Re: Check is in the mail, SecureWorks
Assuming that Putin read the polls like everyone else, would he risk infuriating the likely next President of the United States – Hillary Clinton – by embarrassing her with an email leak that would amount to a pinprick?
Because it's a low-risk, high-reward opportunity?
Worst case for them, Russia angers a newly elected President Clinton who issues some sanctions. Best case for them, Russia appeases a newly elected President Trump who tells everyone what a great guy Putin is.
Clinton herself blamed her surprise defeat on FBI Director Comey’s decision to briefly reopen the investigation into whether she endangered national security by using a private email server as Secretary of State.
Don't forget, there were three wholly separate email "scandals" that got conflated into a single nebulous email problem in the minds of many voters.
There was the "Hillary used a private email server while Secretary of State" issue, there was the DNC hack-and-release issue, and finally there was the Anthony Wiener's secretary's laptop issue. The first two are entirely unrelated and the first and third are only tangentially related because the two parties had potentially corresponded with each other such that messages not contained in one set might have existed in the other (which was not the case.)
It was this last one, the nonsense with Anthony Wiener's secretary's email that was the October surprise from Director Comey, to which Secretary Clinton assigns much of the blame for her unexpected defeat.