Trump's decision to create a 'voter fraud' panel backfires -- now it might investigate Russian hacking

President Donald Trump earlier this year created a panel to investigate the "voter fraud" that he believes cost him the popular vote in the 2016 election -- but now it appears that decision might backfire on him.

The Boston Globe reports that two members of Trump's "voter fraud" commission now want to investigate whether Russian hacking that targeted voting systems in multiple states compromised the integrity of the 2016 presidential election.

"There’s stuff coming out now that states were hacked in this election,” said New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, a Democrat who is a member of Trump's commission.

Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap echoed Gardner's concerns, and said that any commission on voter fraud would have to investigate Russian hacking to have legitimacy.

"If you are looking at the integrity of the election, you have to look at things that might compromise that integrity," he said. "That includes things that might happen electronically."

Republican Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State who is co-chairing the commission, signaled a willingness to investigate ways that Russian hackers may have breached states' voting systems.

“In the initial descriptions of the commission, election security and the integrity of equipment and voter databases was not specifically described,” Kobach said. “But if it’s something the commission wants to discuss, we can.”

Even though American intelligence agencies found that Russian hackers breached voting systems in more than two dozen states, they said that they had seen no evidence that these hackers managed to change electronic votes to alter the outcome of the election.