Special counsel Bob Mueller’s final report showed that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange lied and smeared murdered former DNC staffer Seth Rich to cover up the fact that he obtained stolen Democratic emails from Russia.
According to the Mueller report, Assange knew that Rich was not the source of hacked DNC emails and was actively in contact with sources in Russia’s GRU (military intelligence unit) after Rich’s death. Despite that, Assange repeatedly suggested in interviews that Rich may have been his source.
“After the U.S. intelligence community publicly announced its assessment that Russia was behind the hacking operation, Assange continued to deny that the Clinton materials released by WikiLeaks had come from Russian hacking,” the report says. “According to media reports, Assange told a U.S. congressman that the DNC hack was an ‘inside job,’ and purported to have ‘physical proof’ that Russians did not give materials to Assange.”
Mueller’s report cited an August 2016 interview in which Assange was asked, “why are you so interested in Seth Rich’s killer?”
"We're very interested in anything that might be a threat to alleged Wikileaks sources,” Assange replied. “If there's someone who's potentially connected to our publication, and that person has been murdered in suspicious circumstances, it doesn't necessarily mean that the two are connected. But it is a very serious matter .. that type of allegation is very serious, as it's taken very seriously by us."
Though Assange did not explicitly state so, Mueller wrote that his “statements about Rich implied falsely that he had been the source of the stolen DNC emails.”
WikiLeaks tried to hide communications with Russian intelligence:
Mueller wrote that WikiLeaks and the GRU communicated in September 2016, though Mueller noted that it was unclear when Assange received the stolen information from Russia.
“Both the GRU and WikiLeaks sought to hide their communications, which has limited the Office's ability to collect all of the communications between them,” the report says. “The Office cannot rule out that stolen documents were transferred to WikiLeaks through intermediaries who visited during the summer of 2016.”
WikiLeaks claims its been vindicated by Mueller report:
Despite Mueller extensively detailed the group’s communications with Russian intelligence operatives and doing their bidding by releasing stolen emails with the sole purpose of harming Hillary Clinton’s campaign and aiding Trump’s campaign, WikiLeaks claimed they were vindicated by the report.
“WikiLeaks has always been confident that this investigation would vindicate our groundbreaking publishing of the 2016 materials which it has,” the group wrote, adding, “we disapprove of the large redactions, which permit conspiracy theories abound.”
The Assange-related parts were largely unredacted, however. One part noted Assange explaining why he wanted Trump to win the election.
“We believe it would be much better for GOP to win… dems+media+liberals woudl (sic) then form a block to reign in their worst qualities… With Hillary in charge, GOP will be pushing for her worst qualities, dems+media+neoliberals will be mute… She’s a bright, well connected sociopath,” Assange wrote in 2016, according to the report. “GOP will generate a lot of oposition (sic), including through dumb moves. Hillary will do the same thing but co-opt the liberal opposition and the GOP opposition. Hence Hillary has greater freedom to start wars than the GOP and has the will to do so.”
