No, because that didn’t happen. If you were following the news the claim actually made is what the intelligence agencies of multiple countries concluded: Russia spent a considerable amount of money _influencing_ the elections with fake news and social media and they supported targeted attacks on Democrats.
There were concerns over attempts to compromise election systems, which again were confirmed by subsequent investigations, but that was reported by the mainstream media in the context of the federal government warning states to be prepared and noting that most attacks had failed and there was no reason to believe the elections would not be reliable.
You're absolutely right, Russia very likely did spent time and money attempting to influence the 2016 election, very few would doubt that. What I have issue with is the erasure of the fact that media outlets and mainstream Democrats were absolutely and without a doubt pushing the narrative that Russia "stole" or "hacked" the election, which is very different from attempting to influence.
That piece I posted, of which there are hundreds of similar ones easily perusable quotes:
"[Donald Trump] it turns out, is no more the duly elected president of the United States than I am the world’s most decorated ballerina."
Do you see the issue there? It was a mainstream opinion at the time to believe that despite misguided Americans legally voting him into power, the election was fraudulent and Donald Trump was not the legal president.
I truly believe if the Democrats had exercised more tact in their accusations 4 years prior, we wouldn't have seen the horrific events at the capital by domestic terrorists peddling essentially the same conspiracy theory which had been forced down their throats by centre-left media.
You’re going to claim authoritative representation of American mainstream opinion based on a blog post by a Canadian author who lives in Europe?
More importantly, you’re conflating two very different situations: saying that the Russians _interfered_ with the election is a factual position and random people who are not in power complaining about it or saying that the legitimately elected candidate doesn’t speak for them is very different than the current President baselessly claiming fraud and trying to use his office to get legitimate votes thrown out or request that fake ones be manufactured. Trying to equate the two is simply dishonest.
Here are a lot more representative articles that aren't from a Huffpost opinion piece by a "novelist and photographer"
Clinton says Comey's letter, Russian hackers cost her the election [0]
Russian hackers, Donald Trump, and the 2016 election, explained [1]
Russia and its influence on the presidential election [2]
The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S. [3]
CIA concludes Russia interfered to help Trump win election, say reports [4]
These are consistently and specifically about Russian hacking of Clinton's email servers and about their actions targeting voting infrastructure. They moderate, rather than amplify, any blunt or clickbait language like "Russia hacked the election." There were not widespread claims that the election was outright stolen, and certainly not from the leader of the party. Merely claims that without Russian influence, people would have cast their votes differently.
Remember that Clinton conceded the next day and said outright that "we must accept this result." [5]
There is no one to blame for the big lie that the right wing has swallowed and run with except for the leadership that has fed them those lies over and over and over for years.
There were concerns over attempts to compromise election systems, which again were confirmed by subsequent investigations, but that was reported by the mainstream media in the context of the federal government warning states to be prepared and noting that most attacks had failed and there was no reason to believe the elections would not be reliable.