Trump shouldn’t resist hacking inquiry

Donald Trump should be leading the charge for an investigation into allegations that Russia used hackers to affect the American election.

And he should be hollering for the investigation to take place immediately.

The Obama administration is already investigating. Members of Congress — including many Republicans like Florida’s Marco Rubio — are supporting an investigation. Members of the Electoral College want a briefing on the situation before they convene on Dec. 19 to make the election results official.

For sure, the American public deserves an investigation, and a complete accounting of the evidence as to whether Russian influence had anything to do with the election results.

But President-elect Trump doesn’t want to hear the facts, particularly if those facts go against his opinion.

Trump says “I’m, like, a smart person,” so he doesn’t need to hear the daily intelligence briefings to find out what is going on in the world and what dangers America faces. He dismisses climate change as a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.

And now, with the CIA concluding Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win, the presidentelect’s response is “I think it’s ridiculous. I don’t believe it. I think it’s just another excuse. We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College.” And he blames the Democrats for pushing the hacking narrative.

Set aside the fact — there’s that word again that Trump doesn’t like — there were no landslides in the 2016 election. Trump’s Electoral College margin was 46th among the 58 elections since George Washington was president. And Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost three million votes.

You would think Trump — who said on several occasions during the campaign that the election was “rigged” — would be anxious to remove any suspicion that the Russians helped get him elected, particularly since Americans are well aware of Trump’s affection for Vladimir Putin. And we know that his choice for secretary of state, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, is friendly with Putin. Trump should want to know if Russians hacked Republican National Committee servers as well as emails from the computers of Democratic Party officials.

The election results are not going to change because of any of this. But the American public has a right to know what the hackers did and how they did it; did they interfere with the election process, and if so, what will be done to stop it from happening again.

The FBI isn’t so sure the CIA is correct in its findings. Fine. Let’s hear all sides, lets hear all the facts, instead of just having America’s soon to-be commander-in chief disparage the intelligence community that he will be working with closely after he takes the oath of office.

Two South Florida representatives were among those calling for an investigation and a full disclosure of the facts.

“I do not believe Russia is in this fight for Trump; they’re in this fight for Russia,” Rep. Lois Frankel, DWest Palm Beach, said at a news conference Monday.

“This isn’t about the outcome of this election,” added Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, at the same news conference. He called Russian interference in the election “a hostile act by a foreign power.”

And yet Trump, in his bombastic way, prefers to try and undermine the public’s faith in the CIA and its findings, saying, “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” He prefers to get attention by meeting with rapper Kanye West, which happened Tuesday.

Trump’s dismissive attitude toward hacking will not make this situation go away, particularly when there is bipartisan support to find out exactly what happened, how it happened, and to what extent the Kremlin may have interfered with the election.

Instead of trying to just brush off the whole thing as “ridiculous,” Donald Trump should be leading the way, demanding a full investigation.

The American public deserves an investigation, and a complete accounting of the evidence as to whether Russian influence had anything to do with the election results.

ANDREW HARNIK/AP