President Lenín Moreno of Ecuador *really* wants Julian Assange out of that London embassy.
Convicted felon and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort suggested he could broker a deal for the handover of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the United States during a meeting in May 2017 with the president-elect of Ecuador. Read the rest
Wikileaks, furious about a report in The Guardian claiming that founder Julian Assange met with Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, said that it plans to sue it for libel. Moreover, it expects to create a "business model" from such lawsuits.
NEW RULES: WikiLeaks is going make suing fake news producers like the Guardian a central part of its business model. Since libels are the most predictable response to the power and accuracy of a WikiLeaks' publication, our analysis is that this is a stable, scalable income stream
Hey, at least someone gets to see him in court. Read the rest
"Big news Wednesday... Hillary's campaign will die this week," Randy Credico texted Trump ally Roger Stone, just 6 days before the WikiLeaks email dump.
These text messages obtained by NBC News show that Donald Trump's longtime political “dirty trickster” consigliere Roger Stone was boasting of dirt to come from Wikileaks. Stone has previously denied any foreknowledge of the late-2016 Wikileaks dumps, as he attempts to squirm away from the Special Counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller. This latest news won't help him accomplish that. Read the rest
Roger Stone today revealed that in 2016 he was in communication with at least one senior Trump presidential campaign official about forthcoming WikiLeaks leaks that would be damaging to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Read the rest
Shitty roommate and brilliant legal tactician Julian Assange's ploy to assure his freedom from persecution by suing the only country in the world willing to shield him from those longing to throw him in the clink has hit a tiny snag: a language barrier. According to the English-speaking Assange, his self-righteous blather differs from what the rest of the English-speaking world gets along with:
From The Sydney Morning Herald:
The first hearing in Julian Assange's lawsuit against Ecuador's Foreign Affairs Ministry was suspended as the WikiLeaks founder was unable to understand his translator, and the judge called for a replacement fluent in "Australian."
Speaking from Ecuador's Embassy in London via Skype, Assange said the court-appointed translation service was "not good enough." Judge Karina Martinez said that it was indispensable that Assange testify, and said the court had erred by appointing a translator who only spoke English, apparently under the impression that Australian dialect is unintelligible to other anglophones.
Sure.
Once Assange finds himself an Australian translator, the courts will go forward with his suit against the Ecuadorian government. They took away his Internet! They want him to clean his room! They've been sheltering him from European law enforcement in their London Embassy since 2012! The nerve.
Unsurprisingly, Ecuador is less than impressed with their long-term political houseguest filing suit against them. In response to Assange's whinging, the nation's rolled back their offer to assist him with negotiating his fate with the British government.
I don't normally go in for courtroom drama, but I am so here for this shit. Read the rest
Ecuador plans to stop intervening with the British government on behalf of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, reports Reuters today. Read the rest
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London for years to avoid being arrested by British cops for skipping bail. Read the rest
Roger Stone's Instagram sure is weird.
In an Instagram video he posted today, longtime Trump consigliere Roger Stone said that a Ronan Farrow story soon to be published in The New Yorker reports that Stone explicitly told Donald Trump in October 2016 that WikiLeaks had obtained and was preparing to dump John Podesta's emails. Read the rest
A former executive from the data-mining dark operator Cambridge Analytica 'visited Julian Assange in February last year and told friends it was to discuss what happened during the US election,' the Guardian reported today.
Brittany Kaiser worked as a director there until not long ago, and is reported “to have channelled cryptocurrency payments and donations to WikiLeaks.”
Assange issued a statement saying that he had turned down the Cambridge Analytica offer. Alexander Nix, the company’s chief executive, told Westminster MPs the same in February, during an appearance at the Commons digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) select committee. Nix said he found a contact for WikiLeaks’ speaking agency on the internet and sent Assange an email.
But visitor logs from the Ecuador embassy obtained by the Guardian and Focus Ecuador appear to show that Brittany Kaiser, a senior executive at Cambridge Analytica until earlier this year, visited Assange on 17 February 2017. Information passed to the DCMS committee in the UK and the Senate judiciary committee in the US states that the meeting was “a retrospective to discuss the US election”.
