Without a shred of proof, and flying in the face of hard evidence from his own spooks which points the finger at Putin, Trump claimed China may have hacked the emails of Democratic officials to meddle with the 2016 presidential election.

In an interview transcript published on Sunday, Trump said: "If you don't catch a hacker, okay, in the act, it's very hard to say who did the hacking. It could have been China, could have been a lot of different groups."

The hackers roiled the presidential campaign by making public embarrassing emails sent by Democratic operatives and aides to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. One email showed party leaders favouring Clinton over her rival in the campaign for the party's internal nomination contest.

Trump has been dismissive of the statements by intelligence officials that Moscow hacked the emails to help Trump win the election.

During the 26 Sept Trump said China was one of many actors that could have been behind the hack, including "somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds".