To have done so DURING the election would have created accusations of bias. This was always going to be a big story post-election. Stories about troll factories

To have done so DURING the election would have created accusations of bias. This was always going to be a big story post-election. Stories about troll factories and the Macedonian clickbait troll town were out before the election. The comment trolling phenomenon hasn't even picked up much coverage yet. That said, a lot of blame does need to be apportioned to western intelligence agencies. The idea that hostile foreign actors could (if they wanted) manipulate large segments of electorates seems to have escaped them entirely. This is especially damning since they saw how those tools were effectively deployed in the Arab Spring and elsewhere to foment revolutions (if they weren't behind those movements themselves). It is an epic fail, and joins a long list of intelligence failures.