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 The president-elect has taken yet more swipes at the intelligence community that will be under his command in just a few weeks, once again on Twitter. 
 
 Donald Trump mocked intelligence officials on Tuesday evening, claiming they had delayed a scheduled briefing on alleged Russian hacking because they "needed more time to build a case." 
 
 And on Wednesday, Trump continued to cast doubt on intelligence findings as he cited WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange's claim that a "14-year-old kid could have hacked" the emails of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. "Also [Assange] said Russians did not give him the info!" Trump added. 
 
 Trump's tweets came after Assange once again claimed that Russia was not the source of Podesta's stolen emails, published by WikiLeaks. He told Fox News' Sean Hannity that our "source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party" and that "a 14-year-old kid could have hacked Podesta." 
 
 Intelligence experts both inside and outside of the government say evidence suggests Russia had tried to influence the election. The Obama administration has said the hacking campaign went to the highest level of the Russian government. 
 
 Trump has previously stated that it's nearly impossible to know who hacked what and when. The president-elect antagonized the intelligence community over the weekend, telling reporters gathered outside his New Year’s Eve party that hacking is a “very hard thing to prove” and that he knows “things that other people don’t know, and so [intelligence officials] cannot be sure of the situation." 
 
 Trump has promised to reveal what he proclaims to know this week but there has been some confusion over when he will receive new intelligence briefings. 
 
 He initially said he would be meeting with high-level intel briefers mid-week but that it was delayed. 
 
 However, a senior U.S. intelligence official with direct knowledge of the situation told NBC News Tuesday night that the heads of the NSA, CIA, FBI and the director of national intelligence were always scheduled to meet with Trump on Friday. 
 
 Another official had previously told NBC News that the briefing was scheduled for Wednesday, but that was apparently wrong. 
 
 A senior intelligence official called Trump's tweet disturbing and "adversarial," telling NBC News: "He's calling out the men and women of the intelligence community the way he called out Lockheed and Boeing, but these are public servants." 
 
 Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the new top Democrat in the Senate, said on MSNBC Tuesday night that Trump was being "really dumb" in taking on the U.S. intelligence community. "You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday to get back at you," he told Rachel Maddow on her show. 
 
 CIA Director John Brennan told PBS Newshour Tuesday that his report on Russian hacking was in the “final throes” and would be delivered to President Obama in days. 
 
 Meanwhile, Trump earlier Tuesday tweeted that he would be holding his first news conference in over five months. The Jan. 11 date is a reschedule from when Trump had promised to hold a press conference in late December, but didn't. The last time Trump held a pre-scheduled open media availability was on July 27, 2016. ||||| Washington (CNN) President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter Tuesday evening to deride the US intelligence agencies due to brief him on alleged Russian hacking of American political groups. 
 
 The "Intelligence" briefing on so-called "Russian hacking" was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange! 
 
 It was his latest attack on a key body he will rely on as commander in chief and again put him at odds with the agencies' unanimous conclusion that Russia hacked Democratic Party groups and individuals to interfere in the US presidential election. 
 
 Trump suggested that intelligence officials postponed an " 'intelligence' briefing on so-called 'Russian hacking' " that they were set to deliver to him this week because they might need more time "to build a case." He called the alleged delay "very strange." 
 
 Trump tweeted Wednesday , "Julian Assange said 'a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta' - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!" 
 
 Julian Assange said "a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta" - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info! 
 
 Trump said last week that he would receive an intelligence briefing on the Russian breaches this week and suggested it would come early on, telling reporters on New Year's Eve that they would know more about the subject "Tuesday or Wednesday." 
 
 But US intelligence officials disputed Trump's tweet alleging a delay. 
 
 Top US intelligence officials have been scheduled to brief Trump on the full report on Russian hacking President Barack Obama ordered once it was completed, but the meeting was not set to take place until later in the week, according to US officials. 
 
 The meeting was never scheduled for Tuesday, as even Obama has yet to receive the full-fledged briefing on the Russian hacking, one US official said. 
 
 And a US intelligence official told CNN that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was never scheduled to be in New York City, where Trump is, on Tuesday -- and was perplexed about the "delay" Trump claimed was taking place. 
 
 Trump on Tuesday did receive a classified intelligence briefing -- the Presidential Daily Briefing -- which Trump has elected to receive only sporadically. But it did not dive deeply into the Russian hacking. 
 
