McCain: Russian Hacking Threatens American Democracy; U.S. Electors under Pressure to Change Vote; Extreme Weather Cripples U.S. Roadways.
GEORGE HOWELL, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Show us the proof: that is the word now from the Trump team as leading senators from both sides of the U.S. political divide ask for an independent probe into alleged Russian election hacking. And making it official: Electoral College voters get ready to seal the deal Monday officially making Donald Trump the 45th President of the United States. But there is an effort to get some of those voters to change their vote. And in the meantime, North Korea's leader, not known for keeping his opinions to himself, is withholding judgment on the president-elect. We will examine why he may be holding back -- still ahead. Live from CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta, welcome to our viewers here in the U.S. and around the world. I'm George Howell. CNN NEWSROOM starts right now.</s>HOWELL: It is 2:00 am on the U.S. East Coast. Russian hacking: the U.S. president-elect's chief of staff isn't so sure about it, at least not yet. This despite the fact that the CIA, the FBI and the director of the U.S. national intelligence all say that they are increasingly convinced Russia hacked the Democratic emails all in effort to try to influence the U.S. election. Reince Priebus says top intelligence officials should lay out their findings against Moscow publicly. Listen.</s>REINCE PRIEBUS, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: It sure would be nice to hear from everybody. I mean, if there is this conclusive opinion among all of these intelligence agencies then they should issue a report or they should stand in front of a camera and make the case.</s>HOWELL: Republican Senator John McCain and three other senators sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. They are asking for a select committee to look into these allegations of hacking, McCain slamming the U.S. response so far.</s>SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZ.: We need a select committee. We need to get to the bottom of this. 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. There's no doubt they were interfering and no doubt that it was cyber attacks. The question now is how much and what damage and what should the United States of America do? And so far, we have been totally paralyzed. This is serious business. If they are able to harm the electoral process, then they destroyed democracy, which is based on free and fair elections.</s>HOWELL: Senator John McCain, saying they destroyed democracy; following the story live, CNN's Matthew Chance, in the Russian capital this hour for us. Matthew, good to have you. The drumbeat continues to pick up momentum on this side of the globe. How are these allegations being perceived there in Russia?</s>MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's interesting; the reaction from the Kremlin has been pretty consistent really since the beginning of October, when these allegations first surfaced at the height of the U.S. campaign. And it's just been one of categorical denial and the last statement that I saw, which came late last week from the Kremlin, is they said it was indecent that the United States should keep coming up with this allegation without providing any proof at all. They said they should provide that proof or they should stop talking about it. And so you get the sense that the Kremlin is getting quite irritated at this point by the consistent flow of allegations that are coming from the United States' side. At the same time, I think -- and that view, by the way, is being affected very much on state media. At the same time, when you speak to ordinary Russians about this, the majority of them get their news from state media and so they see this as an attempt to besmirch Russia in the eyes of the incoming U.S. administration by its enemies. But there's another sense in which many people think, well, isn't it great that Russia has the power to be able to put its thumb on the scales of the U.S. presidential election potentially? So there's sort of a twisted national pride amongst some Russians I have spoken to that this could have happened, even though, as I say, the official position is that there is complete denial and a call for evidence.</s>HOWELL: You talk about the power there of cyber when it comes to Russia, the possibility of hacking in this election. But if you could, explain to our viewers, Matthew, the sophistication of Russia's ability when it comes to cyber.</s>CHANCE: Well, the truth is we don't know the full capabilities of Russia, just like we don't know the full capabilities of the United States and other countries that have significant cyber warfare capabilities. But what we do know, I think about Russia, is that it has started a process of --</s>CHANCE: -- what we call weaponization of information, which is something we haven't really seen to this extent ever before. They've got a whole complicated multilayered network of, you know, hacking of fake news, of trolling on the Internet, of, you know, just various other things that they are using in conjunction with each other to try and change the narrative when it comes to, in this case, United States elections but with other issues as well. The big difference, remember, in this alleged intervention in the U.S. election compared with other hacking scandals is that, you know, espionage, the gathering of information from U.S. political institutions is one matter. Actually then, weaponizing that information and releasing it in a partisan way is something that is new and it's something that's very, very disturbing to all of those watching the elections in the United States.</s>HOWELL: Matthew Chance, following the story, live for us in Moscow. Matthew, thank you for the reporting. Russia adamantly denies that it interfered with the U.S. elections but concerns about cyber hacking are not just confined to Washington, D.C. Ukraine and other Eastern European nations are also worried about Moscow possibly meddling as well. We get more on that from CNN's Ivan Watson.</s>IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): War games in the stony fields of Eastern Europe, as U.S. soldiers train in Latvia; 25 years ago, this was part of Soviet Union. Today, Latvia is part of the European Union and also a U.S. military ally in</s>NATO.  WATSON: These are live fire exercises. That's why I've got to wear all this extra protective armor. Military commanders say they're trying to show that they are a force of deterrence and their number one threat, Latvia's much bigger neighbor to the east.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The war games are really a response to Russian activity in 2014</s>WATSON (voice-over): He's talking about Russia's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula after Russian forces drove Ukrainian troops out of this corner of Ukraine in 2014. Russian's land grab frightens people in former Soviet republics like Latvia, where there are still bitter memories after a half-century of Soviet occupation.