Trump agrees Russia responsible for election hacking

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US President-elect Donald Trump has accepted the US intelligence community's findings that Russia was behind the cyber-attacks targeting the 2016 US presidential election, Trump's team said on Sunday.

This combination of pictures created on December 30, 2016 shows a file photo taken on December 28, 2016 of US President-elect Donald Trump (L) in Palm Beach, Florida; and a file photo taken on December 23, 2016, of Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking in Moscow. /CFP Photo

"He's not denying that entities in Russia were behind this particular campaign," said incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus in an interview with Fox News. "He accepts the fact that this particular case was entities in Russia. So, that's not the issue."

However, Priebus did not clarify whether Trump agreed that the Russian hacking was designed to help him win.

It is the first time any senior official from Trump's transition team has acknowledged that, after months of denial and sometimes even disparagement of the US intelligence community, Trump agreed that Russians were responsible for the hacking that led to the leaking of material which dogged Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the final months of her campaign.

US President-elect Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, US, December 28, 2016. /CFP Photo

US intelligence agencies released a report on Friday, making public their assessment that Russia interfered in the US presidential election last year.

"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election," the report said, adding that Moscow's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process.

"We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump," it added. "We have high confidence in these judgments."

President-elect Donald Trump at the New York Hilton Midtown in Manhattan, New York, US, November 9, 2016. /CFP Photo

The report said Moscow's actions were part of its "longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order," and demonstrated a "significant escalation in directness, level of activity and scope of effort."

(Story by Xinhua)