House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., right, sitting next to ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., left, listens during a hearing on "Cyber-securing the... (Associated Press) 
 
 House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., right, sitting next to ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., left, listens during a hearing on "Cyber-securing the Vote: Ensuring the Integrity of the U.S. Election System," on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — Under pressure to show he's taking the threat of Russian interference seriously, President Donald Trump claimed without evidence Tuesday that Moscow will be "fighting very hard" to help Democrats win in the 2018 midterm elections. 
 
 Trump, who has offered mixed messages on Russian interference in U.S. elections — at times even calling it a "hoax" — acknowledged in a tweet that the midterms are a likely target. 
 
 "I'm very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election," Trump wrote. But he added "they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don't want Trump!" 
 
 That's despite Russian President Vladimir Putin saying outright last week, following the leaders' summit in Helsinki, that he wanted Trump to win in 2016. U.S. intelligence agencies also have determined that Russia interfered in the election to help him win, and the agencies have warned there are ominous signs of more cyberattacks to come. 
 
 At Tuesday's hearing, Christopher Krebs of the Homeland Security Department said the intelligence community has observed "continued malign influence operations" into 2018, though they do not appear to be "an effort at the same scope or scale" as in 2016. 
 
 As Trump tweeted on Tuesday, House Republicans held a hearing on election security in which lawmakers — even some of Trump's closest GOP allies — strongly criticized Russian interference and pointed to an indictment this month of 12 Russian intelligence officers. The indictment alleges that the Russians broke into Democratic email accounts and tried to penetrate state election systems. 
 
 House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy noted that the indictment said there is no evidence the vote count was affected, "but that was not likely for a lack of trying." 
 
 Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina criticized Trump directly. 
 
 "Unfortunately, the president's recent comments at the U.S.-Russia summit in Helsinki failed to hold Putin accountable for his attacks on our country's interests and deter him from future indiscretions," she said. 
 
 Other Republicans were careful to draw a line and not directly disagree with the president. 
 
 "I don't think anyone here denies the fact that Russia attempted to meddle in the elections," said Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga. "The issue of meddling is one thing, the issue of the president colluding is another and that is indeed a witch hunt." 
 
 Democrats said Republicans haven't done enough to keep the vote secure this fall. They asked for more questioning, more documents and more money for states to secure their election infrastructure. 
 
 "We need all of our Republican colleagues to conduct oversight — not just use strong words," said Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House oversight panel. 
 
 Earlier this year, Congress allocated $380 million to assist states with election security upgrades, and most of that money has been disbursed. Democrats want to continue the money through 2019, but Republicans have said new spending isn't needed. 
 
 The very makeup of the election infrastructure — decentralized and different in every state — provides some protection against hacking efforts. But state and local election officials have been working with the Department of Homeland Security to shore up their efforts after at least 21 state systems were scanned for vulnerabilities by Russian hackers and at least one state saw its voter registration system breached. 
 
 In addition to helping state election officials obtain security clearances so they can be briefed on the latest threats to elections, Homeland Security officials also offer remote scanning of their networks to identify any vulnerabilities as well as intensive cybersecurity reviews that involve onsite exams. 
 
 "DHS has made tremendous strides and is committed to working collaboratively with those on the front lines of administering our elections to secure election infrastructure from risks," Krebs said. 
 
 Even if state elections systems are better protected, other threats remain. Last week, Microsoft officials said they had seen evidence that suggested phishing attacks were being directed at three candidates who are all standing for election in the midterm elections. The company would not disclose the candidates, citing privacy issues. 
 
 Meanwhile in the Senate on Tuesday, two senators introduced bipartisan legislation to impose new Russian sanctions, saying the U.S. "must make it abundantly clear that we will defend our nation." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Lisa Mascaro, Tami Abdollah and Deb Riechmann in Washington and Frank Bajak in Boston contributed to this report. ||||| Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome. 
 
 The ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials — including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the country’s cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election — contributed to the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Moscow’s efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House. 
 
