"Senate Democrats will join with our Republican colleagues next year to demand a congressional investigation and hearings to get to the bottom of this," Sen. Chuck Schumer said. | Getty Schumer demands congressional inquiry on Russian meddling 'That any country could be meddling in our elections should shake both political parties to their core,' the incoming Democratic leader said.

Incoming Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer is calling for a full, bipartisan congressional investigation into reports of Russian interference in the 2016 election that would likely continue after President Barack Obama leaves office.

Obama on Friday ordered an investigation into Russia's activities, but he leaves office on Jan. 20. Schumer said that Democrats will simultaneously press for an investigation when Congress returns on Jan. 3. Congress adjourned for the year early Saturday after wrapping up its business for 2016.


"Senate Democrats will join with our Republican colleagues next year to demand a congressional investigation and hearings to get to the bottom of this. It’s imperative that our intelligence community turns over any relevant information so that Congress can conduct a full investigation," Schumer said.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was deferential to the White House investigation on Saturday afternoon.

"Obviously any foreign breach of our cybersecurity measures is disturbing, and the White House has just announced an investigation to see if that has occurred and will formulate a response," said Don Stewart, the McConnell aide.

Republicans have been largely mum on the matter and many declined comment on Friday night as the Senate took its final votes of the year. Democrats said on Saturday morning that the GOP should be willing to support an investigation even if the alleged hacking benefited the Republican Party.

“The Republicans knew about this before the election and there wasn’t the bipartisan outcry," said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), an ascending party leader. “It will be interesting to see if they move forward on an investigation."

“The fact that It appears that the Republicans have been able to benefit from Russian meddling in the system should not prevent in any way from an investigation," added Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.).

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican, said on Twitter that Russian hacking is "serious, but hardly news" because it has been going on for years. But some in the GOP are moving more urgently to investigate the matter. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who called for an investigation of Russian hacking, wrote on Twitter that you "don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what Russia is up to — they're trying to undermine democracies all over the world."

"I'm not challenging the outcome of the election, but very concerned about Russian interference/actions at home & throughout the world," said Graham, who did not support Trump during the presidential election.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who intends to probe the hacking next year, said that everybody he knows says "that the Russians have interfered with this election."

"They hacked into my campaign in …. 2008. Should that be a surprise to anyone?” McCain told reporters in the Capitol late Friday. Still, he added: "The CIA has not always been exactly right, to say the least.”

Schumer's access to intelligence will increase significantly in January, when he takes over as Democratic leader for retiring Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). The Washington Post reported on Friday that Reid and McConnell were among the senators briefed on Russian meddling in the election in September, but McConnell asserted to government officials that he had doubts about the veracity of the intelligence and said he would push back against efforts to go public.

Republicans kept the Senate and McConnell's wife, Elane Chao, has been nominated to be Trump's transportation secretary.

McConnell will hold a press briefing on Monday morning. Stewart said he did not have "any readout of what did or didn’t happen in a classified briefing."

Reid said in October that FBI Director James Comey "may have broken the law" by withholding information about Russian hacking this fall. In an interview this week, he said that if Comey had "kept his mouth shut" on Hillary Clinton's emails, she probably would have won and Democrats would have picked up more Senate seats.

Reid told MSNBC on Saturday that "of course" Comey should resign. The retiring Democratic leader predicted that the Russian storyline will hang over Trump's legitimacy to a greater degree than the 2000 recount affected George W. Bush.

"He has let the country down for partisan purposes," Reid said of Comey, a registered Republican. “This is a hanging chad a thousand times over.”

Led by McCain and Graham, some Senate Republicans this week began joining the calls of congressional Democrats to more seriously investigate Russia's activities in the election.

“I can assure you that the Armed Services Committee will be having a subcommittee [hearing] on cyber — not just on elections but everything that cyber does," said McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "It’s the only challenge we have where we don’t have an advantage over our potential adversaries. That ought to get your attention.”

Schumer called reports by the Post and and the New York Times about Russian hacking "simultaneously stunning and not surprising."

"The silence from Wikileaks and others since election day has been deafening. That any country could be meddling in our elections should shake both political parties to their core," Schumer said on Saturday morning.

Trump dismissed the reporting on the matter on Friday, declaring that the CIA officials "are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."