> However, I think it is clear it had a significant effect

How is it clear though? This is my analysis of the RCP average - there are clear events that are showing an impact on the polls, but I am unable to see any swing that is significant enough trending downwards for candidate Clinton that would give merit to the theory of a significant effect.

(https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/g...)

We see candidate Trump overtake candidate Clinton around July 26, which coincides with the release of the DNC emails by Wikileaks, wherein a systematic bias against candidate Sanders is revealed to the public. Apart from this, candidate Trump trails in the polls by mostly 3-6 points.

The decline in numbers for candidate Clinton seems to trend again between August 25 and September 8. August 25 is when the Clinton campaign declared that pepe the frog is a symbol of the alt-right, and denounced the supporters of candidate Trump's campaign as racists. Given that pepe the frog's history as a beloved meme is widespread, including on platforms like Twitch.tv and in several online subcultures, many of which I am a part of, and are completely apolitical, I'm quite convinced that the reaction to this kind of failure to connect with younger voters would have hit her in the polls.

Note also that on August 26, she went on the Jimmy Kimmel show and performed a gag where she opened a pickle jar, to steer clear rumors of her ill health.

On September 9, she made the famous "Basket of deplorables" comment, which shows yet another negative spike - it seems like every time she goes on the offensive against the candidate's support base, she starts to lose favour.

On September 11, she fainted at the 9/11 memorial service. During this entire period there is a significant downtrend in her poll numbers. The polls are most certainly reflecting major popular stories from the campaign.

The week of October 7-14 is again significant here. The Access Hollywood recording was released to the public on October 7, and the John Podesta emails were released the same day. During this period, the polls appeared to have a very sharp negative impact on candidate Trump, whereas candidate Clinton trended upward.

On October 16, the stories from John Podesta's emails finally break in the mainstream media, with CNN's Jake Tapper suggesting that it is illegal for the public to read them. This is where candidate Trump begins to make a comeback in the polls.

On October 28, Director Comey announces that the investigation into candidate Clinton's use of a private server has been re-opened, because emails were found on a the laptop of Anthony Weiner, during an unrelated underage sexting scandal involving Weiner - this causes a very clear nosedive in poll numbers for Clinton, which recovers sharply on November 6, when Director Comey once again clears her of all charges.

For me to accept that "Russian influence" via ads or some other propaganda machinery had a significant impact on the minds of the voters, I think it ought to be visible somehow in the polls - since this is true of nearly every other major development in the campaign. The only theory to validate that would be that the Russians somehow played a part in the Wikileaks drama. Julian Assange has offered to be a witness for the Mueller investigation but has been ignored.

The other controversial figure who had information about what was going on with Wikileaks was the infamous Kim Dotcom, who, in 2015 said that Assange would be targeting candidate Clinton's campaign, as early as 2015, referenced here:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-14/kim-dotco...

Dotcom has also offered to testify, but has not been taken seriously, yet is the only person is known to have had knowledge of the Wikileaks operation an entire year before it happened.

The idea that there was a significant impact seems to be an unfounded hypothesis in the face of actual data.

> As for your statements about 2008 or 2012 I would need a lot of citations for claims about russian interference in those elections.

Page 5 and 6 https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

> Comparing an innocuous diplomatic statement and a line during a debate with a prolonged and consistent pattern of contact between campaign officials to obtain intelligence provided by the Russian government through hacking....

I don't agree that calling it innocuous makes it innocuous. It's clear that the President wanted to take action once it was politically expedient to do so, and promised flexibility on issues once a second term was secured. It is rooted more in politics and less in diplomacy.

The consistent pattern of contact to obtain opposition research obtained through hacking is identical to the effort to obtain opposition research through spying, which is alleged in the Steele dossier. The only difference between these dirty tactics is that the Clinton campaign maneuvered around the law to get the opposition research, likely owing to their decades of political experience. Both are essentially the same crime in principle. It's also important to note that it is clearly known that coordination in the latter case existed and it yielded a result as well - i.e. the dossier. In the former case, there is an investigation to uncover the evidence, and until now no evidence has surfaced that there were meetings or other discussions showing collusion, nor that there was any sort of yield of damaging information that surfaced as a result of the meetings. I think the distinction between the two campaigns is important in the context of the outrage against collusion with the Russian government or agents of the Russian government, because both campaigns were happy to engage in it, but went about it very differently.

In the case of the famous Donald Trump Jr. email and meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, she was not known to be working for the Russian government at the time, and was retained by Fusion GPS - who was ironically working on opposition research against President Trump. She was able to get a meeting under the pretext of providing opposition research, there was no indication that she was an agent of the erstwhile Russian government, so to prove that a crime is committed because they took a meeting won't really hold up in court, nor should it to a reasonable and fair minded person. What it does is certainly give the appearance of impropriety and a willingness to accept opposition research, which is certainly not unprecedented.

> The strongest case against the president (note these might not actually be crimes-often the cover-up is more damaging and criminal) is that his campaign officials met with agents of the russian government

In my comment I said that the strongest case would be that the President not only worked to get elected but continues to do so. That would be fairly treasonous.

> Hell there was a new york times article this very day about how the trump campaign was aware of the DNC hacks months before it became public knowledge. Donald trump cheered the hackers on in debates. Claiming the campaign was entirely unaware is dead wrong.

Many of us around the world cheered the hackers on - Secretary Clinton is a very unpopular person to millions :)

Not sure why but these news sources are conflating Secretary Clinton's emails from her private server with the DNC emails. They are not the same thing. There are 3 classes of emails - Clinton, DNC and Podesta. The latter two became public during the campaign. The first never came out - this is the dirt that they allegedly had, and the public has not seen the 33,000 emails to this day.

Given this distinction, the NYT and other reporting is a little misleading. There was ample reporting on the possibility that Russia specifically had compromised the Clinton private server emails prior to this. It was public speculation for a very long time, much before the George Papadopolous email to his professor friend. Former Defense Secretary Gates said the odds were quite high.

Jan 2016

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/266674-former-defense-se...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3412251/Former-secre...

Feb 2016

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2016/02/12/...

March 2016

http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/16/investigation-hillary-sent...

If I were a betting man I'd wager heavily that the emails were definitely seen by foreign governments - 33,000 were never released to the public, and still have not been, so even if all of this were true, the fact that the emails never became public sort of proves that the result of the alleged collusion never materialized during the course of the campaign. The only stuff that came out was DNC and

> I assure you- the united states is not a russian puppet and will never be so.

If it comes to light that the executive branch is working to further Russian interests, and so are the members in Congress who are lobbied by folks like Manafort and Podesta, then it would be very difficult to argue otherwise. Currently, the jury is still very much out on the former, since what is being trumpeted by the press is thus far betting heavily that a smoking gun will emerge to prove that there was collusion that yielded some exchange.