Late last week, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stepped out of the shadows to grant his first interview in memory with an American media outlet–with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. In it, Assange scoffed at the notion that Russian sources had given him the DNC emails that he’d leaked out during the campaign. Watch here.
Assange harrumphed that nothing in the report showed that he got any information from Russia. For instance, he claimed that the Russian “signature” on one targeted laptop was actually from a “commercially available tool” from Ukraine.
Never mind that the intelligence community is unanimous that pro-Kremlin hackers influenced the election. And never mind the ample evidence even before then that Wikileaks is a Russian front. For instance, Assange hosts a show on the slavishly pro-Kremlin cable channel RT, and has long echoed the Russian line on Syria and other issues. Most damningly, several agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service–one of the most notorious secret police forces in the world–serve on Assange’s security detail. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
But apparently Assange’s word was good enough for Donald Trump. Soon after the interview aired on Monday night, Trump took to Twitter.
Julian Assange said "a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta" – why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017
CNN noticed that Trump was singing a very different tune in 2010, when Bradley Manning–now Chelsea Manning–funneled a number of classified documents and videos to WikiLeaks. CNN’s Kfile stumbled on a YouTube video previewing Trump’s appearance on Fox News Radio’s “Kilmeade & Friends” on December 2, 2010. Watch here.
Kilmeade told Trump that Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch was going to be on hand to discuss WikiLeaks. He jokingly asked Trump if he had anything to do with the leaks. Trump denounced Assange’s actions as “disgraceful,” and added, “I think there should be like a death penalty or something.” Contrast that with Trump’s behavior during the campaign. He liberally used information released by WikiLeaks to attack Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, and openly begged Russia to leak more documents.
Process this for a moment. In 2010, Trump wanted Assange strung up. But during the presidential campaign, he was more than willing to use WikiLeaks information to help him, even in the face of mounting evidence that Assange did the Kremlin’s bidding. Did Trump’s desire to get in the White House at all costs, as well as his ties to Putin, blind him to the danger of letting a foreign power influence our election? Under the circumstances, that’s a fair question to ask.
(featured image courtesy Ecuadorian Consulate in the UK, available under Creative Commons BY-SA license)
