Julian Assange claims that Russia had no involvement in the hacked and leaked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails. But even though Assange says his source of the hacked DNC emails wasn’t the Russian government itself, the Washington Post recently fact-checked whether or not Assange’s source could have been tied to the Russian government in any way. The report published on Thursday concludes that Julian Assange may have been lying about the part Russia played in the DNC cyberattacks.
Of course, the Russian government also denies any involvement in the hacked DNC emails that were later released to the public via Julian Assange’s own news-leaks website WikiLeaks back in July of 2016. And Julian Assange has said multiple times that his source was not from the Russian government. In a prerecorded sit-down interview with Sean Hannity that aired on the Fox News Channel on Tuesday, Julian Assange continued to maintain that his source of the hacked DNC emails was not the Russian government or any other “state party.”
This suggests Julian Assange / Wikileaks colluded with Russian government. Heartbreaking allegation. https://t.co/fv5cUNXhFk
— Rod Gonggrijp ???? and ? and ?? (@LeFouPedalant) January 6, 2017
Even President-elect Donald Trump seems to side with Julian Assange and not with the CIA, who concluded at the end of last year that the Russian government did provide WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked DNC emails, as also previously reported by the Washington Post . According to the CIA, they have identified individuals tied to the Russian government who hacked into the DNC’s email and later provided them to Julian Assange to make public. The FBI also agrees with the CIA assessment that Russia was behind a series of cyber attacks on the DNC, including a phishing attack on John Podesta’s personal Gmail account. According to Time Magazine on Thursday, the CIA has actually determined that the hacked DNC emails followed a “circuitous route” from Russia’s military intelligence agency to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in order to try to make the source harder to trace.
U.S. intelligence agencies have identified which Russian officials provided hacked emails to WikiLeaks — @Reuters : https://t.co/4ZEQjbEawr
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) January 6, 2017
The Time Magazine report referenced Sean Hannity’s interview with Julian Assange, adding that Assange never stated that he didn’t get the hacked DNC emails from a third party — a third party that may have ties to Russia and the Russian government, according to the Washington Post , who also agrees that Julian Assange left open the possibility that his source could have been an intermediary between the Russian government and WikiLeaks. In fact, private security firms confirmed that groups who were allegedly tied to Russia were responsible for breaching the DNC computer network.
Guccifer 2.0 actually took credit for hacking the DNC and leaking documents to the media, as previously reported by Politico , and although Guccifer 2.0 claims he’s a Romanian hacker, the “lone hacker” could not even properly use the Romanian language in an online chat interview, according to a previous report on the Hill .
More than one cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC believes that Guccifer 2.0, along with another hacking group called Fancy Bear, are responsible for the DNC hacks, affiliated with Russian intelligence, and sponsored by the Russian government, although there’s no hard evidence, according to the Washington Post , because Julian Assange published the DNC emails anonymously. Julian Assange himself has previously stated that he doesn’t know who’s behind the hacked DNC documents, but they do look “very much like they’re from the Russians.” Assange may, in fact, have no idea who his source is since he often allegedly gets the information published on WikiLeaks through an anonymous drop box.
Julian Assange: Our source is not the Russian government https://t.co/743HuSLpHR
— Hannelore Thomas (@piripuu) January 6, 2017
The Washington Post concluded that Julian Assange cannot say with “1,000 percent” certainty that the Russian government had nothing to do with the hacked DNC emails that were later published on WikiLeaks.
Donald Trump continued to ask on Twitter on Thursday “how and why” top American intelligence officials are so sure that Russia had any involvement in the series of DNC hacks and subsequent leaks during the 2016 presidential election. The CIA still refuses to reveal details to the public as to why they think Julian Assange is lying about no Russian involvement, saying they don’t want their intelligence-gathering sources and methods to be compromised, but even the senior advisor to the president-elect says that he doesn’t think anyone should be listening to Julian Assange. According to CNN, former CIA director and top adviser to Trump James Woolsey says there’s no point in listening to Julian Assange because he’s “quite a ne’er-do-well.”
[Featured Image by Carl Court/Getty Images]
