WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange was visited nine times last year by an American lobbyist for Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch closely tied to President Vladimir Putin, The Guardian reported Wednesday.
Adam Waldman, Mr. Deripaska’s longtime lobbyist, had more meetings with Mr. Assange in 2017 than almost anyone else who visited the WikiLeaks chief at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London last year, according to visitors logs obtained by The Guardian and Focus Ecuador.
Mr. Waldman declined to answer questions about the meetings, and neither Mr. Deripaska nor representatives for his aluminum company, US Rusal, provided comment, The Guardian reported.
Previous reporting identified Mr. Waldman as having represented Mr. Assange’s antisecrecy organization in connection with its publication last year of leaked CIA hacking tools, WikiLeaks said through its Twitter account Wednesday.
“Waldman is a DC lawyer who represents many high profile clients such as Angelina Jolie,” WikiLeaks tweeted.
WikiLeaks did not immediately return a message seeking additional comment.
Mr. Waldman has represented Mr. Deripaska since at least 2009, and in 2012 he was hired by Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, to assist with the “persistent state of limbo” caused by U.S. officials repeatedly blocking the oligarch from entering the country, The Guardian reported.
His visits to the Ecuadorian Embassy are poised to pique the interest of American investigators probing the 2016 U.S. presidential election given Mr. Assange’s role in disseminating stolen emails and documents allegedly sourced by Russian state-sponsored hackers.
Russia military intelligence officers breached the Democratic National Committee and other targets during the 2016 race in order to obtain sensitive documents subsequently released by outlets including WikiLeaks as part of an interference campaign waged against the election and especially Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, U.S. officials assessed previously.
Moscow has denied meddling in the 2016 race, and Mr. Assange has insisted that the source of the DNC leak was unaffiliated with the Russian government.
James Clapper, the Obama administration’s director of national intelligence at the time of the DNC leak, recently said that U.S. officials identified a suspect within months of the leak thought responsible for serving as a conduit between the Russian hackers and WikiLeaks.
“The real point was it was an attempt to ensure [Assange] plausible deniability,” Mr. Clapper told the “Skullduggery” podcast last week.
Mr. Assange, 46, entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in June 2012 and was granted political asylum several weeks later. He has remained on the property ever since, however, in lieu of risking arrest upon exiting and likely being extradited to the U.S. and charged in connection with publishing government secrets through WikiLeaks.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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