Russia hacking accusations a 'political witch hunt' says Trump

The controversy over potential Russia hacks before the US election is a "political witch hunt", Donald Trump has said.

The president-elect made the comments in a phone call to the New York Times just hours before he was due to receive a briefing from top US intelligence officials over their findings.

Director of US National Intelligence James Clapper said on Thursday he was "very confident" Moscow hacked Democratic Party institutions and spread fake news during the election campaign, as he gave evidence to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Senator John McCain, Republican chairman of the committee, said "every American should be alarmed" by Russia's interfering, which was an "unprecedented attack on our democracy".

In the call with the paper, Mr Trump complained that other countries have been involved in hacking and that "nobody talks about it", and also suggested it was unfair that this particular instance had received far more attention.

"China, relatively recently, hacked 20 million government names," he said. "How come nobody even talks about that? This is a political witch hunt."

He reiterated that he did not believe there was sufficient evidence to prove that Russia was involved in the hack, which exploited communications used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and was shared publicly.

But he added that hackers had infiltrated the White House and Congress, saying: "With all that being said, I don’t want countries to be hacking our country.

"We're like the hacking capital of the world."