Let’s reserve judgment on the Guardian’s intriguing but thinly sourced story that Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort met with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The role of the Ecuadorian intelligence service and spy agencies in the story is key but unclear.
But all that is rather beside the point. The case that Assange was an agent in the collusion of the Trump campaign and Russia is growing stronger, whether or not the Guardian story is true.
This is not to say that Assange broke U.S. law, much less that he should be prosecuted of still-unknown charges. But the Assange’s denials that he seved as a cutout for Russian hackers working for Moscow’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) are getting weaker.
Judd Legum in his newsletter Popular Information explains why.
NBC News obtained a draft indictment of Jerome Corsi, racist conspiracy theorist, reveals what investigators obtained emails showing that Corsi and fellow trickster Roger Stone boasted of talking to Assange about the Democratic National Committee emails that were leaked in the last month the 2016 presidential campaign.
Legum writes;
The document details emails between Corsi and Roger Stone, a longtime political adviser to Trump. On August 2, 2016, Corsi wrote Stone while vacationing in Italy: “Word is friend in embassy [Wikileaks founder Julian Assange] plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging.”
Corsi was responding to a request from Stone, about a week earlier, to get in touch with Assange and find out what he had planned. Corsi did so through an intermediary, a London-based right-wing pundit named Ted Malloch.
Stone and Corsi may have also spoken on the phone. On July 31, 2016, Stone emailed Corsi with the subject line, “Call me MON.”
The email correspondence establishes that there was a line of communication from Trump’s inner circle to Assange and Wikileaks and it was used to tell the Trump team about Wikileaks’ plans in advance.
Assange’s self-presentation as a champion of radical transparency is scarred by the reality of his collusion with reactionary scoundrels.
