President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter on Saturday to say that the "only reason" the hacking of Democratic email accounts was being discussed was because of the party's embarrassment over the size of its election loss in November.

His early-morning assessment came in a series of tweets on the subject and the morning after the release of a declassified report by US intelligence agencies that concluded Russia carried out a comprehensive cyber campaign to sabotage the presidential election and sought to aid Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Saturday morning's tweets were the latest from Trump to portray the episode in starkly partisan terms, even as some senior Republicans in Congress have called for harsher sanctions against Russia than recently ordered by President Barack Obama.

"Only reason the hacking of the poorly defended DNC is discussed is that the loss by the Dems was so big that they are totally embarrassed!" Trump said in one of his tweets, referring to an election in which Clinton won the popular vote but he prevailed in the electoral college.