White House press secretary Josh Earnest speaks during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington. (Photo: AP)

Washington: There are indications that President-elect Donald Trump knew about the Russian involvement in hacking of the servers of the rival Clinton campaign and the Democratic party, the White House has said.

“There’s ample evidence that was known long before the election and, in most cases, long before October about the Trump campaign and Russia — everything from the Republican nominee himself calling on Russia to hack his opponent,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.

“It might be an indication that he was obviously aware and concluded, based on whatever facts or sources he had available to him, that Russia was involved, and their involvement was having a negative impact on his opponent’s campaign. That’s why he was encouraging them to keep doing it,” Mr Earnest said in response to a question.

“You had the Republican nominee refer to the President of Russia as a strong leader. The Republican nominee chose a campaign chair that had extensive, lucrative, personal financial ties to the Kremlin,” Mr Earnest said.

He said this was obvious to those who were covering the race that the hack-and-leak strategy that had been operationalised was not being equally applied to the two parties and to the two campaigns.

There was one side that was bearing the brunt of that strategy and another side that was clearly benefiting from it, he observed.

Outgoing President Barack Obama believed it was important for the intelligence community to make this announcement.

“That’s why you saw a joint statement from the intelligence community and from the Department of Homeland Security. That was an effort to ensure that this information avoided even the appearance of being politically motivated,” Mr Earnest said.