Harry Reid says Russian hacking is 'as big a deal as Watergate or 9/11'

Reuters

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev. speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2014.

Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid compared the gravity of Russia's alleged meddling in the US presidential election to the Watergate scandal and the 9/11 terror attacks.

"I think they should have a 9/11-type commission," Reid said during an interview with BuzzFeed Tuesday night.

Last week, The New York Times and Washington Post reported findings from the CIA that suggested Russia tried to help Trump win the presidential election via its hacking of Democratic Party organizations.

A trove of emails and documents from those breaches were published by WikiLeaks.

Reid has been critical of the FBI's response to the Russia hacking allegations, alleging FBI director James Comey "ignored" the reports and "single-handedly" cost Democrat Hillary Clinton the election.

"Basically what I said is that it appears to me with all the information that is public which substantiates some of the information that I've received indicates that Comey should take a look at this and that was ignored," Reid said.

Reid joined Clinton's campaign in accusing Comey of being responsible of costing the Democratic nominee the presidential election with his actions.

"To think that someone who's head of the FBI would abrogate, go against, repudiate a long standing precedent in the Justice Department that the FBI would not get involved in the last several weeks of an election. Well he got involved not once but several times," Reid said.

"We can look at many different reasons that we lost the Senate and Hillary didn't get elected, but Comey is one of the principles."