Asshole on a balcony at Ecuadors embassy in London two years ago.
Asshole on a balcony two years ago. Jack Taylor/Getty Images

"In order to expand [Russia's] interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election," Russian intelligence agents "transferred many of the documents they stole from the DNC and the chairman of the Clinton Campaign to WikiLeaks," according to page 44 of the Mueller Report. Russian intelligence agents used the made-up Twitter personas DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 "to communicate with WikiLeaks through Twitter private messaging and through encrypted channels, including possibly through WikiLeaks's private communication system."

As the Intercept reported last year (based on leaks from within WikiLeaks), and as the Mueller Report now confirms as fact, Assange "privately expressed opposition to candidate Clinton well before the first release of stolen documents. In November 2015, Assange wrote to other members and associates of WikiLeaks" that "it would be much better for GOP to win" and that Hillary Clinton is "a bright, well connected, sadistic sociopath."

Hmm. Projection much?

As Mueller's report tells us: On June 22, 2016, after Gufficer 2.0 released online some stolen documents they'd hacked from the DNC, "WikiLeaks used Twitter's direct message function to contact the Gufficer 2.0 Twitter account and suggest that Guccifer 2.0 '[s]end any new material [stolen from the DNC] here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing."

In other words: Russia, let WikiLeaks help you.

"On July 6, 2016," the Mueller Report goes on, "WikiLeaks again contacted Guccifer 2.0 through Twitter's private message function, writing, 'if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after.' The Guccifer 2.0 persona responded, 'ok... i see.' Wikileaks also explained, 'we think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary... so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting."

WikiLeaks and Russia "sought to hide their communications, which has limited [Mueller's] Office's ability to collect all of the communications between them," the report says, but "it is clear that the stolen DNC and Podesta documents were transferred from the [Russian intelligence officers] to Wikileaks."

Mueller's office was "able to identify" when Russian intelligence "transferred some of the stolen documents to WikiLeaks." The report notes that Assange had internet access from the embassy of Ecuador in London. (In the photo at the top of this post, Assange is on a balcony at that embassy.)

"WikiLeaks and Assange made several public statements apparently designed to obscure the source of the materials that WikiLeaks was releasing," as reports were starting to come out about WikiLeaks's coordination with Russian intelligence officers in disseminating over 50,000 documents stolen from Hillary Clinton's campaign. The file-transfer evidence "and other information uncovered during the investigation discredit WikiLeaks's claims about the source of the material that it posted," Mueller's report says.

Where did WikiLeaks say it had gotten those stolen documents that Russia in fact gave them? Well, through a little made-up story told by Assange about a guy who'd worked for the DNC and had recently been murdered. You may already know this story, just like you probably already suspected WikiLeaks and Russia coordinated, but the Mueller report makes it all clear. Assange basically built a conspiracy theory capitalizing on the death of a young DNC staffer to hide his interactions with Russia.

Beginning in the summer of 2016, Assange and WikiLeaks made a number of statements about Seth Rich, a former DNC staff member who was killed in July 2016. The statements about Rich implied falsely that he had been the source of the stolen DNC emails. On August 9, 2016, the @WikiLeaks Twitter account posted: "ANNOUNCE: WikiLeaks has decided to issue a US$20k reward for information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich." Likewise, on August 25, 2016, Assange was asked in an interview, "Why are you so interested in Seth Rich's killer?" and responded, "We're very interested in anything that might be a threat to alleged WikiLeaks sources." The interviewer responded to Assange's statement by commenting, "I know you don't want to reveal your source, but it certainly sounds like you're suggesting a man who leaked information to WikiLeaks was then murdered." 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."

That snake. Using Rich's senseless murder (he was believed to have been killed in an attempted robbery) to cover his own tracks. One of the ways Assange covered his tracks was by doing things like in the paragraph above, calling Rich an "alleged WikiLeaks source," even though the person "alleging" it was Assange himself! Wrongly! For the purposes of confusing and deceiving us. And this from the guy who supposedly stands for transparency.

"After the U.S. intelligence community publicly announced its assessment that Russian was behind the hacking operation," the Mueller Report goes on to say (I'm on page 49 now), "Assange continued to deny that the Clinton materials released by Wikileaks had come from Russian hacking. 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."

There is still much we don't know. The stuff in the Mueller report about Roger Stone and the way his actions intersected with WikiLeaks is redacted. The stuff about Corsi is redacted enough that I can't follow it. But Assange, who used to be thought of as some kind of radical-journalistic hero (back when he was exposing coverups at the Catholic Church and the like), is clearly the bright, well connected, sadistic sociopath here.

Want to see what a bright, well connected, sadistic sociopath looks like as he's being arrested and carried out of an Ecuadorian embassy?




Assange is currently being held in "one of the UK's most notorious prisons," a place once known as "Britain's Guantanamo Bay."