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This whole thing about Russia is utter nonsense. I simply cannot believe that this country is wasting so much time and effort over pure bunk.

Let’s try to look at this a bit logically, shall we?

1) Russia obtains about 68% of its foreign currency earnings (as of 2013) from the sale of oil and natural gas. http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=17231 As an exporter of these resources, even an idiot can understand that it is clearly in Russia’s national interest to have the highest possible prices for them. Russia is actually running out of foreign currency reserves, which it uses to cover its own budget deficits, and is rather desperate to have oil rise in price to stabilize and even replenish its foreign reserves. http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/27/russias-reserve-fund-could-run-empty-in-2016.html

Oh, yeah, and Hillary Clinton pledged to NOT allow the XL Pipeline to be built, to continue to NOT grant drilling leases on federal land or offshore, to continue to put every regulatory roadblock imaginable to reduce domestic oil production, to NOT allow new coal mines (and, in fact, to shut down as many as possible), etc., etc. (all ostensibly to reduce “global warming” but, more likely, to be the pay-off of some pretty hefty, uh “contributions” to the Clinton Foundation by oil-rich foreign countries, and a means of extracting even more of such “contributions”). IOW, her policies, if implemented, would have reduced the supply of fossil fuel energy in the world, thus driving prices UP (which would be very good for Russia). Donald Trump, OTOH, pledged (and so far is following through on that pledge) to unleash American energy companies to drill and mine as much oil, natural gas and coal as possible, to increase employment and (SPECIFICALLY) to reduce the price of these commodities (which would lead to yet more job creation here). This would be (i.e. is and will be) very bad for Russia.

2) The U.S. and Russia are geopolitical rivals. In ANY geopolitical rivalry, each side seeks to have if not actual military superiority, then at least sufficient trained and well-equipped forces to inflict very serious damage on any rival or combination of rivals. Of course, for superpowers or great powers, building that type of a military is an enormously expensive proposition...and, as noted above, Russia already has budget deficit problems, WITHOUT having to compete with a new US military build-up.

Hillary Clinton has never been known as a “hawk” on foreign or defense policy, and there is no good reason to believe that she would have engaged in a large build-up of US military forces, nor that she would have been credibly aggressive in opposing Russia across the globe. Donald Trump, OTOH, pledged a massive build-up of US forces, and has (like in so many other areas) followed through on his pledge by asking Congress for the largest percentage increase in the peacetime Defense budget since Ronald Reagan’s first term. I will note that it is widely believed that the US military build-up of the 1980s had the effect of adding substantially to Soviet economic difficulties, all of which combined in the late 1980s and early 1990s to effectively bankrupt the Soviet Empire and lead to the removal of the Communist Party from leadership of the Soviet Union (which no longer exists - THANK YOU, Ronald Reagan and Bill Casey!!!). Another such build-up now would place incredible strains upon the Russian economy, possibly leading to another change of government.

3) If the Russians had damaging/compromising information on Hillary Clinton as a result of hacking her at-home and unsecured server, which would have been the better use for it:

a) Before the Presidential election, so as to damage her chances of obtaining office?

b) After the election, and even after she had entered office, when it could have been used to blackmail or otherwise persuade her to change policy?
So which candidate in the 2016 Presidential election did the Russians REALLY want to win? If they are self-interested (and one has to believe that they are), then Donald Trump would have been BY FAR the worse choice for the Russians.
The simple fact is that NOBODY heard anything about “the Russians” and their supposed”hacking of the election” until Wikileaks revealed that the DNC and the Clinton campaign had conspired to deny Bernie Sanders the Democrat nomination for President. IMMEDIATELY upon the release of this information, the DNC and the Clinton campaign proceeded to blame the messenger (or the supplier of the messenger), rather than to even attempt to refute the substance of the emails that Wikileaks had released. IOW, the DNC and the Clinton campaign saw a mortal danger to their political futures, and decided to shout “SQUIRREL!!!!” while pointing in the opposite direction from where everyone’s attention had been focused.

So, the bottom line is that they are a bunch of lying cover-up artists, and not even very good ones at that (because it is OBVIOUS that the Russians had every reason in the world to prefer a Clinton Presidency).