You can’t separate the two easily because the DNC email hack and “DCLeaks” front group was attributed to Russia by the U.S. intelligence community, as extensively covered in the Mueller report, and a large amount of social media activity around both email stories and other topics was conducted by the Russian Internet Research Agency. Comey had more significance but the flurry of allegations had more than minor involvement of Russian assets and people weren’t reacting to just one detail but the whole barrage. Pizzagate is still around now and that started with the Russian spearphisher who got Podesta’s emails.
Sorry to be clear I was talking about Hillary Clinton's misuse of private email as SoS. Didn't involve Russia to my knowledge - though I would not be surprised most larger nation states hacked there way in.
Sure Russia probably amplified it but it was wall to wall across ALL media a few days before the election - when undecideds are going to vote. And the big damage from the first hit.
The corruption, thinks she is above the rules, tarmac with Lynch etc. That hit really hard with the small slice of swing voters and maybe more importantly reduced turnout from Ds
I don't think anyone who would believe pizza gate would ever vote for Hillary lol e.g. not a swing voter to begin with
Sorry, my response needed to better clarify with a complicated mess like this. The idea I was trying to get at with “both email stories” was the attempts to blur everything together - trying to use the DNC email acknowledgment to lend credibility to all of the other stories. There were a lot of self-proclaimed infosec experts posting about how disqualifying it was.
I completely agree that Comey bringing it back into the front page played a bigger role but I wouldn’t rule out all of the social media trolling having more than a little influence. It seemed to leave a lot of reporters covering non-stories lest they be accused of bias again.
