No, it was definitely the Russians. In addition to the clear and definitive attribution by federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies, there was significant work by private industry to support the attribution. For example the phishing email that got Podesta was included in the leak of his inbox, and traced back to phishing infrastructure that had previously (i.e. before the DNC and Podesta hacks happened) been attributed to one of the Russian APTs.

If the DNC leak impacted the election, should the blame be on leaker or on the people responsible. The DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned over the content of the emails, and the DNC issued a formal apology to Bernie Sanders and his supporters over the conduct during the election.

It seems a bit like blaming the NBCUniversal for leaking the audio tape of trumps lewd conversation about women, rather than trump.

A big question is how influence the three major leaks had on the election, and from an outside perspective it seems insane that the whole US political direction get decided on embarrassing leaks rather than political subjects.

IIRC the DNC was using Crowstrike for their AV and security who interestingly has a lot of their company based in Ukraine, and both CS and DNC refused to allow the FBI access to servers and logs to verify the Russian attack.

IDK much about much, but that sure does seem questionable to me.

The RNC has since hired Crowdstrike too, even as Republican officials they support have said lots of stuff about Crowdstrike and Ukraine. The public statements are all for show.

I’m not sure that’s a big vote of confidence for me. The other take on what you wrote is the RNC watched the DNC skirt over any sort of responsibility to allow authorities to investigate such a claim and want in on that action.

The Crowdstrike line is another primary talking point of the paid Russian propagandists.

A talking point belonging to a group one dislikes does not make it invalid.

If someone else had looked at the servers, it seems likely we would have heard of it by now...