Alarm over the rise of Donald Trump reached a new pitch early this week as officials in Washington worried that the United States has elected a leader who may be uniquely blind to threats posed by Russia, may be confused about US national interests, or who may, in his own largely invisible layers of business and personal interests, have conflicting loyalties.

Trump has stoked those concerns, in part, by repeatedly dismissing outright reports of Russian malfeasance, particularly in the US presidential election. “I think it’s ridiculous,” Trump said on Sunday of a newly leaked CIA report concluding that Russia had sought to tip the presidential election his way. “I think it’s just another excuse [for the Democratic loss]. I don’t believe it.”

Such are Trump’s perceived sympathies for Moscow that members of the intelligence community told the Guardian on Sunday that they feared reprisals from the incoming president over their assessments of Russia’s hostile conduct.

Now it appears that those concerns are on track for a public airing in the earliest days of the Trump administration, with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, on Monday backing calls for a congressional review of Russia’s alleged meddling, and others warning that Trump’s secretary of state, the ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, an associate of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, would face a tough confirmation grilling.

“I don’t know what Mr Tillerson’s relationship with Vladimir Putin was, but I’ll tell you it is a matter of concern to me,” Senator John McCain told Fox News over the weekend.

From Russia’s interference in the US election to fears in the intelligence community to the role of the Senate to the president-elect’s reaction, here are key figures and questions in play:

Did Russia ‘hack’ the US election?

Russia has been accused of interfering with the US election, including by attempting to tamper with voter registration rolls, by hacking Democratic National Committee emails, and by hacking the emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. In recent days, secret intelligence community assessments have been leaked to the media, concluding that Russia sought to tip the election in favor of Trump. The assessments do not go so far as to say that Russian intervention was decisive to Trump’s victory, as far as is publicly known.

On 8 October, the US government formally accused Russia of hacking the Democratic party’s computer networks and said that Moscow was attempting to “interfere” with the US presidential election. On 9 December, Barack Obama ordered US intelligence to review evidence of Russian interference in the election. A day later, the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, accused the FBI of covering up information about Russia, seeking to tip the election in Trump’s favor. On 10 December, the Washington Post reported that a secret CIA assessment had found that Russian operatives covertly interfered in the election in an attempt to ensure the Republican candidate’s victory. A separate report in the New York Times said intelligence officials had a “high confidence” that Russia was involved in hacking related to the election.

What is Rex Tillerson’s role?

As head of the world’s largest non-state energy company, Tillerson has had extensive dealings with Russia and with Putin and could have potential conflicts of interest tied to ongoing ExxonMobil projects, even if he was personally divested from the company, where he has worked for 40 years. In 2011, Tillerson signed a deal with Putin to partner with Russian oil giant Rosneft to explore and drill for oil in the Arctic, a project that outran native Russian technological capabilities. In 2013, Putin presented Tillerson with the Order of Friendship, a top decoration from the Russian state for foreign nationals. Supporters argue that Tillerson could be a strong secretary of state owing to his experience at securing contracts and business interests around the world. Critics question whether he could separate US interests from ExxonMobil interests.

As head of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson has had extensive dealings with Russia and with Vladimir Putin and could have potential conflicts of interest. Photograph: Daniel Kramer/Reuters

Can the Senate stop Tillerson?

It’s the Senate’s job to approve or nix executive and judicial appointments made by the president. Apart from a supreme court nominee, anyone nominated by the president who retains the support of Republicans in the incoming Congress is likely to be confirmed on the strength of a roughly party-line vote. That’s thanks to a November 2013 rules change at the hands of Democrats eliminating the need for a 60-vote majority to confirm significant nominees. Under current rules, 51 votes would be required to confirm a cabinet nominee and 60 votes to confirm a supreme court nominee. Republicans will enjoy a 52-48 majority in the next Senate. It is highly unusual for members of the president’s party to abandon a nominee.

Where do Senate leaders stand?

The reservations of top Republican senators about Russian conduct in general and Tillerson in particular appear to be significant – but Trump has called the party to heel before. “The Russians are not our friends,” McConnell said on Monday. But the scope of congressional inquiry on offer appeared to fall short of the aggressive investigation Democrats favor. McConnell said the Senate intelligence committee was “more than capable of conducting a complete review” of the issue of Russian electoral sabotage, but the chairman of that committee, Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina and a vocal supporter of Trump, did not commit to an actual investigation.

Where does the intelligence community stand?

Some members of the intelligence community feel they may face a situation in which defending the national interest runs counter to their career interests. It is not possible to gauge precisely how deeply fears of retaliation from a President Trump run within the intelligence world, Guardian US national security editor Spencer Ackerman wrote on Sunday. Two currently serving intelligence officers told the Guardian over the weekend weekend they had not heard their colleagues express such concerns:

One noted that civil-service laws prevented Trump from launching a purge, but also called attention to a report that Trump is combing through the energy department bureaucracy to identify people “who have attended climate change policy conferences”. Former intelligence officers told the Guardian they considered retaliation by Trump to be all but a certainty after he is sworn into office next month. Trump still has several appointments to make at the highest levels of the intelligence apparatus, picks which are likely to be bellwethers for the new president’s attitudes toward the agencies. “There is not just smoke here. There is a blazing 10-alarm fire, the sirens are wailing, the Russians provided the lighter fluid, and Trump is standing half-burnt and holding a match,” said Glenn Carle, a retired CIA officer and interrogator. “The facts hurt, Trump won’t like the truth, and he will without question seek to destroy those individuals or organizations that say or do anything that he thinks harm his precious grandiosity.”

What has Trump’s reaction been?

Trump asked Russia last July to use hacking to find emails he said had been deleted from a Clinton server, but he has also consistently denied Russian hacking. On Monday, he suggested that intelligence analysts were dabbling in conspiracy theory: “Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!” Trump wrote. “Unless you catch ‘hackers’ in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn’t this brought up before election?”

It was.

On 8 October, one month before the election, the office of the director of national intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a joint statement formally accusing Russia of hacking the Democratic party’s computer networks and saying that Moscow was attempting to “interfere” with the US presidential election. “We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the letter said in part.

On Monday, Carter Page, a former adviser to the president-elect, dismissed CIA assertions that Russia was behind the hacking during the election, saying it was a “lot of speculation but nothing there”. His words were echoed by John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the United Nations who has been floated as a possible pick to run Trump’s state department, who questioned the allegations of Russian interference.

What has the Russian reaction been?



The Russian reaction has closely paralleled Trump’s: ridicule and denial.

Putin assigned the October accusation of election tampering to “hysteria”. “They started this hysteria, saying that [hacking] is in Russia’s interests,” Putin told a business forum in Moscow. “But this has nothing to do with Russia’s interests.”

“Everyone is talking about who did it. But is it that important? The most important thing is what is inside this information.”

The Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour the allegations were “flattering” – “But it has nothing to be explained by the facts; we have not seen a single proof.”



After the election, Putin called for a new era of “fully fledged relations” between Russia and the United States. “We understand that it will not be an easy path given the current state of degradation in the relations,” Putin said at the Kremlin. “And as I have repeatedly said, it’s not our fault that Russian-American relations are in such a poor state. But Russia wants and is ready to restore fully fledged relations with the United States.”