HIGHLIGHTS Russian role in election dominates Sunday talk shows 
 
 Podesta says Russians ‘clearly intervened’ in election 
 
 Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and a bipartisan group of colleagues, including Republican Sen. John McCain, sent a letter Sunday to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell requesting a special committee to probe reported Russian interference into the November presidential election. 
 
 “Cybersecurity is the ultimate cross-jurisdictional challenge,” the letter states. It also says the “select committee on cyber” should make recommendations on “new legislation to modernize our nation’s laws, governmental organization, and related practices to meet this challenge.” 
 
 Also on Sunday, Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) called for an investigation into whether and why CIA director John Brennan leaked information on Russian hacking to members of the media. King has said the House Intelligence Committee has not learned that Russian officials sought to help Donald Trump win the election, only that they wanted to interfere with the race. 
 
 “There should be an investigation of what the Russians did, but also John Brennan and the hit job he seems to be orchestrating against the president-elect,” King said on ABC’s “This Week.” 
 
 David Popp, spokesman for McConnell (R-Ky.), said the senator will review the letter and noted the senator said last week he supports a bipartisan inquiry into any Russian meddling. The letter was sent by Schumer (D-N.Y.), McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.). 
 
 On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman, said “Russians were trying to elect a lap dog” by backing Trump through the series of cyberhacks. 
 
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 “I think the Russians clearly intervened in the election and I think that . . . now we know that both the CIA, the director of national intelligence, the FBI all agree that the Russians intervened to help Trump and that — as they have noted this week, NBC first revealed — that Vladimir Putin was personally involved with that,” Podesta said. 
 
 Russian diplomats said they were talking to the Trump campaign and Trump surrogates said in August that they were in touch with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Podesta said. 
 
 On “Fox News Sunday,” incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said Trump was still waiting for a uniform response from intelligence officials regarding Russia’s involvement in hacking U.S. officials, though he does not think the hacks affected the outcome of the election. 
 
 “I think he would accept the conclusion if these intelligence professionals would get together, put out a report, show the American people that they’re actually on the same page,” Priebus said. “Let’s assume it’s true. There’s no evidence that shows that the outcome of the election was changed because of a couple dozen John Podesta emails that were out there.” 
 
 Podesta said he was only contacted by the FBI two days after his emails appeared on WikiLeaks on Oct. 7. He has not had any further contact with the FBI, he said. 
 
 With Alison Fox ||||| Senator John McCain passed documents to the FBI director, James Comey, last month alleging secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Moscow and that Russian intelligence had personally compromising material on the president-elect himself. 
 
 
 
 The material, which has been seen by the Guardian, is a series of reports on Trump’s relationship with Moscow. They were drawn up by a former western counter-intelligence official, now working as a private consultant. BuzzFeed on Tuesday published the documents, which it said were “unverified and potentially unverifiable”. 
 
 Explainer: what is in the Trump-Russia dossier John McCain passed to the FBI? Read more 
 
 The Guardian has not been able to confirm the veracity of the documents’ contents, and the Trump team has consistently denied any hidden contacts with the Russian government. 
 
 A spokesman for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday denied Russia has collected compromising information on Trump and dismissed news reports as a “complete fabrication and utter nonsense”. Dmitry Peskov insisted that the Kremlin “does not engage in collecting compromising material”. 
 
 Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but late on Tuesday, Trump tweeted: “FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” He made no direct reference to the allegations. 
 
 An official in the US administration who spoke to the Guardian described the source who wrote the intelligence report as consistently reliable, meticulous and well-informed, with a reputation for having extensive Russian contacts. 
 
 Some of the reports – which are dated from 20 June to 20 October last year – also proved to be prescient, predicting events that happened after they were sent. 
 
 
 
 One report, dated June 2016, claims that the Kremlin has been cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for at least five years, with the aim of encouraging “splits and divisions in western alliance”. 
 
 It claims that Trump had declined “various sweetener real estate deals offered him in Russia” especially in developments linked to the 2018 World Cup finals but that “he and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.” 
 
 Most explosively, the report alleges: “FSB has compromised Trump through his activities in Moscow sufficiently to be able to blackmail him.” The president-elect has not responded to the allegations. 
 
 The story of the Trump dossier: secret sources, an airport handoff, and John McCain Read more 
 
 CNN reported on Tuesday that the FBI was still investigating the credibility of the documents but added that the intelligence chiefs had included a summary of the material in a secret briefing on Russian interference in the election delivered last week to Barack Obama and Donald Trump. 
 
