Team Clinton says Donald Trump in a liplock with Vladimir Putin

In perhaps the most shocking twist in the bitter American presidential battle till now, the Hillary Clinton campaign on Sunday charged that the Democratic National Committee emails had been stolen and released by Russia for Donald Trump’s benefit.

Ms Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, said, “Experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, (and are) releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump”.

Mr Trump dismissed these claims as a “joke”. In a series of tweets on Monday, he wrote, “The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should have never been written (stupid), because Putin likes me Hillary was involved in the e-mail scandal because she is the only one with judgement (sic) so bad that such a thing could have happened.”

But Ms Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta added fuel to the debate, saying there was “a kind of bromance going on” between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mr Trump. The Clinton campaign says Russia favors Mr Trump’s views, especially on NATO.

The eerie suggestion of a Kremlin conspiracy to beat Ms Clinton and help Mr Trump become the next US President had only been whispered till now. But the release on Friday, of some 20,000 stolen emails, revealing how the DNC was favoring Ms Clinton over her rival Sen. Bernie Sanders during the primary season, has changed that. To fight the expose, Team Clinton seems determined to go on the offensive about the role of Russian intelligence agencies in disrupting the 2016 campaign.

Proving the source of a cyberattack is notoriously difficult. But, according to the New York Times, researchers have concluded that the DNC was breached by two Russian intelligence agencies, the same ones behind previous Russian cyberoperations at the White House last year. “Metadata... suggests that the documents passed through Russian computers,” the article said, and added, “Whether the thefts were ordered by Mr Putin, or just carried out by apparatchiks who thought they might please him, is anyone’s guess.”