This Russian spy caper fails to prove Donald Trump’s election was rigged

What to make of the findings by Robert Mueller, the US Special Counsel, that Russians “meddled” in the 2016 presidential election? The allegations are colourful, including that Russian citizens infiltrated the country, posed as Americans and sought to rally support not just for Donald Trump, but also for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary election, and for Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate.

Some of the conspirators used false identities for online campaigning, but people were also paid to attend Trump events, including one who was dressed as Hillary Clinton in prison clothes, according to the investigation.

This looks like an effort by Russian intelligence to influence the outcome of a democratic election, but there are two important questions. Did it have any effect? And did Mr Trump cooperate with it?

On the first, we are sceptical. The activities alleged by Mr Mueller seem rather small in scale, and were probably no more effective than the efforts of the Czechoslovakian intelligence service to influence British democracy by having two cups of tea with Jeremy Corbyn, backbench MP, in 1986.

To the extent that it is possible to manipulate the outcome of a US election by setting up a few social media accounts and dressing up to go to rallies, the candidates’ campaign teams had already thought of those devices. A Clinton jailbird costume and even a few thousand Facebook posts are not going to shift many votes.

If there was a Russian attempt to boost Mr Sanders then it was, self-evidently, unsuccessful. The test has to be whether any interference in the campaign was worth 80,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the states Ms Clinton needed to win to deny Mr Trump the presidency. (Even if all of Ms Stein’s votes in those states had gone to Ms Clinton – an unlikely shift with or without outside interference – that would not have been enough.)

There is a number-crunching debate in the US about whether the late intervention by James Comey, then head of the FBI, announcing a new line of inquiry into Ms Clinton’s emails, influenced the result of the election. The consensus is that it probably did. But that was a huge media firestorm, not some hole-in-the-corner spy caper.

The second question about Mr Mueller’s investigation is much more important. What did candidate Trump know about Russian interference in the election and did he cooperate with or solicit it? The latest documents from Mr Mueller explicitly state that there is “no allegation in this indictment that any American had knowledge” of Russian activity.

However, that is hardly the end of the matter. We already know, separately, that senior members of Mr Trump’s team met Russian officials. We know that during the campaign Donald Jr, the President’s son, met a Russian lawyer who claimed to have “dirt” on Ms Clinton.

These are serious allegations that require thorough and impartial investigation. It is to be hoped that Mr Mueller will be able to complete it.