Assange: Some leaks may have been Russian

On Sean Hannity’s radio show, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said that hacked Democratic documents sent to reporters at Gawker and The Hill may have come from Russia. But, he said, he is confident the emails he received did not come from the same source. 

The Hill and other outlets received documents from a hacker or hackers calling itself “Guccifer 2.0.” Guccifer 2.0 also posted separate documents on its own site. Assange denied knowing Guccifer 2.0 on Hannity’s show Thursday.

“Our source is not the Russian government,” said Assange, later claiming WikiLeaks did not receive its material from any state actor, Russia or otherwise. 

While the intelligence community agrees that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic National Campaign Committee, there is dissent over whether the Russians did so with an eye to promoting President-elect Donald Trump or just generally wanting to sow chaos.

Assange has been adamant that Russia did not send the files to his site. In fact, his confirmation that a state actor did not send the hacked emails violates a longstanding WikiLeaks policy of not making any comment about sources. 

He did leave the possibility open that Guccifer 2.0’s leaks to the media were a Russian plot.

{mosads}“Now, who is behind these, we don’t know,” he said. “These look very much like they’re from the Russians. But in some ways, they look very amateur, and almost look too much like the Russians.”

In the Hannity interview, Assange also claimed that WikiLeaks received three pages of information about Trump and the Republican National Convention. It chose not to reprint those documents because they had already been printed elsewhere. 

The New York Times reported intelligence officials believe that Russia also hacked the Republican National Committee but chose not to leak those files to prop up the Trump candidacy.

Assange also declined to comment on a Daily Mail report that his confidant Craig Murray flew to the United States to retrieve the documents printed on the site. Murray told the Daily Mail that he met with an intermediary in a wooded area near American University in Washington, D.C., who was handing off the documents on behalf of someone with “legal access” to both the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta emails. 

“Craig Murray is not authorized to talk on behalf of WikiLeaks,” Assange said sternly.