I thought that until today. Now I hope Putin gives that a rethink, since the joke will be on him. Only people with a sense of shame or something to lose can be blackmailed. If Clinton is elected, she would just laugh in Putin’s face if he released evidence of her crimes. Who would do anything about it? Who would even care? The minority of the public with moral standards? The null set of public officials with any integrity?
The only hope us that someone starts releasing smoking gun evidence immediately, and keeps rolling it out.
I think Putin’s best shot is to upset Hillary’s applecart right at the convention, and either remove or fatally weaken her campaign. He cannot “blackmail” her with this kind of material once she is POTUS because then she will be even more untouchable against evidence of all but the newest and even far more egregious wrongdoings. Whatever Putin has will be “old news” by 2017.
IF Putin decides he does not want Shrillary as POTUS, he has to undermine her campaign. Why would he do that when he could look forward to having such a weak and vacuous US leader to deal with? It seems like he should prefer Hillary to Trump for Russia’s interests, except that (1) he must respect Trump far more and may actually want a fellow head of state he doesn’t despise; (2) Hillary’s interventionism and globalism may pose more problems for Russian interests; (3) Trump may be judged much more likely to cut deals that Russia can live with, while Hillary would be out overthrowing govts and expanding NATO etc.