Embarrassed Democrats making hacking noise: Trump

Incoming Republican President Donald Trump has said that Democrats are making a lot of “noise” about Russia’s alleged cyberattacks against US political organizations to influence the 2016 presidential election because they were “embarrassed” by the election results.

Trump made the remarks in a series of tweets on Saturday morning, a day after the US intelligence community released an unclassified report claiming that the Russian government directed hackers to target various Democratic Party organizations and operatives to influence the outcome of the election.

Trump downplayed Russia's role in the election, saying there was no credible evidence the hacking affected the election results.

“Intelligence stated very strongly there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results. Voting machines not touched!” he tweeted.

In another tweet, Trump said, “Only reason the hacking of the poorly defended DNC is discussed is that the loss by the Dems was so big that they are totally embarrassed!”

In another tweet on late Friday, Trump said negligence on the part of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) might have allowed any incident of hacking.

“Gross negligence by the Democratic National Committee allowed hacking to take place. The Republican National Committee had strong defense!” he tweeted.

According to the assessment from the intelligence community delivered in a public report on Friday and provided to Trump in a separate classified briefing, Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered his government to help Trump win the presidential election.

The report claims that Russia "sought to help" Trump by running a smear campaign against Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, but the report has not concluded that the Russian interference tipped the scales to the Republican candidate.

Trump has previously floated the idea that the hacks could have been carried out by a "14-year-old" or "a guy sitting on their bed who weighs 400 pounds."

The president-elect has also cited past faulty intelligence involving the Iraq War to raise doubts about the intelligence community's assessment now.

"These are the same people who said Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction," Trump said in a statement last month.

Meanwhile, former CIA director Leon Panetta on Friday denounced Trump's distrust of the intelligence community regarding Russia’s alleged role in election-related hacking, calling it "just unheard of and unprecedented."

The Democratic claims of the alleged hacking have been strongly rejected by Moscow. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, which published the stolen emails, has also denied that the Russian government provided the files.

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