 The emergence of the documents is potentially explosive, 10 days before Trump’s inauguration and on the eve of his first planned press conference since July last year. 
 
 Despite glowing references from US and foreign officials who have worked with the source, there are some errors in the reports. One describes the Moscow suburb of Barvikha as “reserved for the residences of the top leadership and their close associates”, but although it is a very expensive neighbourhood, there are no restrictions on who can own property there. The document also misspells the name of a Russian banking corporation. 
 
 The FBI does not normally make any comment on ongoing counter-intelligence investigations but was under increasing pressure from Democrats and some Republicans to act before the inauguration, particularly because of Comey’s announcement of a continuing investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server 11 days before the election, which many of her supporters believe cost her the presidency. 
 
 
 
 The reports were initially commissioned as opposition research during the presidential campaign, but its author was sufficiently alarmed by what he discovered to send a copy to the FBI. It is unclear who within the organisation they reached and what action the bureau took. The former Democratic Senate leader, Harry Reid, has lambasted Comey for publicising investigations into Hillary Clinton’s private server, while allegedly sitting on “explosive” material on Trump’s ties to Russia. 
 
 Another Democratic senator, Ron Wyden, questioned Comey insistently at a Senate intelligence committee hearing on Tuesday on whether the FBI was pursuing leads on Trump campaign contacts with Russia. 
 
 “Has the FBI investigated these reported relationships?” Wyden asked. 
 
 Comey replied: “I would never comment on investigations … in a public forum. 
 
 The Guardian can confirm that the documents reached the top of the FBI by December. Senator John McCain, who was informed about the existence of the documents separately by an intermediary from a western allied state, dispatched an emissary overseas to meet the source and then decided to present the material to Comey in a one-on-one meeting on 9 December, according to a source aware of the meeting. The documents, which were first reported on last year by Mother Jones, are also in the hands of officials in the White House. 
 
 James Comey refuses to tell Senate if FBI is investigating Trump-Russia links Read more 
 
 McCain is not thought to have made a judgment on the reliability of the documents but was sufficiently impressed by the source’s credentials to feel obliged to pass them to the FBI. 
 
 The Senate armed services committee, which Senator McCain chairs, launched an inquiry last week into Russian cyber-attacks during the election. 
 
 McCain was reluctant to get involved, according to a colleague, for fear the issue would be dismissed as a personal grudge against Trump. He pushed instead for the creation of a special Senate committee to look into connections between campaign staff and Moscow, but the proposal was blocked by the Republican leadership. 
 
 McCain told the NBC programme Meet the Press on Sunday: “I would like to see a select committee. Apparently that is not in agreement by our leadership. So we will move forward with the armed services committee and I’m sure foreign relations and intelligence committee will as well.” 
 
 But the senator added: “It is possible if enough information comes out, that that decision could be reversed. I still think it’s the best way to attack the issue.” 
 
 Asked on the same programme on whether an investigation was ongoing into campaign links to Moscow, Senator Lindsey Graham, another conservative Republican said: “I believe that it’s happening.” 
 
 According to the report passed to Comey, Russian intelligence allegedly gathered compromising material during Trump’s stay in Moscow in November 2013, when he was in the city to host the Miss Universe pageant. 
 
 
 
 Another report, dated 19 July last year said that Carter Page, a businessman named by Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers, had held a secret meeting that month with Igor Sechin, head of the Rosneft state-owned oil company and a long-serving lieutenant of Vladimir Putin. Page also allegedly met Igor Divyekin, an internal affairs official with a background in intelligence, who is said to have warned Page that Moscow had “kompromat” (compromising material) on Trump. 
 
 Two months later, allegations of Page’s meetings surfaced in the US media, attributed to intelligence sources, along with reports that he had been under FBI scrutiny. 
 
 Page, a vociferous supporter of the Kremlin line, was in Moscow in July to make a speech decrying western policy towards Russia. At the time he declined to say whether he had been in contact with Russian officials, but in September he rejected the reports as “garbage”. 
 
 The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation. 
 
 A month after Trump’s surprise election victory, Page was back in Moscow saying he was meeting with “business leaders and thought leaders”, dismissing the FBI investigation as a “witch-hunt” and suggesting the Russian hacking of the Democratic Party alleged by US intelligence agencies, could be a false flag operation to incriminate Moscow. 
 
