On Tuesday The Guardian published a story based on a “well-placed source” who claimed that onetime Trump campaign adviser Paul Manafort held “secret meetings” with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2013, 2015, and 2016.
The latter date especially is noteworthy, at least according to conspiracy theorists who believe the Democrat Deep State lie that POTUS Donald Trump “colluded” with Russia to meddle in the election to “steal” it from Hillary Clinton.
Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House.
It is unclear why Manafort would have wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last apparent meeting is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
A well-placed source has told the Guardian that Manafort went to see Assange around March 2016. Months later WikiLeaks released a stash of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers.
We are supposed to deduce from this uncorroborated story that Manafort, during his final meeting, gave WikiLeaks those “Democratic emails” allegedly “stolen” by Russia, or at least pointed Assange in the direction where they could be found — and this is the missing “Russia connection” to the Trump campaign that everyone ‘knew’ was there all along.
Except that, again, there is no corroboration for this story and it just happens to have been published amid reports that Mueller is currently looking at a “connection” to Assange via someone in President Trump’s orbit (namely Manafort, in addition to investigative journalist Jerome Corsi and longtime Trump associate Roger Stone, to be exact).
But there are other reasons to doubt the veracity of this dubious report — namely the reporters who wrote it have a history of manufacturing damaging stories about WikiLeaks, Luke Harding and Dan Collyns. (Related: Here’s the evidence refuting claim that Paul Manafort held ‘secret talks’ with Julian Assange.)
Reporters have dubious connections
As noted by The Gateway Pundit, Harding, in particular, has been particularly slanderous of WikiLeaks — so much so that the whistleblower website has called him out for being a paid stooge of British intelligence.
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1009432384008278016
WikiLeaks has also accused Harding of being a plagiarist.
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/463087910976512000
In addition, the editor of the website Justice4Assange.com tweeted, “The authors of the bogus Guardian story, Dan Collyns and Luke Harding, were in Ecuador 10 days ago with US-funded [Fernando] Villavicencio, who they have previously bylined with in bogus stories. This picture was taken last week.”
https://twitter.com/AssangeLegal/status/1067435292745854995
Villavicencio is an Ecuadorean journalist and a purported CIA asset in the country. Mind you, Assange is currently holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. In recent months, reports surfaced that the Ecuadorean government was finalizing plans to revoke his asylum and evict him from the embassy. USA Today reported:
Ecuador has grown increasingly unhappy with the asylum arrangement in recent months. In March, Ecuador barred Assange from using the Internet from the embassy for violating an agreement he signed at the end of 2017 not to use his communiques to interfere in the affairs of other states.
Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno, who was elected in May, has alternately described Assange as a “hacker,” an “inherited problem,” and a “stone in the shoe.” The visit by Collyns and Harding to Ecuador to see Villavicencio smells a lot like an intelligence operation.
Whatever Assange’s fate may wind up being, what seems clear is that The Guardian — which has already begun walking back or altering portions of its report — was duped into publishing a piece of propaganda or did so willingly. Either way, what was reports appears to be completely bogus.
Read more about the activities of the shadowy Deep State at DeepState.news.
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