 US officials briefed on the matter said Clapper, National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers, FBI Director James Comey and CIA Director John Brennan are scheduled to attend the meeting with Trump providing him details on the Russian hacking. 
 
 While Obama met with the heads of US intelligence agencies in his first weeks as president-elect, Trump has yet to do so eight weeks after he was elected, which US officials said was due to Trump's scheduling conflicts. 
 
 Instead, the President-elect has repeatedly questioned their assessment of Russian cyber activity. 
 
 Before the election, when 17 US intelligence agencies issued a public statement concluding that Russia orchestrated the hack of the Democratic National Committee, Trump immediately cast doubt on those conclusions, arguing it was impossible to distinguish between a Russian government operative and "somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds." 
 
 After Obama then slapped a series of sanctions on Russia, Trump issued a statement calling for the country to "move on to bigger and better things" and then tweeted praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin for not retaliating against the sanctions. 
 
 Trump continued his skepticism on New Year's Eve, telling reporters once again that it "could be somebody else." 
 
 "I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a very hard thing to prove," he said. 
 
 He added that he also knows "things that other people don't know, so they can't be sure of the situation." 
 
 On Tuesday, Russia again denied intervening in the US election campaign. 
 
 Reacting to a US intelligence official who told CNN the administration traced the hack to specific keyboards, which featured Cyrillic characters, Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov said: "I don't understand what this means exactly but Cyrillic characters can be used everywhere." 
 
 "Once again I reject any possibility that official Russia can be involved in any way," he added. ||||| CLOSE President-elect Donald Trump is continuing to publicly raise doubts as to Russia's involvement in the election, sparring with intelligence officials. Nathan Rousseau Smith (@fantasticmrnate) has the story. Buzz60 
 
 Donald Trump (Photo: Joe Raedle) 
 
 Gearing up for a high-profile briefing on claims that Russia hacked Democratic officials during last year's election, President-elect Donald Trump is apparently taking the word of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange over that of U.S. intelligence officials who will brief him. 
 
 "Julian Assange said 'a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta' - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!" Trump tweeted Wednesday. 
 
 John Podesta was the Hillary Clinton campaign chairman whose emails were released by WikiLeaks during the campaign, part of an effort that U.S. intelligence officials attributed to the Russians, perhaps in order to help Trump win the election. 
 
 Julian Assange said "a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta" - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017 
 
 Trump, who has questioned the potential involvement of Russia, is scheduled to receive his special intelligence briefing Friday. 
 
 As lawmakers in both parties criticized Trump for promoting Assange over the American intelligence community, the president-elect sent out more tweets wondering why the Democratic National Committee didn't have the the same "hacking defense" as the Republican Party did. 
 
 The Assange tweet came the morning after Trump claimed — without evidence — that intelligence officials had delayed a briefing on the allegations against Russia. 
 
 Tweeted Trump late Tuesday: "The 'Intelligence' briefing on so-called 'Russian hacking' was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!" 
 
 Intelligence officials told reporters that the special briefing has always been scheduled for Friday; it is part of a review ordered by President Obama, who has also accused the Russians of seeking to intervene in the 2016 election. 
 
 Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied involvement in the email hackings of Democratic Party and Clinton campaign officials. 
 
 In an interview with Fox News, Assange said the WikiLeaks source was not a "state party." He also said the accusers are seeking to "de-legitimtize" Trump's win, a claim also made by the president-elect and his aides. 
 
 U.S. intelligence officials have said WikiLeaks takes information anonymously, and that Russians took advantage of that system. 
 
 The White House stood behind the assessments of the intelligence community and said Trump has a choice to make. 
 
 “On the one hand, you’ve got the Russians and the aforementioned Mr. Assange," said Obama spokesman Josh Earnest. "On the other side you’ve got the 17 intelligence agencies of the United States government, (and) outside cyber experts who have looked at this situation." 
 
 Earnest added: "You have Democrats on Capitol Hill, you’ve got Republicans on Capitol Hill, and at least one adviser to Mr. Trump expressing concern about Russia's malicious activity in cyberspace in the context of the election.” 
 
 Trump aides, including Vice President-elect Mike Pence, said skepticism about the Russia case is justified. Pence, speaking with reporters on Capitol Hill, cited the "intelligence failures" of recent years, presumably a reference to erroneous claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. 
 
 "He's skeptical about conclusions from the bureaucracy," Pence said of the president-elect. 
 
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 Pence will also attend Friday's meeting. Their briefers are scheduled to include Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey, said Trump transition spokesman Sean Spicer. 
 
 Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers in both parties questioned Trump's criticism of the U.S. intelligence community. 
 
 "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "So even for a practical supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he's being really dumb to do this.” 
 
 Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., also on MSNBC, said that "I have a lot more faith in our intelligence officers" than in "people like Julian Assange." 
 
 Critics noted that WikiLeaks has been under investigation over the leaking of classified information, while Assange himself faces sexual assault allegations in Sweden. He has been living in the Ecuadoran embassy in London; Ecuador's government granted him asylum in 2012, saying he faced the prospect of political persecution. 
 
 House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told radio host Hugh Hewitt that he would not “start commenting on every little tweet or Facebook post" by Trump, and "that is just not what I do with the president-elect or when he’s president.” 
 
 Ryan also called Assange "a sycophant for Russia" who "steals data and compromises national security," and suggested that Trump would become “better informed” at Friday's intelligence meeting. 
 
 “I think he has not received his Russia briefing yet,” Ryan said. “So hopefully he’ll get up to speed on what has been happening and what Russia has or has not done, and he’ll be better informed on that.” 
 
 Contributing: Gregory Korte and Craig Gilbert 
 
 Stay with USA TODAY for full coverage of the 2017 inauguration. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2hRSyXO ||||| A day before U.S. intelligence agencies take their case on hacking during the 2016 campaign directly to Donald Trump, spy chiefs publicly rebuffed the president-elect’s criticism of their work and reiterated that Russia’s most senior officials authorized the e-mail theft and disclosures. 
 
 “There is a difference between skepticism and disparagement,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday when asked about Trump’s repeated questioning of the intelligence agencies’ conclusions and reliability. “Public trust and confidence in the intelligence community is crucial.” 
 
 Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey are scheduled to brief Trump Friday on the hacking and leaks of e-mails from Democratic officials and organizations backing his campaign rival Hillary Clinton. They’ll face a skeptical interrogator in the president-elect, who has said “hacking is a very hard thing to prove” and that intelligence agencies have been wrong before. 
 
 But Clapper told the Senate panel that the intelligence agencies’ confidence in their findings is now “very high” and they are “even more resolute” in their findings about Russian involvement than when they first weighed in on the issue publicly on Oct. 7. Yet Clapper also emphasized that Russian hacking didn’t change the vote count that made Trump president. 
 
 He testified alongside Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Marcel Lettre and Admiral Michael Rogers, who leads both the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command. 
 
 The hearing -- called by Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona -- highlighted a divide between Trump and some of his party’s most influential foreign policy hawks in Congress. Trump has repeatedly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, while McCain and other lawmakers have said Russia, which has repeatedly denied the hacking accusations, should be punished with stiffer sanctions. 
 
 Rocks, Not Pebbles 
 
 Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said “Putin is up to no good” and “it is time now not to throw pebbles, but rocks.” Addressing Trump’s barbs against the intelligence community, Graham said: “Mr. President-elect, when you listen to these people you can be skeptical, but understand they’re the best among us and they’re trying to protect us.” 
 
 Clapper said it “would be a good thing" if the U.S. and Russia could find areas where the countries’ interests could “converge,” as has happened in the past, "but there’s a threshold of behavior that’s unacceptable." 
 
 In a series of tweets starting Jan. 3, Trump called an alleged delay in his briefing on the Russian hacks “very strange” and went on to quote an interview with fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who said on a Fox News opinion show this week that “a 14-year-old” could be responsible for computer breaches of Democratic Party offices last year. “Also said Russians did not give him the info!” Trump added in his posts. 
 
 Clapper and Rogers both said Assange had put U.S. lives in danger by publishing classified material on WikiLeaks in the past and shouldn’t be a credible source on the hacking issue. The intelligence community doesn’t have a “whole lot of respect for him,” Clapper said. When questioned if Trump’s comments are hurting morale among intelligence officers, Clapper said, “I hardly think it helps.” 
 
 Trump pushed back ahead of the hearing, saying on Twitter that “The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange - wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people...to make up their own minds as to the truth. The media lies to make it look like I am against ‘Intelligence’ when in fact I am a big fan!” 
 
 Obama’s Advice 
 
 President Barack Obama said in a television interview Thursday that “it’s going to be important to make sure the president and the intelligence communities are both working on the best possible information.” 
 
 “My hope is that when the president-elect receives his own briefings and is able to examine the intelligence as his team has put together and they see how professional and effective these agencies are, that some of those current tensions will be reduced,” Obama told WMAQ-TV in Chicago. 
 
