Behind Democrats’ email leak, experts see a Russian subplot and desire to discredit US politics

If the Russian government is behind the theft and release of embarrassing emails from the Democratic Party, as US officials have suggested, it may reflect less a love of Donald Trump or enmity for Hillary Clinton than a desire to discredit the US political system.

A US official who is taking part in the investigation said that intelligence collected on the hacking of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails released by Wikileaks on Friday “indicates beyond a reasonable doubt that it originated in Russia.”

The timing on the eve of Clinton’s formal nomination this week for the November 8 presidential election has raised questions about whether Russia may have been trying to hurt her, to help Trump, her Republican rival, or to fan populist sentiment against establishment politicians as it has sought to do across Europe in recent years.

“Certainly Russia has become a master at manipulating information for their strategic goals: Witness the information bubble they have created for their threatening behaviour in the Crimea, the Ukraine and elsewhere,” said former CIA and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden. “A step like this, however, would be really upping their game.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in the Laos capital Vientiane for a regional security forum Tuesday, shrugged when asked by reporters if Russia was responsible.