-hush meeting back in September where administration officials urged that bipartisan group of 12 legislators go public with concerns about Russian interference in the election, that he would not participate and that if Democrats did so, he would tell the American people this was just partisan politics. 
 
 Think that through. McConnell, according to the Post story, showed no concern about the truth of the allegations. And bear this nugget in mind: This was not Barack Obama trying to persuade him to join in this bipartisan effort. This was Lisa Monaco, the president’s counterterrorism adviser; and Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security secretary; and FBI Director James Comey . McConnell told Comey, in essence, to go take a jump in the lake. McConnell was interested only in party, not at all in country. That’s not treason, but it sure isn’t patriotism. 
 
 This obviously cries out for hearings and an investigation, or a few of them. If we lived in a different universe, we’d ideally have a bipartisan investigation by Congress that was honest and serious and was able to be finished or at least to reach decent conclusions before the Electoral College votes on December 19. 
 
 But that will not happen. Republicans will make the Democrats do all the lifting here and then will cry that they’re being partisan and it’s just sour grapes. (Republican Senator John Cornyn tweeted , All this 'news' of Russian hacking: it has been going on for years. Serious, but hardly news.") But this is a genuine crisis. The guy who got 2.8 million fewer votes to begin with, and won because he took three states by less than 1 percent may have made it over the finish line, limping as he was, with a push from Vladimir Putin. 
 
 I know I often say “imagine if Hillary had done this,” but in this case, it’s not a mere hypothetical. Imagine the situation were reversed, and this lurid right-wing dystopic fantasy were playing out before our eyes—remembering, I should note, that Trump earlier in the campaign encouraged Russia to do more hacking of Clinton! What would the Republicans be doing? A few things, I think: 
 
 •They’d certainly be calling the election illegitimate and would declare Clinton an illegitimate president. 
 
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 •They’d call on the electors to seat Trump, citing—and properly, by the way—the Founders’ view that electors existed for precisely this purpose. 
 
 •Noting that Clinton had (in this hypothetical) earlier egged Russia on, they would be accusing Clinton of being an agent of a foreign government; that is, of treason. 
 
 •They’d be so legally brilliant and diabolical that it’s far beyond my capacity even to imagine. 
 
 And what would rank-and-file conservatives be doing? Hard-shell Trumpists? Richard Spencer? The good folks at Stormfront? 
 
 What should the Democrats do? I’m not exactly sure. Demand the release of the information. Demand a real investigation, one that can be completed by Dec. 19, when the electors meet. Pin McConnell’s ears to the wall in every way they can think of, discredit him as much as possible. Liberals groups need to agitate from the outside. The media needs to get the message that conservatives aren’t the only people who get pissed off. 
 
 In a word: Fight. Like hell. Obama too. He’s been doing his job—ensuring the peaceful transition of power. But that is just a custom. He didn’t swear an oath to it. He did however swear an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. That comes first. 
 
 Liberals often accuse Democrats of bringing a knife to a gun fight. For this one, it’s time to haul out the bazooka. ||||| President Barack Obama seems to fear that president-elect Donald Trump will ignore US intelligence that Russia used cyber tools to influence the result of the Nov. 8 election. And with good reason: Trump has displayed intense skepticism of what US intelligence agencies regard as a profound risk to the American electoral system. 
 
 So Obama is attempting to box Trump in politically—ordering a definitive report on Russia’s cyber-intrusions before he leaves office in six weeks. 
 
 In a new briefing to key members of Congress last week, the CIA advanced its long-held conclusion that Russia conducted cyber-intrusions and disseminated fake news in order to disrupt the presidential election. In its latest assessment, the CIA said the attacks were not intended solely to disrupt the election, but specifically to skew it to Trump’s advantage, according to the Washington Post. The newspaper quotes a US official who was in the congressional briefing as saying “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 CIA assessment aligns with the discovery of similar cyber-attacks across Europe, including the hacking of sensitive servers, as well as information warfare. In recent days, intelligence officials in both the UK and Germany have said that Russia’s cyber warfare imperils their respective democracies. On Dec. 10, Nicholas Burns, one of the most respected former diplomats in the US, tweeted that the threat is sweeping. 
 
 Trump’s team, however, has brushed off the new reports as the work of a tarnished intelligence community. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. 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,’” the statement read. 
 
 In an interview with Time magazine, Trump had voiced similar sarcasm about the cyberattacks. “It could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey,” he said. “I believe that it could have been Russia and it could have been any one of many other people. Sources or even individuals.” 
 
 Hence Obama’s worry. Broadly speaking, Trump is setting an early trend of treating information he doesn’t like as politicization. For instance, his transition team has suggested that the Energy Information Administration, the much-respected data division of the US Department of Energy, is politicizing its data to support Obama’s climate change agenda. And he is accusing the 17 US intelligence agencies—one of the baselines of US foreign policy—of doctoring the hacking analysis to tarnish him and his presidency. The mindset suggests another dimension to Trump’s penchant for operating in an alternate universe of facts. 
 