 Another of the reports compiled by the former western counter-intelligence official in July said that members of Trump’s team, which was led by campaign manager Paul Manafort (a former consultant for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine), had knowledge of the DNC hacking operation, and in return “had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue and to raise US/Nato defence commitments in the Baltics and Eastern Europe to deflect attention away from Ukraine”. 
 
 A few days later, Trump raised the possibility that his administration might recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea and openly called on Moscow to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails. 
 
 In August, officials from the Trump campaign intervened in the drafting of the Republican party platform, specifically to remove a call for lethal assistance to Ukraine for its battle against Moscow-backed eastern rebels. 
 
 Trump campaign denies report of Trump Organization tie to Russian bank Read more 
 
 Manafort stepped down in August as campaign manager and the campaign steadily distanced itself from Page. However, Trump’s praise of Putin and defence of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine and Syria remained one of the few constants in his campaign talking points. 
 
 Manafort has denied secret links with Moscow calling the allegation “an outrageous smear being driven by Harry Reid and the Clinton campaign”. 
 
 Since then, Trump has consistently cast doubt on Russian culpability for hacking the Democratic National Committee, defying a consensus of 17 national intelligence agencies. After Obama deported 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation for Moscow’s intervention, Trump praised Putin for not carrying out tit-for-tat deportations of US diplomats. “I always knew he was very smart,” he tweeted. 
 
 An FBI spokesman declined to comment after the CNN report. ||||| In an extraordinary rebuke of the intelligence agencies he will soon lead as president, Donald Trump broke with his predecessor on Friday and rejected the conclusion that Russia had sought to help him by meddling in the U.S. election. 
 
 "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," the Trump transition team said in a unsigned press release. "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.'" 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 The Trump team's highly unusual statement came after the White House revealed that President Barack Obama has ordered a "deep dive" into the cyberattacks that plagued this year's election -- and news reports suggested that some agencies had already reached conclusions that Trump might find uncomfortable. 
 
 Obama has asked the intelligence community to deliver its final report before he leaves office, raising the prospect that agencies may conclude that a foreign power successfully altered the trajectory of the Nov. 8 election just days before Trump's inauguration. 
 
 The review will put the spate of hacks — which officials have blamed on Russia — "in a greater context" by framing them against the "malicious cyber activity" that may have occurred around the edges of the 2008 and 2012 president elections, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said during Friday's briefing. 
 
 "This will be a review that is broad and deep at the same time," he added. 
 
 The Washington Post reported on Friday evening that the CIA had determined in a secret assessment that the Russian government had interfered in this year's election not just to rattle confidence in the system but specifically to help elect Trump, whose fiery response came just hours later. 
 
 In an interview days earlier with Time magazine, Trump flatly rejected intelligence agencies' preliminary finding that Russia had hacked Democrats' computer and email systems to influence the election. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe they interfered,” he said. Asked directly if those conclusions were motivated by partisan politics, he replied: “I think so.” 
 
 The White House's announcement follows repeated demands from congressional Democrats for more information about the digital assault that destabilized the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's campaign through much of the election. Schultz insisted the review was "unrelated" to these requests, however. 
 
 At a Friday morning event, Lisa Monaco, Obama’s counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, explained that the country had "crossed into a new threshold." 
 
 "It is incumbent upon us to take stock of that, to review, to conduct some after-action, to understand what this means, what has happened and to impart those lessons learned," she said at a breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor. 
 
 It's not clear how much of the report will be made public, or what actions it might lead to, a potential point of irritation for lawmakers who have urged the Obama administration to publicly strike back against Russia and to declassify more information about the election-season hacks. 
 
 Schultz vowed to "make public as much as we can." 
 
 "Obviously, you can imagine a report like this is gonna contain highly, you know, sensitive and even classified information," he added, noting that Congress and "relevant stakeholders," such as state election officials, would be briefed on the findings. 
 
 But Schultz did say the review would not spare any country that has digitally meddled in a U.S. election. 
 
 In 2008, the campaigns for both Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Obama were bombarded by suspected Chinese hackers, according to U.S. intelligence officials. The digital intruders were reportedly after internal policy papers and the emails of top advisers. 
 
 And in 2012, Gawker reported that hackers had broken into Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s personal Hotmail account after correctly answering his backup security question: “What is your favorite pet?” 
 
 "We will be looking at all foreign actors and any attempt to interfere with the elections," Schultz said. 
 
 View Obama orders deep dive of election-related hacking The White House talks about the election on Friday. 
 
