Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said Saturday that the U.S. intelligence report presented this week on Moscow's hacking did not provide "a scintilla of evidence that the Russians actually had an impact on the election."

"Did they hack machines? Probably so," the former Republican presidential candidate told Uma Pemmaraju on Fox News.

"Did they perhaps get involved by sending misdirection, misinformation? Doubtful that they did any more misinformation than did The New York Times, The Washington Post or the major networks," he said.

Those mainstream news outlets "ignored the content of some these emails, which was explosive in its contempt for conservatives, Christians, people in the middle of the country, Catholics," Huckabee said. "There was some things that they never really covered.

"It's just one more way in which [Democrats] are trying to say, 'Gee it really wasn't us, when in fact, it really was."

The report, declassified after the president-elect was briefed about it on Friday, blamed Vladimir Putin and the Russian government for pre-election hacking to try to undermine Democrat Hillary Clinton and help Trump.

http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/US-Trump-The-Latest/2017/01/06/id/767251/

The findings concluded that Putin and his agencies "aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.

"All three agencies agree with this judgment," the document said. "CIA and FBI have a high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence."

President Barack Obama ordered the report, which was presented to him on Thursday.

Trump responded by publicly questioning the intelligence community's conclusions and characterized the report as a "political witch hunt."

The president-elect also called for a congressional investigation into the leak of the report to NBC News on Thursday before he had a chance to see it.

As for meddling in other nation's elections, Huckabee noted that the Obama administration spent $350,000 in taxpayer money through the State Department to try to thwart the re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015.

"If the Senate wants to get all exorcised — let's have hearings and get to the bottom of this — terrific," he told Pemmaraju. "They should.

"But while they're getting to bottom of interference in elections, get to the bottom of the U.S. and the Obama administration and taxpayer dollars from the State Department getting involved in the Israeli elections.

"I would love to see that investigation go down, but I guarantee you it isn't going to happen in the next few days before Obama leaves office," Huckabee said.

The former governor added that only the "people who are in the bubbles of Washington, New York and … Hollywood" care about the report — not average Americans who voted for Donald Trump.

"They are certainly looking at this and saying, 'There's something of great consequence here,'" Huckabee said. "But I'll tell you, the average American is not looking at it — and they are certainly not in any way affected.

"They're glad for these eight years to be coming to an end.

"They voted for Donald Trump," he said. "They know why they voted for him. Nothing to do with Vladimir Putin."

http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/huckabee-intel-report-russia/2017/01/07/id/767324/