 With that as the backdrop, Obama is racing against the clock to get the facts on Russia out there prior to Trump’s inauguration. 
 
 There is bipartisan support in Congress for action against Russia. In separate statements, Republican senator Lindsey Graham and Democratic leader Chuck Schumer both called for investigations into the hacking. “I am going to lead the charge to investigate Russia’s role, not only in the elections but throughout the world,” Graham said. “So I’m going after Russia in every way we can go after Russia. I think they’re one of the most destabilizing influences on the world stage. I think they did interfere with our elections, and I want Putin personally to pay a price.” 
 
 In terms of that price, the US has what experts call the most sophisticated offensive cyber capabilities in the world, and it could easily retaliate. The question always has been how, since no one wants to initiate an escalating tit-for-tat cyber war that could easily get out of hand. One of the most powerful US messages, for example, could be taking out a piece of the Russian electric grid; but Russia presumably is armed with similar capability and could do the same thing. In which case, what does the US do next? 
 
 Until now, Obama has seemed reluctant to act without bipartisan support in the form of consensus from the Republican-controlled Congress. In September, White House homeland security and counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco, plus FBI director James Comey, and cabinet secretary of homeland security Jeh Johnson, met with 12 Senate leaders of both parties to brief them on the election hacking. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell responded by casting doubt on the intelligence, and pushed back against any public rebuke of Russia. He said he would view that as not factual, but a partisan message from the Democratic party. 
 
 With a Republican in the White House and the war over with Obama, however, McConnell and other Republican congressional leaders could look at the intelligence differently. But Trump, who has publicly expressed admiration for and a desire to get along with Putin, could be a different story. Obama certainly appears to be preparing for the possibility that Trump would ignore any evidence of Russian meddling. ||||| CIA officials told senators it is now "quite clear" that electing Donald Trump was Russia's goal. In an interview on Fox News Sunday on Dec. 11, President-elect Trump denied the CIA's assessment. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post) 
 
 As evidence piles up that Russia actively tried to tilt the presidential election to Donald Trump, the big flash point over a potential U.S. response won't just be between that nation and the United States — it could also be between the president-elect and the Republican Party. 
 
 Some senior congressional Republicans are indicating that they want to investigate Russia's meddling in our election; Trump — as well as some members of the GOP on Capitol Hill — has been clear that he wants to give Russia the benefit of the doubt. (After all, it's his victory that risks being called into question.) 
 
 It's a no-win situation for the GOP. But what if Russia-distrusting Republicans in Congress could get Trump to take a tougher line with Moscow? It would certainly make their lives a lot easier by allowing them to both hold Russia accountable and avoid a potential intraparty war as soon as Trump takes office. 
 
 They do have options to try to steer Trump away from being friendly with Russia — though pretty much all of them risk some level of confrontation with their president. Of course, there's no guarantee Trump would go along with Congress. But Mieke Eoyang, a national security expert with the center-left think tank Third Way, weighed in on four ways Congress could act, whether the commander in chief is on board or not: 
 
 1. Hold hearings. Lots of hearings. 
 
 
 
 Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) (Susan Walsh/Associated Press) 
 
 A hearing is Congress's equivalent of a bully pulpit. 
 
 And there are some early indications that Republicans, who control both chambers, intend to use it to get tough on Russia — and Trump. The Washington Post's Karoun Demirjian reported that several Republican senators who run powerful committees — Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) on the Armed Services Committee, Richard Burr (N.C.) on the Intelligence Committee and Bob Corker (Tenn.) on the Foreign Relations Committee — are readying hearings on Russia's ability to hack into U.S. political parties and even weapons systems. 
 
 These coordinated hearings are likely to have three overarching goals, each of which builds on the other: 
 
 1. Explain to the American public what, exactly, officials think Russia did to try to influence the election and how directly involved its government was in this. 
 
 2. Piece together an ironclad case that Russia took unprecedented steps to meddle in American democracy. 
 
 3. Try to prove to Trump that Russia is the bad guy here, in a way that gives their president no outs to say, as he did this past week, that the election-related hacks could have been done by “some guy in his home in New Jersey.” 
 
 Then again, these hearings also risk dividing Republicans in Congress. The Post reported Friday that in September, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) got a secret briefing on all this and threw doubt on intelligence officials' assessment that Russia was meddling in the election to benefit Trump. And he made clear he'd consider any attempt to go public with it before the election to be a partisan attack on his nominee. 
 
 Which raises the question of how those who wanted to defend Trump before the election will react to these revelations now that he's about a month shy of being president. 
 
