The Post reported Friday that in September, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) got a secret briefing on all this and threw doubt on intelligence officials' assessment that Russia was meddling in the election to benefit Trump. 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. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the transition team said in an unsigned statement. Republicans will make the Democrats do all the lifting here and then will cry that they’re being partisan and it’s just sour grapes. “I’m going after Russia in every way you can go after Russia,” the Republican South Carolina senator said Wednesday on CNN. (Pool photo by Natalia Kolesnikova via Associated Press) 
 
 Intelligence officials say there's “consensus” in their community that Russia tried to sway the U.S. election in an “unprecedented” way.
– 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.