There is reason to worry. Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of the intelligence community’s investigative work, and has questioned the neutrality of the agencies’ conclusions. “I think it’s ridiculous,” he said on Fox News Sunday, of reports that the CIA determined that Russia used hacking to try and tilt the election in his favor. “I think it's just another excuse. I don't believe it.” Earlier this week, he told Time he thinks the intelligence community’s determinations were politically motivated.

Trump has also decided not to attend some of the daily intelligence briefings that traditionally help presidents-elect get up to speed with sensitive national-security issues before they take office. “I'm, like, a smart person,” he said Sunday when Fox’s Chris Wallace asked him why he wasn’t attending the briefings every day, complaining that the briefings were too repetitive. “I don’t need to be told, Chris, the same thing every day, every morning, same words. ‘Sir, nothing has changed. Let’s go over it again.’ I don't need that.”

Kellyanne Conway, a top advisor to Trump, told Face the Nation that Trump “will not interfere in the legislative branch” if Congress were to conduct investigations into Russia’s electoral meddling. She was asked whether Trump would also stay out of the way of an executive branch probe, but didn’t answer. A spokesperson for the Trump transition committee didn’t immediately answer a request for comment.

If the intelligence community doesn’t finish its investigation before January 20 and Trump decides to obstruct it, the agency and the President will find themselves in an unusual conflict. Glenn Carle, a retired CIA agent of 20 years, told the LA Times that an antagonistic relationship between the White House and the CIA would pose novel problems.

“It sets up one of the great crises in the history of the executive branch,” Carle said. “All the agency can do short of insurrection is to present the facts when allowed to the executive we serve.”

If the public is to stay informed about foreign hacking that the executive branch wanted to keep quiet, whistleblowers in the intelligence community would have to come forward to leak important findings. But under President Obama, leakers have faced steep penalties for sharing classified information with the press or the public—and Trump seems far more hostile toward transparency, as evidenced by his stances on journalism and free speech.

In the absence of official reports about hacking, the private sector would have a bigger role to play, too. Crowdstrike, an American cybersecurity company, helped the Democratic National Committee investigate the data breach that led to the leak of tens of thousands of emails and documents. The company publicly shared its findings—that the intrusion originated in Russia—in June, a month after it discovered the breach.