President Obama has directed the U.S. intelligence community to conduct a full review of Russian attempts to influence the November elections through a series of cyber attacks targeting political networks, White House counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco said Friday.
Obama ordered intelligence agencies to produce a report by the end of his term next month assessing the impact the Russian hacks may have had on last month's election, Bloomberg reported. The report will be handed over to Congress, but it is unclear whether it will be made public.
"You want to [be] very attentive to not disclosing sources and methods that would impede our ability to identify and attribute malicious actors in the future," Monaco said during a D.C. event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. "We may be crossing into a new threshold and it's incumbent upon us to take stock of that."
Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have pledged to investigate Russian attempts to interfere in the elections, but efforts have faced pushback from President-elect Donald Trump, who has continued to deny Moscow's involvement.
"I don't believe they interfered," Trump said in an interview with Time Magazine published on Wednesday. "It could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey. I believe that it could have been Russia and it could have been any one of many other people. Sources or even individuals."
The Obama administration in October formally accused Russia of directing cyber attacks against political networks, including the Democratic National Committee. Still, questions remain regarding the extent of the breaches and Moscow's underlying motivations.