Who won the popular vote — Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump? Now more than one month after the 2016 presidential election, the nationwide vote count is nearing completion. The answer, and Clinton's popular vote wipeout of Trump, suddenly appeared to take on new relevance on Friday, when bombshell revelations that Russia may have deliberately tampered with the election to get Donald Trump elected were leaked to the Washington Post.
The issue of Russian intelligence agencies hacking into Democratic National Committee internet servers in order to steal information that could cast Clinton in a poor light and tilt the election toward Trump was raised well before the election. In fact, Clinton herself hammered on the issue in her October 19 debate with Trump.
"We have 17, 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyber attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin. And they are designed to influence our election," Clinton said during that debate. "I find that deeply disturbing."
On Friday, the Post revealed that a secret CIA intelligence assessment concluded that Clinton was right — and not only that, the Russian cyberattacks were specifically designed to help Trump get elected.
The new revelations, which imply that Trump won the election unfairly with help from a foreign power, have raised questions about the validity of the 2016 election, and who should be named the rightful winner. While Trump appears to have won the Electoral College — though electors do not vote until December 19 — Clinton was the clear choice of voters who cast ballots in the November 8 election, taking a popular vote win by a margin unprecedented in any modern election.
