Less than a week after an embarassing leak of their own , Gawker has published what they claim are some ham-fisted email seduction attempts written by Julian Assange in a leaked-leaks-the-leaker scenario.
The emails, allegedly penned by Assange to a woman after he tried to pick her up in a bar near Melbourne, date back six years. Assange was 33 at the time they were written, and the woman says she was 19 at the time. The missives certainly cast Assange in a less than flattering light, albeit one contrary to the cad-like date rapist profile he’s been assigned in more critical reporting in recent weeks. Gawker spoke to “Elizabeth” by phone to get her account of events:
“I started talking to him and he just seemed kind of quiet and nerdy,” she told us in a phone interview. “I didn’t think he was sexy or anything. Just strangely alluring for a 19-year-old girl.” Assange flirted with her, showing off by explaining complex equations and joking about her mathematical ignorance.
They chatted until the bar closed, and Assange walked Elizabeth back to the small town where she lived with her parents. Walking down a small country road, Assange kissed Elizabeth. She wasn’t particularly thrilled by this development, but it didn’t put her off too much either. “It was like, fine, whatever,” Elizabeth said. “He wasn’t creepy about it, and he didn’t try anything weird.”
That is, until he allegedly began an awkward and persistant email campaign to attempt to gain her affections. “Elizabeth” saved the emails for some undisclosed reason, though her responses to him, she says, were not part of her cached data. The mails have not been transcribed, and efforts to confirm their authenticity by Gawker aside from “Elizabeth’s” account have not been disclosed. You can view images of the emails here – real tale of unmitigated creepiness, or another attempt by a shadowy someone, somewhere to discredit the internet’s reigning free speech folk hero?
