Wikileaks Julian Assange: delivers bombshell on Russian hacking for Trump
US President-elect Doanld Trump stated he was going to drop a bombshell on alleged Russian hacking of top democrats email between today and tomorrow: that the Russians may be the wrong targets of accusation.
It appears that the bombshell he has talked about has arrived. Though not from Trump, the bombshell is coming from Fox News, the conservative mouth piece and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose group released pre-November 8 presidential election, a lot of embarrassing email stolen from the computers of top democrats.
Fox News stated it will air today an interview held with Assange in his Ecuadorian embassy refuge in London, in which Assange categorically denied that the Russians were the source of hacked Democratic emails released by his group.
“This was the information that [Assange] put forward. I think that’s a bombshell,” stated Kellyanne Conway, a senior advisor to President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump: is Assange’s interview his bombshell?
Conway spoke to CNBC’s **“**Squawk Box” on Tuesday, referring to excerpts from a transcript released by Fox News of Assange’s interview with Sean Hannity.
Assange told Hannity that his source was not the Russian government, and “not a state party,” adding President Barack Obama is trying to “delegitimize the Trump administration” with accusations that Russia engaged in hacking to help Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton .
In remarks heading into a New Year’s Eve celebration at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Saturday night, Trump once again expressed skepticism that Russia was responsible for hacking Democrat emails.
Trump is well-informed by various intelligence sources about such matters, stated Conway, who stepped in late in the race as the billionaire’s campaign manager. She’s since been named by Trump as counselor to the president.
“[Trump] receives any number of different intelligence pieces of information from a number of different sources, including the … presidential daily briefing,” Conway stated.
“He [also] receives regular briefings from his security team, from outside sources, and he … has agreed to receive this top-level intelligence briefing from the nation’s top, top intelligence officials,” she also stated.
President Barack Obama last week expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the United States and shut two Russian outposts in the country, accusing them of carrying out malicious cyber hacking to influence the 8 November election, in favour of Donald Trump. The Russians who have declined to take retaliatory actions, have denied the charge.
*With reports by Mathew J. Belvedere