Trump renews questions about election hacking reports

WASHINGTON - U.S. Republican President-elect Donald Trump on Monday renewed his questions about U.S. intelligence reports that Russia intervened in the presidential election by targeting his rival.

In two posts on Twitter, Trump also suggested that politics played a role in the news reports on the Russian hacking that emerged late last week.

'Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!” he wrote.

A second tweet said, 'Unless you catch ‘hackers' in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn't this brought up before election?”

The U.S. government did accuse Russia of trying to interfere with the election process a full month before the Nov. 8 vote with a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations. A statement from the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security said the hacks could have been authorized 'only by Russia's senior-most officials.”

Trump had addressed the suspected Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee during a debate with rival Hillary Clinton by saying the intrusion also could have been carried out by China or 'somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Bill Trott)