First, they sought to undermine confidence in the American democratic enterprise—to dirty us up so that our election process would no longer be an inspiration to the rest of the world. Second, the Russians wanted to hurt Hillary Clinton. Putin hated her, blaming her personally for large street demonstrations against him in Moscow in December 2011. Putin believed Clinton had given “a signal” to demonstrators by publicly criticizing what she called “troubling practices” before and during the parliamentary vote in Russia that year. She said, “The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve
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