Amid speculation that the leaked internal Democratic National Committee emails were hacked and released by the Russian government,
Politico reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin has a personal animus to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton that goes back years.
Clinton has never been a fan of Putin, joking in 2008 when she was a senator that President George W. Bush was wrong when he said he looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul. That couldn't be right, Clinton said, since Putin was a former KGB agent and "by definition he doesn't have a soul."
Putin didn't care for that crack, but he was even more incensed when Clinton, then secretary of state, questioned the legitimacy of Russia's 2011 parliamentary elections. Clinton over the years was Putin's harshest critic in the Obama administration, even as she was negotiating with his government.
"He was very upset [with Clinton] and continued to be for the rest of the time that I was in government," Michael McFaul, the top Russia official in the national security council from 2009 to 2011 and later U.S. ambassador to Moscow, told Politico. "One could speculate that this is his moment for payback."
Others disagree on the personal vendetta, but
intelligence experts do generally agree Putin, if involved, likely wanted to discredit the U.S. political system.
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