 Other key pieces of information gathered by U.S. spy agencies include the identification of “actors” involved in delivering stolen Democratic emails to the WikiLeaks website, and disparities in the levels of effort Russian intelligence entities devoted to penetrating and exploiting sensitive information stored on Democratic and Republican campaign networks. 
 
 Those and other data points are at the heart of an unprecedented intelligence report being circulated in Washington this week that details the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and catalogues other cyber operations by Moscow against U.S. election systems over the past nine years. 
 
 The classified document, which officials said is over 50 pages, was delivered to President Obama on Thursday, and it is expected to be presented to Trump in New York on Friday by the nation’s top spy officials, including Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and CIA Director John Brennan. 
 
 (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post) 
 
 Given the president-elect’s skepticism about the intelligence community — particularly its conclusions about Russia — the Trump Tower briefing has taken on the tenor of a showdown between the president-elect and the intelligence agencies he has disparaged. 
 
 [Top U.S. intelligence official testifies on Russian interference in election ] 
 
 “The Russians felt pretty good about what happened on Nov. 8 and they also felt pretty good about what they did,” a senior U.S. official said. 
 
 U.S. officials declined to say whether the intercepted communications were cited in the classified version of the report commissioned by Obama, and they emphasized that although the messages were seen as strong indicators of Moscow’s intent and clear preference for Trump, they were not regarded as conclusive evidence of Russian intelligence agencies’ efforts to achieve that outcome. 
 
 “There are a variety of different exhibits that make the case, different factors that have provided the intelligence community with high confidence” that Russia sought in part to help elect Trump, said a second senior U.S. official who has reviewed intelligence findings on Russia’s cyber operations. 
 
 Officials emphasized that “signals intelligence,” as such communication is known, is treated by analysts with caution because statements can be taken out of context and sophisticated adversaries including the Kremlin are adept at spreading disinformation. 
 
 U.S. officials who have reviewed the new report said it goes far beyond the brief public statement that Clapper and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson issued in October, accusing Russia of having “directed” cyber operations to disrupt the U.S. election, and concluding, in a reference to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, that “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.” 
 
 The new report incorporates material from previous assessments and assembles in a single document details of cyber operations dating back to 2008. Still, U.S. officials said there are no major new bombshell disclosures even in the classified report. A shorter, declassified version is expected to be released to the public early next week. 
 
 Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 election and the question of how the United States should respond have become bitterly polarizing issues in Washington, sowing discord among Republicans on Capitol Hill, complicating the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations, and exacerbating an increasingly toxic relationship between the president-elect and U.S. spy services. 
 
 Senior lawmakers have called for a full investigation of the Russian hacking. Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Clapper said that Moscow’s cyber assault on the election went beyond interference and into “activism.” 
 
 At Thursday’s hearing, Clapper said that U.S. spy agencies “stand actually more resolutely” behind conclusions they reached last year on Russia’s determination to undermine the U.S. election. He also appeared to take aim at Trump’s social media sniping at U.S. intelligence services, saying that “there’s a difference between skepticism and disparagement.” 
 
 Obama last week announced a series of measures designed to punish Russia, actions he characterized as “a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests.” Obama moved to impose economic sanctions on Russian intelligence agencies, expelled dozens of alleged Russian intelligence operatives from the United States, and shuttered two compounds that for decades had purportedly served as retreats for Russian diplomats but were described by the administration as locations for espionage activities. 
 
 Meanwhile, Trump continued his string of Twitter attacks, accusing U.S. intelligence agencies — with the word “intelligence” set off in quotation marks — of delaying a planned briefing on Russia and the election, a charge that U.S. officials disputed. He also appeared to side with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has denied that his organization got the hacked emails from Russia, over U.S. spy agencies, which think that WikiLeaks got the material through middlemen with ties to the Kremlin. 
 