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our main aim is to protect and protect our sovereignty and</s>WATSON (voice-over): But there are two sides to this tension. We traveled from Latvia across Lithuania to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave in Europe that's cut off from mainland Russia. In Soviet times, this was a heavily militarized place, closed off from the outside world. Kaliningrad was recently thrust back into the spotlight after Russia deployed nuclear-capable missiles here. Russia's top diplomat defended the move, arguing it's the U.S. that's threatening Russia.</s>SERGEY LAVROV, RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: Well, it's our territory. But the plans of the United States, not only to -- well, they quadrupled, they think, the money allocated to support military deployment in Eastern Europe. Then they moved NATO infrastructure next to our borders.</s>WATSON (voice-over): Kaliningrad is still the headquarters of the Russian navy's Baltic fleet and Moscow has been flexing its own muscles, performing military drills in the region. In 2014, Western governments punished Russia's actions in Ukraine with economic sanctions. They've contributed to a broader economic crisis in Russia that's got everyone we talked to worried about the future. "Of course I feel bad when they always blame Russia for everything that's gone wrong in the world," says Konstantin Smirnov (ph). This confrontation, he tells me, is not good for anyone. Rival militaries maneuvering along opposite sides of increasingly tense borders in a land that still bears scars from the last time armies fought here.</s>WATSON: The countryside around Kaliningrad is dotted with dozens of old German churches like this one, abandoned and in ruins after the Soviet army invaded and conquered this land, reminders of what happened the last time tensions spun out of control in this part of Europe -- Ivan Watson, CNN, Kaliningrad, Russia.</s>HOWELL: Ivan, thank you. And a programming note for our international viewers joining today, all this week, CNN will have --</s>HOWELL: -- have special coverage of Vladimir Putin's Russia, from allegedly meddling in the U.S. elections to annexing Crimea and its role in the Syrian conflict. Be sure to join us for "Reports on Russia: Flexing Its Muscle on the Global Stage," here on CNN. So the election in the United States it did happen; Americans did vote but officially Donald Trump has yet to win the presidency. That all changes today because that is -- because 538 members of the U.S. electoral college will meet Monday in every U.S. state and the District of Columbia. They will be casting their ballots. Trump won the majority of electoral votes in last month's election, even though he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by about 3 million people. The electoral college vote is typically a formality. It's typically a rubber stamp, if you will. But this year, there has been a drive to get Republican electors to change their votes and it is drawing much more attention to this process. CNN's Kyung Lah reports the electors are being targeted with some intense messages.</s>KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The threats keep coming to Christopher Suprun (ph), from raping his wife and daughters with a knife before killing him to warnings on social media to messages on his cellphone.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You'd better get yo' shit straight. We coming after you.</s>CHRISTOPHER SUPRUN (PH), TEXAS ELECTOR: People have put out my home address. They put out my home phone number. We're now in a place, where, oh, you're not going to vote the way I want? I'm going to kill you.</s>LAH (voice-over): All because Suprun (ph) is a Republican Texas elector in the Electoral College. He's a so-called faithless elector, a conservative lifelong Republican will not vote for Donald Trump, even though the GOP easily won Texas.</s>LAH: Why not vote for Donald Trump? I mean, isn't that what you're supposed to do?</s>SUPRUN (PH): If I'm a rubber stamp, that's exactly what I'm supposed to do. This is, unfortunately, the first time I think we've needed to use it as a nation. But it's time to pull the brake.</s>LAH (voice-over): He claims that goal of stopping Trump has made him the target of a smear campaign. Suprun (ph) says he was a Dale City (ph), Virginia, volunteer paramedic at the Pentagon on 9/11. He said Trump supporters are alleging he was never there, a claim he calls "outrageous." The Dale City (ph) fire department says Suprun (ph) was a volunteer member from 2000-2002 but can't find a record of where he was on 9/11.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These electors are charged with a constitutional responsibility.</s>LAH (voice-over): The electoral vote is something we usually never pay attention to. But 2016 has been anything but usual.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bottom line, he hasn't won yet. The only vote that matters when it comes to president has not happened yet.</s>LAH (voice-over): Brett Kiafalo (ph), Democratic Washington State elector formed The Hamilton Electors the day after the election, now trying to urge Electoral College members across the country to block Trump from 270 votes. For that to happen, 37 Republican electors must flip. Suprun (ph) is the firset Republican to publicly flip but Kiafalo (ph) says he's heard from others.</s>BRETT KIAFALO (PH), DEMOCRATIC WASHINGTON STATE ELECTOR: We believe that there's a large group of people who are staying silent out of fear or maybe because they haven't made a final decision. But we do believe there's dozens of Republican electors who are seriously considering not voting for Donald Trump.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The callers will announce the votes.</s>LAH (voice-over): But even if that remote possibility happens, the House of Representatives controlled by Republicans elects the president.</s>LAH: He's still going to win.</s>SUPRUN (PH): He's still going to win.</s>LAH: So isn't this all pointless then?</s>SUPRUN (PH): Not if you're trying to vote your conscience. Not if you're trying to do the right thing and bring up the issue. I have been hoping he would become the president we all want him to be. But he keeps proving me wrong.</s>LAH (voice-over): Kyung Lah, CNN, Dallas.</s>HOWELL: Kyung Lah, thank you. Still ahead here on NEWSROOM, China and Donald Trump spar yet again over his tweets. What China did this time to rile up the U.S. president. Plus: hundreds of people have been evacuated from Eastern Aleppo. But thousands more are still waiting and it is getting tougher for them to survive the hunger and the freezing temperatures.