Assange vows to prove Russia did not leak DNC documents

Julian Assange, the founder of the global whistleblowing service WikiLeaks, has denied Democratic claims that he obtained leaked Democratic National Committee (DNC) documents through his ties with the Russian government.

Assange said this during a meeting with Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who chairs an important House subcommittee on Eurasia policy, on Tuesday at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been holed up for years, The Hill reported on Thursday.

Rohrabacher told the Washington-based newspaper that Assange promised additional helpful information about the leaks in the near future, but dismissed reports that Moscow meddled in the November 8, 2016 US presidential election in order to help Donald Trump win the White House.

“Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC emails during last year's presidential election,” Rohrabacher said, “Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails.”

The run-up to the November 8 face-off between Trump and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton saw the two candidates attacking each other over a series of confidential emails that were mainly published by WikiLeaks.

The hacked emails mostly belonged to the DNC and Clinton’s top aide John Podesta.

Trump said that the emails showed Clinton’s corruption, proving that she was unfit to lead the country. Clinton, on the other hand, accused Trump of getting help from Moscow to win the election.

The emails, coupled with Clinton’s own email fiasco, have been blamed by her supporters as the main reasons behind the former secretary of state’s defeat.

Democrats and the Obama administration have been blaming the hacks on Russia, but the Kremlin has categorically denied the claim.

Rohrabacher said Assange told him that he had information to share privately with President Trump. 

“Julian also indicated that he is open to further discussions regarding specific information about the DNC email incident that is currently unknown to the public,” he added.

“Julian passionately argued the case that WikiLeaks was vital to informing the public about controversial though necessary issues. He hoped that Wikileaks — an award winning journalistic operation — might be granted a seat in the White House press corps,” he stated.

Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden after Swedish prosecutors issued a European arrest warrant against him.

Assange has denied the rape accusations, and says the claims are part of an attempt to ultimately have him extradited to the United States, where he could be charged over WikiLeaks’ release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US government has often described WikiLeaks as a tool of Russian intelligence agencies.

In December, the CIA said it had concluded that Russian intelligence operatives provided materials to Wikileaks in an effort to help President Trump’s defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

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