 The Obama administration in early October accused the Russian government of directing a digital campaign to disrupt the U.S. election. As part of this effort, U.S. officials said Moscow-backed hackers infiltrated the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other political organizations. 
 
 Emails and documents from some of these groups ended up leaking online through WikiLeaks and other suspicious websites and hackers that researchers alleged were fronts for Russian intelligence services. 
 
 Hackers reportedly linked to Russia also breached the personal email accounts of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, and several Democratic staffers. 
 
 At Friday’s event, Monaco struck an ominous tone about internet-related dangers, calling them among the most significant national security issues facing the new administration. President-elect Donald Trump’s team will "inherit a rapidly growing threat in this space across all dimensions," she said, including intrusions from both "hacktivists" and "criminal actors." 
 
 Trump, however, has repeatedly rejected the intelligence community’s conclusion about the election-related cyberattacks, arguing that the allegations were politically motivated. 
 
 The president-elect’s ongoing denial of Russian involvement may have, in part, spurred Obama to act. Administration officials told NBC News that “Obama is concerned that Russia will go unpunished for the behavior unless he acts.” 
 
 Obama also moved after a months-long Capitol Hill pressure campaign. 
 
 In September, Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and her House counterpart, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), put out a statement accusing Moscow of trying to "influence the U.S. election" with the breaches, weeks before the administration made similar allegations. 
 
 The chorus for action ebbed and flowed over the last few months, with Democrats calling on GOP congressional leaders to launch various probes into the Kremlin’s involvement and on the White House to share with the public how it reached its conclusion. 
 
 But the campaign surged back into the spotlight this week, when House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer and the highest-ranking Democrats on several national security-focused House committees sent a letter to Obama asking for administration officials to brief all members of Congress on Russian efforts to influence the election. 
 
 A spokeswoman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday said the White House review "complements the efforts of House Democrats," which also includes a bill from Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) that would create an independent commission to study the election hacks. 
 
 Hoyer called for "a complete accounting of what Russia or Russian-backed entities did." 
 
 “The American people deserve to know the extent to which a foreign adversary meddled in our democracy," he added. 
 
 Cummings said he hopes the upcoming report will help Congress investigate the issue itself and "allow all members of Congress to receive additional intelligence." 
 
 “I hope we can get to the bottom of it ... as soon as possible,” said Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. 
 
 In addition to the Democratic pressure campaign, several Republican committee and subcommittee chairmen have promised to hold hearings on the cyberattacks. 
 
 The Washington Post reported Thursday night that Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) was readying his own investigation, “working closely” with Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. 
 
 Burr on Friday said his committee "has been, and remains, concerned about Russia’s actions." 
 
 Democrats mostly praised the White House on Friday as details of the review emerged, but reiterated calls for Congress to be kept in the loop. 
 
 Schiff said he was “pleased," but called on the White House to “declassify as much of it as possible, while protecting our sources and methods, and make it available to the public.” 
 
 Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a vocal privacy advocate on the Intelligence Committee who has pressed the administration to release more details about the alleged Russian hacking, echoed Schiff's call. 
 
 "This is good news," he said in a statement. "Declassifying and releasing information about the Russian government and the US election, and doing so quickly, must be a priority." 
 
 Schiff wants the White House to go further. 
 
 “More than that, the administration must begin to take steps to respond forcefully to this blatant cyber meddling, and work with our allies in Europe who have been targets of similar attacks to impose costs on the Kremlin," Schiff added. "If we do not, we can expect to see a lot more of this in the near future." 
 
 If Obama doesn't act, Democrats are hoping the report will put pressure on the Trump administration to stand up to Russia. 
 
 "President-elect Trump, who openly encouraged foreign hackers to target his political opponent in the campaign, has a responsibility to the American people to confront any foreign government’s efforts to undermine American democracy," Pelosi said in a statement. 
 
 But some Republicans were not as charitable to the White House. 
 
 House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) chided the president for having "suddenly awoken to the threat" posed by Moscow. 
 
 "As I’ve said many times, the intelligence community has repeatedly failed to anticipate Putin’s hostile actions," Nunes said. 
 
 Burr agreed that his panel has always fed the White House the "necessary" intelligence information. 
 
 "What our nation’s leaders do with that information, and how they respond to those threats and challenges, is largely the responsibility of other committees," he said. 
 
 Nolan McCaskill and Nahal Toosi contributed to this report. ||||| 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.”
– 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.