John Podesta's carefully-worded statement Monday in support of Electors seeking an intelligence briefing on Russian efforts to influence the presidential election was a part of an organized effort by former Clinton officials to leverage next week’s Electoral College vote to assure any information uncovered by investigations into foreign involvement is disclosed to the public.

Clinton allies said in a series of interviews on Monday that while they don't think the move will have any effect on the outcome of the official presidential vote, they hope to pressure Congressional Republicans to produce a report on the Russian hacking. They also expressed concern that a Trump White House might not release the complete findings of a report ordered by President Barack Obama, burying forever evidence of Russia’s actions to promote Trump’s candidacy.


"The Electoral College system gives a bunch of regular people—Democrats and Republicans—real power over the President-elect, and they've got the next week to use that power or lose it,” according to a Clinton ally with knowledge of her team’s thinking. “They have a chance to try and get information out in the public that might never see the light of day once Donald Trump is inaugurated."

Conversations about how to deal with the allegations of foreign intervention have been bubbling among the people closest to Clinton, according to people familiar with the discussions, many of whom have expressed frustration, as Podesta did on Monday, that the Russian hacking never got the attention they felt it deserved during the campaign, and concern that the Kremlin could be able to successfully sway a presidential election.

According to people who’ve been keeping up with them, a group of Clinton advisers has held regular conference calls exploring their options.

“We are asking ourselves ‘what would Trump do if he was us?’” said one person familiar with the discussions. “You don’t think he’d try to pressure the electors? You don’t think he’d be trying to delegitimize the process?”

Clinton and her team have mostly kept their distance from any public comments about the various recount efforts beyond a post on Medium from attorney Marc Elias insisting that the campaign had an obligation to participate once Green Party candidate Jill Stein had initiated it—there was a sense they’d fail, and as one Democratic strategist put it at the outset, “what Hillary Clinton can’t do is let her supporters down again.”

Calling attention to the Russian involvement is a different matter to them.

Podesta’s statement, that “Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed,” was carefully worded so as not to address the prospect of the Electoral College doing anything but electing Trump.

But any kind of statement is worrying to some Democrats who feel like they are making progress in getting Republicans on board with an investigation, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday morning joining the calls for an investigation , after a weekend of notably staying silent on the issue, despite reports that he had doubted the intelligence assessments he and other Hill leaders heard during the campaign. McConnell followed Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who joined with the original letter from Schumer and Reed pushing for an inquiry.

Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul, who discussed a job in the Trump administration, also joined the call on Monday for a further investigation, while House Intelligence Chair Devin Nunes, who continues to advise the transition, said he "did not see any benefit in opening further investigations" on top of those already underway.

“It’s important in the days after the report that we get as many Republicans on the record as possible either in favor or opposed to an investigation,” said a senior Senate Democratic aide. “We will press them to make that investigation as bipartisan, as wide-ranging and as deep as possible, and ensure that everyone involved has access to as much information as possible and that the findings are made public.”

Those elements are all important to Democrats, especially incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Jack Reed, who don’t want the investigation to look like it’s purely a Democratic effort to undermine Trump once he’s president, and they don’t want to risk Republicans not releasing a full report.

Democrats have been increasingly vocal in raising concerns about the Russian hacking, but the White House on Monday went further than it had since Election Day in criticizing the president-elect, whom Obama and his aides have been careful to be deferential and diplomatic toward, and linking him to the efforts to influence the election.

Trump “certainly had a pretty good sense of whose side this activity was coming down on,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at his daily briefing, ticking through an extensive list of concerns, including the president-elect’s praise of Vladimir Putin, the “extensive, lucrative” connections between Trump’s former campaign chairman and Russian interests, positions on NATO that align with Moscow’s and a national security adviser in Michael Flynn who was a paid contributor to RT, the Kremlin-funded television station.

Earnest said that he hoped Congress would fulling its “basic responsibility” of holding hearings.

At a time, though, when Democrats have begun to criticize Obama for not doing more to shed light on Russian involvement ahead of the election, the White House is digging in.

Obama’s review is due before Inauguration Day. On Monday, Earnest dangled the possibility that no matter what happens in the Electoral College, in Congress or elsewhere in between, the president will say more before turning over the keys to the White House.

“There still could be a time,” Earnest said, “when this is something we’re able to discuss more publicly.”

Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.