Seriously?
I know this is the hot and trending topic right now about the mean old Russians tampering with our election process, but let's sit back and analyze this possibility. As a writer of fiction, this just doesn't pass the smell test to me. Think about it for a minute, which e-mails derailed her campaign? Which was the smoking gun that ended her chance at success?
Having a hard time coming up with one? There's a reason for that. There isn't one. The e-mails that were leaked weren't especially flattering, but none was a smoking gun to destroy her campaign. Now imagine you're the head of the Russian intelligence services and Vladimir Putin calls you in and says he wants you to destroy Hillary Clinton's campaign. You know there are 30,000 (or so) e-mails that were presumed lost forever when her server got hit with Bleach Bit. That gives you 30,000 (or so) opportunities to create a forged e-mail that no one can prove isn't real.
You could create anything and all she could do is deny ever sending it, but with her server wiped clean, she couldn't prove she never sent it. The Russian intelligence services could create whatever type of e-mail chain they wished and it would be impossible for Hillary to prove it was faked. They have tens of thousands of her real e-mails to use as a baseline, so it would be easy to forge a creatively written series of e-mails that could destroy her. Imagine the reaction if an e-mail or two from those 30,000 thought lost forever emerged in which she angrily referred to President Obama as the "N" word? What if e-mails emerged that referred to her Hollywood supporters as easily conned morons? What if e-mails emerged in which she referred to the LGBT community in an insulting fashion?
When you think about it, there are dozens of possibilities that the Russian intelligence services could have used to create fake e-mails that would have completely derailed Hillary Clinton's campaign. It would have been almost too easy to do so if they'd really tried to do so. What did we get instead? Nothing all that impressive.
Was Russia hacking our computers? Certainly! We're hacking theirs too. It's what countries do. Did Russia feed the information they hacked to Wikileaks to destroy Hillary Clinton's campaign? Not likely. If they wanted to destroy her campaign they could have done so in a much more impressive fashion. So, who did leaked the e-mails then? Most likely a Bernie Sanders backer within the DNC who wasn't happy with how Bernie had been treated. Seth Rich is the obvious suspect as he reportedly had access to the information and Julian Assange (founder of Wikileaks) posted a reward for information leading to those who killed Seth Rich. Assange has said Russia did not supply the material he leaked and I'm inclined to believe him.
But how did Hillary lose if Russia didn't steal the election from her? She lost the old fashioned way, she earned it. Hillary Clinton pretty much disappeared from the campaign trail for much of September, popping up only at the occasional fundraiser, but largely ignoring the general public. Meanwhile, Donald Trump was holding rally after rally and getting good crowds of people energized about his campaign. Trump simply ran the better campaign. He put in more appearances, before more people, in the weeks/months leading up to the election. He energized his supporters while Hillary failed to do so. Remember her "Why aren't I ahead by fifty points" comment? She thought she had the election won and put it on cruise control. Trump never stopped campaigning.
But the polls all said Hillary would win! Not all of the polls agreed on that. The LA Times/USC poll had Trump winning pretty much the whole election season. Now, LA isn't generally viewed as being a Republican stronghold and I'm pretty sure the newspaper readers in LA would have preferred the LA Times to say Hillary would win, but the LA Times/USC stood firm in their numbers and ended up being right.
So, Trump won fair and square? Sad to say, it looks that way. The leaked e-mails certainly didn't help her campaign, but find me someone who said they didn't vote for her solely because of the leaked e-mails. It may take you a while to find anyone. The truth of the matter is, Trump ran a better campaign. He focused like a laser on winning the states needed for the Electoral College votes and he pulled it off. Hillary largely assumed she'd win Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Wisconsin, or some combination that would give her the votes needed. She was wrong. Russia likely played little to no role in the outcome of this election. Think about what they could have done if they'd truly wanted to influence the election? They could have created/released e-mails that would have made it impossible to Hillary to win and it wouldn't have been hard.
Sometimes the best evidence for what happened is the evidence that's missing. If Russia had truly wanted to influence this election, we likely would have seen them take a far more aggressive approach in doing so. There is no evidence to suggest that Russia fabricated an e-mail that doomed Hillary Clinton's campaign. If they'd wished to do so, it would have been ridiculously easy for them to have done so. Not having a smoking gun e-mail that sank Hillary's campaign is likely all the proof we need that Russia was not actively involved. Were they hacking the computers? Certainly. Did they actively try to sabotage Hillary Clinton's campaign? Not likely. It would have been so easy for them to have done so in a much more effective manner, that lacking that, one must assume Russia didn't participate. The Hillary Clinton loss is on Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump simply beat her where it mattered the most.
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