 Ultimately, even if Trump doesn’t trust the intelligence agencies’ judgment on Russia, he will need their help to understand other foreign policy issues and cybersecurity threats, including from China, Iran and North Korea, Beau Woods, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative in Washington, said in interview. 
 
 ‘Unhelpful’ 
 
 “The conclusion of the intelligence community was that they like skepticism -- they’re in the business of being skeptics themselves,” Woods said. “However, to out-of-hand dismiss or disparage the intelligence that comes out of their processes, it’s unhelpful for finding the truth.” 
 
 At the start of the hearing, McCain, the committee’s chairman, called Russia’s hacking an "unprecedented attack" on U.S. democracy. He said "every American should be alarmed" by Russia’s attack. 
 
 In prepared remarks, the intelligence officials said Moscow “poses a major threat” to U.S. government, military, diplomatic, commercial and critical infrastructure networks. They also said Russia has developed a “highly advanced offensive cyber program.” 
 
 “Looking forward, Russian cyber operations will likely target the United States to gather intelligence, support Russian decision-making, conduct influence operations to support Russian military and political objectives, and prepare the cyber environment for future contingencies,” their statement said. 
 
 Public Disclosure 
 
 Clapper told the Senate panel that intelligence officials plan to brief Congress behind closed doors and release an unclassified version of their review to the public early next week. Although there are some sensitive sources and methods, he said he intends to “push the envelope as much as I can,” he said. 
 
 “The public should know as much as possible,” said Clapper, who described himself as “apolitical.” “We’ll be as forthcoming as we can.” 
 
 The White House already has the intelligence review, which Obama ordered be completed before he leaves office, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Thursday. 
 
 “Men and women of the U.S. intelligence community are patriots. They’re experts. They’re dedicated to getting the facts right,” Earnest said. 
 
 After the hearing, Trump again took to Twitter, suggesting that the intelligence community’s report had been politicized after NBC News on Thursday night reported that it detailed attacks not only against the DNC, but the White House, State Department and Joint Chiefs of Staff. 
 
 "Who gave them this report and why? Politics!" Trump tweeted. 
 
 Trump went on to claim the DNC would "not allow the FBI to study or see its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia." The tweet appeared to be a reference to a BuzzFeed story that revealed the FBI had relied on analysis by CrowdStrike, a third-party cyber security company. 
 
 The FBI Thursday night confirmed that DNC officials rebuffed requests for direct access to the servers, forcing agents to rely on the third-party source. 
 
 ‘Aggressive’ Posture 
 
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 In recent years, the intelligence officials said in their statement, the Kremlin has assumed a more “aggressive cyber posture,” targeting government organizations, critical infrastructure, think tanks, universities, political organizations and corporations, often using phishing campaigns that give attackers access to computer networks. In some cases, Russian intelligence actors have “masqueraded as third parties” with false online identities to confuse the source of the hacking, they said. 
 
 The intelligence community and Cyber Command continue “hardening” internal U.S. government systems, the officials said. Still, as of late 2016, more than 30 nations are developing offensive cyber attack capabilities, the officials said in the statement. Terrorist groups are also using the internet to collect intelligence and incite action, such as Islamic State continuing to “seek opportunities to target and release sensitive information” about U.S. citizens.
– Donald Trump launched what the BBC describes as a "fresh assault on America's intelligence community" with a tweet Tuesday night accusing them of delaying a briefing—and putting "intelligence" in quotes. "The 'Intelligence' briefing on so-called 'Russian hacking' was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case," Trump tweeted. "Very strange!" Officials, however, tell CNN that the briefing had never been scheduled for Tuesday, and even President Obama has yet to receive the final report from top intelligence officials on the alleged Russian hacking of the presidential election. Officials say Trump or his team may have mistakenly thought his regular intelligence briefing Tuesday would be the Russia-related one. A senior intelligence official tells NBC News that the director of national intelligence and heads of the NSA, CIA, and FBI are among those scheduled to meet with Trump on Friday. The Washington Post reports that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called Trump's attitude toward intelligence services "really dumb" Tuesday night. "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you," he told Rachel Maddow. "From what I am told, they are very upset with how he has treated them and talked about them." A source tells the Post that the report on Russian hacking could be on Obama's desk as soon as Thursday. A declassified version might be released to the public early next week, the source says. (At least one Trump adviser disagrees with the president-elect's skepticism.)