The Obama administration is attempting to “delegitimize” President-elect Donald Trump before his inauguration this month by emphasizing the Russian government’s alleged role in the recent White House race, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange indicated in an interview airing Tuesday.
Speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity from London, the 45-year-old WikiLeaks publisher accused the current administration of propagating claims concerning Russia’s purported election meddling in order to raise questions about Mr. Trump’s standing as president before he even takes office, according to excerpts released prior to broadcast.
While the U.S. intelligence community has blamed Kremlin-tied hackers with infiltrating the email accounts of Democratic targets and then providing the stolen contents to WikiLeaks for publication, Mr. Assange reiterated to the interviewer that the website’s source wasn’t any nation state, Russia included.
“We can say, we have said, repeatedly that over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government, and it is not a state party,” Mr. Assange said.
Indeed, Mr. Assange insisted previously that Russian hackers didn’t supply him with any of the sensitive, U.S. election-related material his website published prior to Nov. 8 — specifically a trove of internal emails stolen from Democratic National Committee computers and the inbox of John Podesta, the chairman of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign.
Yet while the Obama administration double-downed on blaming the Kremlin last week upon releasing further evidence of its hacking campaign and expunging dozens of Russian citizens, Mr. Assange told the Fox News host that the U.S. government has so far failed to further implicate his antisecrecy website with any state actors.
“If you look at most of his statements, he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say that WikiLeaks obtained its information from Russia, worked with Russia,” Mr. Assange said.
“Our publications had wide uptake by the American people. They’re all true. But that’s not the allegation that’s being presented by the Obama White House. So, why such a dramatic response? Well, the reason is obvious. They’re trying to delegitimize the Trump administration as it goes into the White House. They are trying to say that President-elect Trump is not a legitimate president,” Mr. Assange insisted.
Prior to the Nov. 8 race, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security issued a joint statement that said the disclosure of hacked emails by sites like WikiLeaks was “consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts,” allegedly waged by the Kremlin “to interfere with the U.S. election process.”
“The intelligence that I’ve seen gives me great confidence in their assessment that the Russians carried out this hack,” President Obama said in a post-election press conference the following month, speaking with respect to both the DNC and Podesta hacks.
Despite being briefed with the same intelligence, Mr. Trump said last week, “It could be somebody else. I also know things that other people don’t know, so we cannot be sure.”
Fox News is scheduled to air the first part of its interview with Mr. Assange on Tuesday evening.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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