I think either would have been equally acceptable to the Russians. The goal was a painfully close election like 2000 which leaves the new president weakened and ineffective. The perfect result would have been 269-269 in the electoral college with the House deciding the election.
I think I can see where you are going with that but I am not convinced the Russians would want The Donald as their rival. The end result is the goal and having a decisive victor that would be amenable to their ends is always preferable.
But more to the core issue, the tactic of using leaked emails is probably the weakest, least effective means of interfering with an election, IMHO. While it may solidify those already entrenched, it probably would hold no sway over the undecided. Personality and truthfulness is what sways them. While an email chain would influence an undecided who pays attention, the truth is that there is no such animal. If they are paying attention, they already distrust HRC. Also, the attention span of the average voter is probably on par with a flea, WRT politics.
I’ll second the sentiment in #50. If you’re trying to get a “close election” to weaken the victor, leaking one party’s emails is a pretty lousy way to do it. Doing so is useful in weakening one particular party, but is far from decisive.
IF - as a hypothetical - Russia did “hack” the email server and leaked the contents to WikiLeaks (unlikely for numerous reasons), it is best explained as Russian intelligence services cracked the inept security as a matter of routine & mundane espionage (on the world stage, we expect everyone is at least casually trying to get into everyone else’s email), and sending the contents to WikiLeaks was a rather trivial & obvious action. The “leak” was so easy it was almost harder to _not_ do it.
To wit: the DNC’s contention amounts to this was little more than sneaky kids doing simple lock picking to rummage thru a disliked adult’s file cabinets, photocopying a particularly juicy & thick file folder, and mailing copies to their friends.