 2. Take it to Russia overseas 
 
 
 
 A boy looks at a mural depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin and President-elect Donald Trump in Belgrade, Serbia. (Andrej Cukic/European Pressphoto Agency) 
 
 The battleground for this fight is in Syria and Ukraine. (Few things having to do with U.S.-Russian relations are direct.) Shortly after the election, the House passed a bill that would levy sanctions against any nation that tries to help the Syrian government in its effort to regain control in a years-long civil war. (The United States is on the side of the rebels.) 
 
 The bill was aimed partly at Russia, which has been providing military aid to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, even as human rights groups have said the Syrian government is slaughtering and even torturing innocent civilians. 
 
 Congress also passed a defense policy bill that calls for providing millions of dollars worth of weapons and other lethal aid to the government of Ukraine, another country torn by violence where the United States and Russia have held very different positions. 
 
 These bills attempt to draw a line in the sand for Russia and its actions overseas, but they also draw a line in the sand for Trump: Sign them or risk looking weak on Syria/Russia/the Islamic State. 
 
 Trump has said it would be “wonderful” if the United States and Russia could work together in Syria. But it's much easier to say that during a campaign than it is to veto a bill that your own party put on your desk and says is crucial to U.S. national security interests. 
 
 (There's also always the possibility of other sanctions aimed at Russia that have more to do with its actions in the United States than its Syria moves — though no sign of anything of that sort is in the works.) 
 
 3. Start a war of words with Trump 
 
 A bipartisan group of senators say they want to investigate whether Russia interfered with the 2016 U.S. election, amongst claims that Donald Trump's rhetoric on Russia and Vladimir Putin is too soft. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) 
 
 I call this one the Lindsey O. Graham method: Call out those who disagree with you on Russia strategy, even if that person is the president. 
 
 Or, perhaps, especially if that person is the president. 
 
 “I’m going after Russia in every way you can go after Russia,” the Republican South Carolina senator said Wednesday on CNN. “I think they’re one of the most destabilizing influences on the world stage. I think they did interfere with our elections, and I want [Russian President Vladimir] Putin personally to pay the price.” 
 
 This step probably creates the most chaos between Trump and his party, but it could be most effective if Republicans really do want to steer him away from Russia, Eoyang said. 
 
 Democrats have been crying foul about Russia for some time now, but their words often get lost in everyday partisan bickering — especially when their side is the one that lost the presidential election. 
 
 It raises eyebrows — and makes headlines — when Republicans are the ones critiquing their own president's position on Russia. And that could make it harder for Trump to ignore or dismiss. 
 
 4. Hope Russia shows its true colors 
 
 
 
 Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin in Moscow. (Pool photo by Natalia Kolesnikova via Associated Press) 
 
 Intelligence officials say there's “consensus” in their community that Russia tried to sway the U.S. election in an “unprecedented” way. 
 
 But you'd also be hard pressed to find a national security official who thinks Russia did this because it likes Trump, Eoyang said: “It's not like the Russians are partisan. They just want to see America weak.” 
 
 In other words, some national security experts say that they think it's only a matter of time until Russia decides it is in its interests to try to undermine Trump. 
 
 And letting Russia make the case to Trump via its own actions that it is a foe, not a friend, could be one of the most effective ways — possibly the only effective way — for Russia-skeptical Republicans in Congress to get their president to actually see Moscow the way they do.
– The fallout from Friday night's "bombshell" report from the CIA that Russian hackers directly interfered with the US election in order to get Donald Trump elected continued Saturday. Here are seven things you need to know: With Trump criticizing the CIA—rather than Russia—in the wake of the report, the New York Times reports he's opening an "extraordinary breach" between himself and the national security establishment he's bound to need during his presidency. While mostly at a loss, Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast has a few pieces of advice for what Democrats should do next: "Demand the release of the information. Demand a real investigation...The media needs to get the message that conservatives aren’t the only people who get pissed off." In a "no-win situation for the GOP," some Republicans in Congress want to investigate Russia's involvement in the election against Trump's wishes. The Washington Post has four ways they could take on Russia, with or without the president-elect. Harry Reid is calling for the resignation of FBI director James Comey, who he compares to J. Edgar Hoover and accuses of covering up information about Russia's activities to get Trump elected, the Guardian reports. Pamela Kruger at Fortune points out that Trump did Saturday what he normally does when faced with a major negative story: spend the morning tweeting about something completely unrelated; Celebrity Apprentice, in this case. Worried Trump will ignore Russian threats to US democracy when he takes office, Quartz reports President Obama is "racing against the clock" to get a full report on Russia's involvement in US affairs before he steps down in six weeks. Meanwhile, John McCain says the close relationship between Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson—Trump's likely secretary of state—and Vladimir Putin "a matter of concern," the Hill reports. With Democrats needing only three GOP senators to vote against Tillerson, a McCain aide says a confirmation is unlikely. "Putin is a thug, bully, and a murderer, and anybody else who describes him as anything else is lying," McCain says.