Kaiser is also alleged to have said that she had funnelled money to WikiLeaks in the form of cryptocurrency. She called the organisation her “favourite charity”. The reports passed to investigators say that money was given to her by third parties in the form of “gifts and payments”.
After the afore-quoted story was published, there was all-new news in London today.
Alexander Nix appeared as scheduled before the DCMS committee for the second time at 3pm on Wednesday (today), where he was questioned by lawmakers on Cambridge Analytica’s relationship with WikiLeaks and the disinformation campaign by Russia to elect Donald Trump. Read the rest
Federal investigators believe a man who once worked for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is responsible for last year's massive leak of Top Secret CIA hacking tools, court documents reveal. Read the rest
The Democratic National Committee today filed a lawsuit against the Russian government, Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and WikiLeaks, alleging the Trump campaign 'gleefully welcomed Russia's help.' Court papers describe a far-reaching conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 presidential campaign, and throw the election for Donald Trump through a complex and well-funded global disinformation campaign. Read the rest
Longtime Trump consigliere Roger Stone likes to give slippery answers when grilled by lawmakers or reporters about the specifics of his contacts with Wikileaks and Julian Assange, who are more or less one and the same. The Washington Post finds that their contact dates back to at least 2016. Read the rest
Police in London surrounded the embassy of Ecuador, where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange resides in exile, to reportedly address a 'suspected suspicious package.' More details as the story develops. Read the rest
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been living in the Ecuadoran embassy to the United Kingdom in London for more than 5 years, believing that if he were taken into custody by the UK police, he would face extradition to the USA where he would be tried for publishing details of war crimes committed by the US military. Read the rest
Sweden's top prosecutor announced Friday that it is dropping its rape investigation of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, because it was "impossible to serve him notice."
Assange has been hiding in Ecuador's embassy in London for five years to avoid extradition to Sweden, but he's still wanted by British cops for skipping court and they already warned him they'll arrest him if he leaves the building.
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) said Mr Assange still faced the lesser charge of failing to surrender to a court, an offence punishable by up to a year in prison or a fine. But the UK has not commented on whether it has received an extradition request from the US, where Mr Assange could face trial over the leaking of hundreds of thousands of secret US military and diplomatic documents.
Assange said he'd submit to extradition to the U.S. if Chelsea Manning, a key Wikileaks source, was released—an offer he later made contingent upon cutting his own deal with U.S. authorities. Manning was released this week. Read the rest
The stolen emails recently published by WikiLeaks reveal that President Barack Obama's email address during the presidential transition at the end of the 2008 campaign was bobama@ameritech.net. Read the rest
Two allegations of sexual assault leveled against Julian Assange by Swedish police were dropped Thursday due to that nation's statute of limitations.
But he still faces a more serious rape allegation and remains subject to if ever he leaves the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
“Julian Assange, on his own accord, has evaded prosecution by seeking refuge in the embassy of Ecuador,” Swedish chief prosecutor Marianne Ny said in a statement. “As the statute of limitation has [expired] … I am compelled to discontinue the investigation.”
Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has not been charged in connection to the allegations and denies them, maintaining that they amount to politically motivated retaliation for his work exposing embarrassing government misdeeds. His lawyers say that should he travel to Sweden, he will be extradited to the U.S., which recently sentenced whistleblower (and Assange source) Chelsea Manning to 35 years' imprisonment.
“I am an innocent man. I haven’t even been charged," Assange told The Guardian. "From the beginning I offered simple solutions. Come to the [Ecuadorian] embassy to take my statement or promise not to send me to the United States. This Swedish official refused both.”
Since Assange entered Ecuador's embassy in 2012 and was granted asylum, the UK government has spent more than £12m maintaining a round-the-clock police presence at its doors to prevent him leaving.
The situation is a bureaucratic farce: Swedish prosecutors say they are willing to interview Assange in London, but Ecuador will not permit them to do so within their embassy. Read the rest
