I hear the crickets chirping...

[Haruo]

Collaborated should read corroborated. (One of those cases where most Japanese are likely to get the spelling right more often than most Americans in a day of Autocorrect.

Maybe the Russians sent a Cohen look-alike into the Czech Republic so if the present ever came to pass they could use this to get access to Cohen's client list.

Having been on the receiving end of some of the Russian efforts to manipulate the election (yes, some of their operatives are halfway competent in Esperanto!) I can pretty certainly attest that the Russian effort was to deflect support from Clinton to Trump. My guess is that this is not so much because they liked his politics better than hers, domestically or internationally, but because they thought his election would destabilize the United States, and his inexperience in foreign affairs of the military/political sort would make it less likely that he would succeed in efforts to oppose Russian strategies.