text: 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 ||||| "What did Trump Inc. know? When did they know it? Were they in touch with the Russians?" John Podesta asked. | AP Photo Podesta suggests Trump associates may have colluded with Russian hackers 
   
   Former Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta said Sunday he believes that Donald Trump's associates may have colluded with Russian hackers to win the election. 
   
   In his first TV interview since Hillary Clinton's loss, Podesta said he doesn't believe that the president-elect himself was part of the plan but suggested some of his associates may have gone off the reservation. The Electoral College electors, he said, have the right to know the extent of the Trump campaign's involvement before they cast their votes Monday. 
   
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   "It's very much unknown whether there was collusion," Podesta said on NBC's "Meet the Press." 
   
   "What did Trump Inc. know? When did they know it? Were they in touch with the Russians?" Podesta asked. "I think the electors have the right to know what the answers are." 
   
   "The Russians were trying to elect a lap dog," Podesta said, referring to a recent piece by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. 
   
   Podesta also offered new details on the hacking of his private Gmail account, saying he wasn't contacted by the FBI until Oct. 9, two days after WikiLeaks started releasing his emails. 
   
   "The first thing the agent said to me is, 'I don't know if you're aware, but your email account might have been hacked,'" Podesta said. "I said, 'Yes, I was aware of that.'" 
   
   "That was the last time I talked to the FBI," Podesta added. 
   
   Podesta accepted a share of the blame for Clinton's loss, though, conceding the campaign wasn't aggressive enough in some Midwestern states. Democrats should put together a detailed postmortem report, he said, similar to what Republicans did after Mitt Romney's loss in 2012. 
   
   “We owe it to our supporters to say what we think we did right, what we think we did wrong," Podesta said. "I think [in] Wisconsin we could have done better. There’s no question about it.” 
   
   “At the end of the day, we also lost Pennsylvania, and there is nothing we left … undone there, and we still lost by 44,000 votes," he added. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
   
   / Updated By Liz Johnstone 
   
   John Podesta, former chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign, said Sunday that the FBI first contacted him about his hacked emails two days after WikiLeaks began publishing them — and that he has not heard from the FBI since. 
   
   "Let's go through the chronology. On October 7, the Access Hollywood tapes comes out. One hour later, WikiLeaks starts dropping my emails into the public," Podesta told Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press," referencing the leaked tape from 2005 that features now-President-elect Donald Trump bragging in graphic terms about kissing and groping women without their consent. "One could say that those things might not have been a coincidence. Two days later, the FBI contacted me, and the first thing the agent said to me was, 'I don't know if you're aware but your email account might have been hacked.' I said, yes, I was aware of that." 
   
   Todd pressed Podesta on when he knew that his emails had been stolen. 
   
   "In one of those DNC documents that appeared to me ... that might have came from my account," Podesta said. "So I wasn't sure. I didn't know what they had, what they didn't have. It wasn't until October 7 when [WikiLeaks' Julian] Assange ... started dumping them out and said they would all dump out, that's when I knew that they had the contents of my email account." 
   
   "By the way," Podesta added, "that was the last time I'd heard from the FBI." 
   
   "Do you expect to get a phone call before the end of the year?" Todd asked. 
   
   "Maybe before the end of the show," Podesta joked. 
   
   Intelligence officials confirmed Friday that the FBI agrees with the CIA's assessment that Russia mounted a covert operation intended not just to disrupt the 2016 election, but to help Trump win. U.S. intelligence now has "a high level of confidence" that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in the campaign. 
   
   Podesta recently published an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing that "something is deeply broken" within the FBI and called for a full, independent investigation into the Russian hacks. Podesta on Sunday also criticized director James Comey's actions regarding intelligence surrounding Russia's interference in the election relative to how he handled a development in the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state. 
   
   "What I said was baffling, Chuck, was on October 7, as the Director of National Intelligence, Jim Clapper, Jay Johnson, director of Homeland Security, went out and said, 'The Russians are trying to interfere in our election,' Director Comey counseled against that. He said, 'I don't want the F.B.I.'s name on that,'" Podesta said. "Then three weeks later, he went out and dropped the infamous letter just 11 days before the election, saying that he was going to take yet another look at Hillary Clinton's emails because of the laptop that he had gotten from Huma Abedin's husband Anthony Weiner. So how can you have that both ways?" 
   
   Podesta said that ahead of tomorrow's Electoral College vote cementing Trump's victory, "the question is whether there are 37 Republican electors who think that either there are open questions or that Donald Trump, based on everything we know about him, is really unfit to be president of the United States." 
   
   Podesta indicated that he was aware of calls for Clinton's electors to support someone like John Kasich or Mitt Romney in order to entice those 37 Republican electors away from Trump, but that he assumed Clinton's electors were going to vote for her. 
   
   "It's not really what the Democrats are going to do. And I guess we'll know about it tomorrow," Podesta said.
target: – John Podesta continued his assault on the FBI on Sunday, telling Meet the Press that he only heard from the bureau once about his hacked emails—and that was two days after WikiLeaks started dropping them. The timeline, per Podesta: On Oct. 7, the controversial Access Hollywood tape depicting Donald Trump dropped; "One hour later, WikiLeaks starts dropping my emails into the public," Podesta says. "One could say that those things might not have been a coincidence. Two days later, the FBI contacted me, and the first thing the agent said to me was, 'I don't know if you're aware but your email account might have been hacked.' I said, yes, I was aware of that." That, he says, "was the last time I'd heard from the FBI." “I think the Russians clearly intervened in the election and I think now that we know both the CIA and the FBI agree the Russians intervened to help Trump and Vladimir Putin was personally involved with that," Podesta continued, per Politico and Newsday. "It was distorted by the Russian intervention. A foreign adversary directly intervened into our democratic institution and tried to tilt the election to Donald Trump." Podesta contends that while "the Russians were trying to elect a lapdog," it's unclear whether Trump himself knew what was going on, but that "I think the electors have the right to know what the answers are."