I don't think it is important how secrets come to light. It is only important if they are true or not.
Sure, Russian Intelligence may have hacked my politicians computers. Or Russian teenagers. Or American teenagers. Or American journalists paid off an informant.
None of that actually matters because the only thing important is if the information is true or not.
If it was uncovered "legally" makes no difference in the USA, except for prosecutions and lawsuits. Journalists cannot be prevented from publishing true information, no matter how they got it.
>None of that actually matters because the only thing important is if the information is true or not.
Sure, if we are limiting the discussion to specifically the information presented in these documents, but we never leave it there. There is nothing in the body of the emails that have proven Joe Biden was involved in anything nefarious. However the larger story is whether these emails are an implication of his corruption. In this larger story, both the interpretation of emails and the larger context of the emails are just as important at the body of the emails themselves. The source matters in that regard. A biased source can hide exonerating pieces of context and only show the evidence in a manner that is most likely to elicit the response they want.
For example, let's look back to 2016. There was a big controversy over Clinton getting debate questions ahead of time. That was true and looks awful with the context we had. However, what if there was also an email that Sanders received the same debate questions (purely a hypothetical for the sake of discussion, I'm not actually suggesting this happened)? That would change the entire story. Suddenly we go from a corrupt candidate manipulating everything to her advantage to a story about the artifice of televised political events. The Clinton email would be no less "true", but the existence of evidence we didn't see would change what that email means. It is easy to manipulate with partial truth like this.
What if we found out that Russian intelligence, in collaboration with the White House and RNC, has been trying to hack Biden family systems all year? And that these data, while real, were pulled from his laptop and a massive cover story created about the original?
It doesn't change my thoughts on HB's actions, but now we have a much bigger issue: a conspiracy where the president in cahoots with an unfriendly foreign power. That's waaaaaay bigger than Biden's kid, or Trump's kids, enriching themselves because of their parents' position.
Sure, Russian Intelligence may have hacked my politicians computers. Or Russian teenagers. Or American teenagers. Or American journalists paid off an informant.
None of that actually matters because the only thing important is if the information is true or not.
If it was uncovered "legally" makes no difference in the USA, except for prosecutions and lawsuits. Journalists cannot be prevented from publishing true information, no matter how they got it.