 [How Julian Assange evolved from pariah to paragon] 
 
 Trump appeared to retreat on Thursday, accusing the “dishonest media” of misrepresenting his comments about Assange. “The media lies to make it look like I am against ‘Intelligence,’ ” he said, “when in fact I am a big fan!” 
 
 U.S. officials said the captured messages, whose existence has not previously been disclosed, added to the confidence level at the CIA and other agencies that Putin’s goals went beyond seeking to undermine confidence in America’s election machinery and ultimately were aimed at tilting a fiercely contested presidential race toward a candidate seen as more in line with Moscow’s foreign policy goals. 
 
 Even so, the messages also revealed that top officials in Russia anticipated that Clinton would win and did not expect their effort to achieve its goal. 
 
 Russian officials “were as surprised as the rest of the world,” said the second U.S. official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. 
 
 “In this case, you do learn things after the fact based on how they feel about it,” the first official said, adding that the intercepts added to the intelligence community’s “shifting level of confidence.” 
 
 The intercepts also echoed some public comments in Moscow. “Trump understood the mood of the people and kept going until the end, when nobody believed in him,” Putin said at a news conference last month, adding with a wry smile, “except for you and me.” 
 
 U.S. intelligence officials think that Putin has for years held a grudge against Clinton, whom he accused of fomenting demonstrations in Moscow in 2011 and 2012 that embarrassed Putin and rattled the former KGB operative’s confidence in his grip on power. 
 
 Russia’s elite spy services have for years used cyberespionage capabilities to gather information on U.S. policymakers and political candidates — as the United States does on Russia. But Moscow’s decision to dump thousands of stolen emails into public view on WikiLeaks was seen as a provocative departure from the traditional lanes of espionage, U.S. officials said. 
 
 Clapper on Thursday said there is a difference between “an act of espionage, which we conduct, as well, and other nations do, versus an attack.” 
 
 U.S. officials said that Russia’s goals appear to have shifted over time. Moscow’s initial hacking operations targeted almost every major candidate, including Trump’s Republican primary rivals, as part of a fairly typical clandestine collection program. 
 
 Russia’s initial objective may have been merely to meddle and undermine the legitimacy of an assumed Clinton victory. But as Trump captured the GOP nomination and showed that he could remain competitive with Clinton, Russia’s aims became more ambitious, officials said. The final months of the race saw a steady stream of leaked emails that damaged Clinton’s candidacy, without any corresponding release to embarrass Trump. 
 
 Russia also used social media and “fake news” platforms as an “accelerant” to try to boost Trump and undermine Clinton, the second official said. 
 
 Julie Tate contributed to this report. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 Putin to Democratic Party: You lost, get over it 
 
 U.S. intelligence officials say Russian hacks ‘prioritized’ Democrats 
 
 Obama administration announces measures to punish Russia for 2016 election interference
– Under pressure to show he's taking the threat of Russian interference seriously, President Trump claimed without evidence Tuesday that Moscow will be "fighting very hard" to help Democrats win in the 2018 midterm elections, the AP reports. Trump, who has offered mixed messages on Russian interference in US elections—at times even calling it a "hoax"—acknowledged in a tweet that the midterms are a likely target. "I'm very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election," Trump wrote. "Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!" That's despite Russian President Vladimir Putin saying outright last week, following the leaders' summit in Helsinki, that he wanted Trump to win in 2016. US intelligence agencies also have determined that Russia interfered in the election to help him win, and the agencies have warned there are ominous signs of more cyberattacks to come. As Trump tweeted on Tuesday, House Republicans held a hearing on election security in which lawmakers—even some of Trump's closest GOP allies—strongly criticized Russian interference and pointed to an indictment this month of 12 Russian intelligence officers. The indictment alleges that the Russians broke into Democratic email accounts and tried to penetrate state election systems. House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy noted that the indictment said there is no evidence the vote count was affected, "but that was not likely for a lack of trying." Meanwhile in the Senate on Tuesday, two senators introduced bipartisan legislation to impose new Russian sanctions, saying the US "must make it abundantly clear that we will defend our nation."