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Is Putin trying to pick our president?

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Russian President Vladimir Putin.Alexei Nikolsky

As if trolling for controversy, Donald Trump today invited Russia to hack into US computers and dig up missing e-mails from Hillary Clinton's time as secretary of state.

This call for a foreign power to meddle in US politics comes in the thick of a scandal suggesting that Russia is already meddling, actively trying to throw the election to Trump.

Earlier this week, Russian hackers were implicated in a high-profile leak designed to embarrass Clinton. And talk of a Russian plot to help Trump was further fueled by Trump's long-confounding tendency to praise Vladimir Putin, endorse Putin-friendly policies, and hire advisers with strong ties to the Russian government.

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It's difficult to separate speculation from evidence in this tale of international intrigue; here's where that line is now.

It starts with Russian hackers

At the end of last week, WikiLeaks unveiled a cache of embarrassing e-mails stolen from the Democratic National Committee. In several of them, senior members of the Democratic Party plotted and joked about how to help Clinton beat Bernie Sanders. That gave new force to the charge that the committee may have inappropriately put its thumb on the primary scales; and as a result DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz agreed to resign.

Turns out, that damaging leak seems to have been perpetrated by Russia. Computer experts had already concluded that the DNC was originally hacked by Russian intelligence agencies, and new evidence suggests that the e-mails passed through Russian computers.

Expect the unexpected from Trump — and Putin

While another presidential contender might be expected to allay concerns at such a moment, Trump has a unique approach to scandal.

Defying concerns about his over-close relationship with Putin, on Wednesday he encouraged Russia to expand its hacking activities to include the personal e-mail server Clinton used as secretary of state.

"Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing," he said. "I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press."

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It's a remarkably direct appeal to engage in further hacking, though the request to target 30,000 missing e-mails is misleading.

Clinton herself turned over 30,000 e-mails from her server. Several thousand other, deleted e-mails were also uncovered, but the FBI "found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them."

Trump's basic gambit here is that the chance to remind people of Clinton's e-mail troubles outweighs any risk of further entangling himself in the Russian hacking scandal. Time may well prove him right, though he was quickly rebuked by members of his own party.

What’s the connection between Trump and Russia anyway?

Trump and Putin seem to have a symbiotic political relationship.

Trump has praised Putin in the past. Back in December, he said, "I've always felt fine about Putin. He's a strong leader, he's a powerful leader. . . . He's actually got popularity within his country."

And for his part, Putin has said that Trump is "a very flamboyant man, very talented, no doubt about that."

But the charges of Trump-Putin solidarity go far further.

• Trump has called NATO "obsolete," questioning the bedrock idea that an attack on any NATO country should be treated as an attack on all. And the party that stands to gain the most from a weakened NATO is Russia, which has long bristled against the expansion of NATO into what it considers its sphere of influence.

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• As Republicans negotiated over a common platform at last week's convention, the Trump team kept mostly aloof — letting party insiders craft the document as they saw fit. But there was one big exception: policy toward Ukraine. Trump's camp successfully opposed the inclusion of a call for US-provided weapons to help Ukraine fight back a separatist movement supported by Russia.

• Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, spent years as an adviser for ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych (a Putin ally). Also, Trump's top foreign policy adviser on Russia and Europe has ongoing ties to the Russian state oil company Gazprom.

• Trump insisted in a tweet that he has no money invested in Russia, but there are real questions about how much money Russians have invested in him. It's hard to know for sure, since Trump won't release his tax returns, but over the years he seems to have borrowed substantially from Russian investors. Trump's son and business partner, Donald Jr., said in 2008 that Russians made up a disproportionate share of their assets, adding, "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."

Put these together, and Trump does indeed seem a much more Putin-friendly candidate than Clinton.

How deep does this really go?

There's a weak link in this argument that Russia hacked into DNC servers in order to help Trump and embarrass Clinton: The e-mails released didn't contain any truly damning revelations. And if you're a powerful autocrat intent on swinging an election, why not fabricate a few?

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Plus, the Russians left their fingerprints all over the computers and files. That's either a sign of amateurism or an indication that this isn't exactly a state priority.

Still, more incriminating information could easily come out in the coming days. Clinton campaign operatives are sure to start digging for darker connections between Trump and Putin.

Perhaps the biggest open question is whether this is merely Russia's opening salvo. If Putin really does want to influence the election, leaking a few e-mails in July doesn't amount to much. But a more dramatic Russian intervention, say in early November, could decide the next election.


Evan Horowitz digs through data to find information that illuminates the policy issues facing Massachusetts and the United States. He can be reached at evan.horowitz@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeHorowitz.