Story highlights Corker said Tuesday his committee would hold both open hearings and classified sessions

"We are going to systematically walk through the entire Russia issue," he said

Washington (CNN) The influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee plans to launch a new review about Russia's hacking of the elections, the latest push by a top Republican to explore allegations of improper meddling by the Kremlin -- despite President-elect Donald Trump's own skepticism of the issue.

Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican who heads the panel, told CNN Tuesday his committee would hold open hearings and classified sessions to get to the bottom of Russian involvement.

"We are going to systematically walk through the entire Russia issue and fully understand what has transpired," Corker said Tuesday.

It will be the third Senate committee planning to dig into the issue next year, joining the Armed Services Committee led by Arizona Sen. John McCain and the Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr.

But these three reviews stop short of a separate standing committee whose sole task is to investigate the matter -- similar to the way House Republicans established a panel to review the 2012 Benghazi attacks. While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan back the inquiries in the existing committees in Congress, they have resisted calls to establish a new stand-alone panel, something that could grow unwieldy and amount to a political threat to Trump.

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