WikiLeaks Clinton Email Leaks Taking Cues From Conspiracy Theorists?

WikiLeaks Clinton emails have generated a lot of interest with days to go before Election Day, but an explosive new report in the Daily Beast raises serious questions about where the whistleblower organization is receiving its information from.

So far, as promised by WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, the organization has released 28 batches of emails hacked from the personal account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta. Most of the information contained in those emails reaffirm Clinton’s ties with Wall Street, her association with Goldman Sachs, the fact that donors to the Clinton Foundation had “special access” to the Clintons, and, ultimately, the emails throw a light on Hillary’s vision to have “a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders.”

But while those leaks have not been contended by the Clinton campaign, effectively meaning that the veracity of the documents that WikiLeaks released was never in doubt, some of the recent activity carried out by the organization raises some pertinent questions about its credibility.

On Thursday, the WikiLeaks official Twitter page tweeted about a Reddit report that tied Hillary Clinton with the child thief Laura Silsby, whose organization, The New Life Children’s Refuge, is accused of attempting to transport as many as 33 children from Haiti to the Dominican Republican after the Haiti earthquake. Silsby was subsequently tried for “stealing” the children and was incarcerated in Haiti. Now while such an explosive report, if true, could obviously derail a presidential campaign no matter what the stakes, the problem with this particular piece of information is that it stems from a highly dubious source — the conspirators on Reddit.

To be precise, the information was posted by the user PleadingtheYiff on the largest community dedicated to the Republican nominee Donald Trump on the web, the subreddit R/The_Donald.

“One of the first things Hillary did when she took over the scene in Haiti was to get Laura off the hook,” PleadingtheYiff writes, corroborating the source of this information as AboveTopSecret.com.

But this is not true. Silsby remained incarcerated in Haiti, a fact which debunks the premise altogether.

“Huma Abedin was constantly forwarding Hillary articles on this woman’s organization,” PleadingtheYiff goes on to mention in the post, without providing any such emails in the forum.

The WikiLeaks link provided in the article is merely perfunctory in nature and does not contain any email forwarded by Hillary to Huma Abedin.

Significant, if partisan, find showing how the Clintons supported child stealer Laura Silsby https://t.co/7nULjOgmzr pic.twitter.com/NCgsVWTF2W

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 3, 2016

This subreddit is infamous in the online community for banning any Trump dissenters, and also for fueling wild conspiracy theories with no verifiable facts to back them up.

“Zero political opinion is permitted,” read one of the rules of the subreddit.

“We have one goal and off topic activity is not allowed. We welcome people of all political affiliations. This is a non-partisan effort to expose crimes committed by the Clintons and their accomplices.”

In the ever-diminishing window of credibility in online journalism, one would perhaps not be too surprised if such conspiracy theories make their way into news reports, but to think that WikiLeaks would pick their cues from such posts not only makes the whole organization less credible but also dangerous in times such as this.

WikiLeaks Clinton emails have generated a slew of reports, and while the American people deserve to know if Hillary is involved in something devious, to let conspiracy theorists become the filters through which we process information is just wrong at so many levels.

A lot of Americans trust WikiLeaks to provide credible information about Hillary’s emails, but when even they are seen indulging in partisan showmanship and conspiracy-mongering, one wouldn’t know who to trust anymore.

[Featured Image by Win McNamee/Getty Images]