President-elect Donald Trump did "absolutely the wrong thing" in his Twitter post Wednesday supporting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's attack on American media coverage, Rep. Adam Kinzinger said.
"This is no nice guy," the Illinois Republican told Jim Sciutto on CNN. "He's exposed American secrets.
"He's putting American operatives, American troops, American policy goals at risk.
"There's a lot of things with Donald Trump that I'm excited to work with him on as a Republican, but this is one area where I'm still having a hard time understanding," Kinzinger added. "This Russia issue is one area where we don't see eye to eye."
But the fourth-term congressman declined to say whether Trump's support of Assange was disloyal to the United States, telling Sciutto "that's a big thing to level, so I'm not going to go there."
Trump tweeted he agreed with Assange's view of the U.S. media as "very dishonest" in an interview Tuesday with Sean Hannity of Fox News.
Assange also reiterated Russia did not provide WikiLeaks with any hacked information it later published on its website, including emails from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
Kinzinger said Congress could respond to the hacking issue by leveling stronger sanctions against Moscow — and legislators could override any Trump veto because "there is the support to continuing to hold Russia accountable for their behavior in the world."
"This is very dangerous," he later told Sciutto. "Julian Assange is a bad person with probably American blood on his hands.
"Definitely, the information he's put out there has made our country far less safe."