Donald Trump has sided with Julian Assange against the United States’ own intelligence agencies – taking the WikiLeaks founder’s word as stronger proof than the information provided by the CIA and FBI.

Mr Trump, who takes over as commander in chief in 16 days time, has consistently expressed scepticism about the intelligence agencies’ insistence that Russia was behind the hack of Democratic party emails.

More than 50,000 emails were released during the 2016 presidential campaign, which shone an embarrassing light on practices at the Clinton Foundation, relationships between top journalists and the Clinton campaign, and derogatory internal memos.

It also revealed that Donna Brazile, DNC interim chair and a CNN contributor, had alerted Hillary Clinton’s team to one of the questions before her CNN debate with Bernie Sanders.

Last week President Barack Obama took retaliatory action against Russia for interfering in the election – expelling diplomats from the US and closing Russian-controlled sites in the country.

On Wednesday a group of intelligence and defence officials called for a bipartisan inquiry into the hacking allegations.