143 Julian Assange: Donald Trump’s Unpaid Super Pac Cum Putin’s Favorite “Journalist”

(Part of) What I Shared with the FBI – emptywheel

Very tantalizing passage regarding “Phil”

On July 29, 2016 — the same day I was trying to figure out why this guy had just made a big deal of signing a comment guccifer2 — we had another conversation, one I believed at the time was unrelated, a discussion about what motivated Julian Assange. Revenge, I argued: the guy hates Hillary, going back to 2010. “Yes” Phil conceded, “but he has a puppeteer too — IDK who and maybe it’s just $ but.” Again, I was sure this was “sheer retaliation for him.” “You might be right,” Phil responded, “but there’s a political or $ way to get him out — please don’t lose sight of that…” I still didn’t buy it, and asked again why. “B/C if ‘I’ wanted badly enough for him to release that data in a manner that benefitted me, I could get him out and he’s damn sure in prison — where people do desperate things.”

Serving as Julian Assange’s Unwitting Data Mule to Israel Shamir Is Not Journalism – emptywheel

The Intercept’s Silence about Edward Snowden’s Inclusion in Julian Assange’s Charges – emptywheel

emptywheel on X: “Area Substacker would like to remind you that Assange’s indictment includes a 5-year hacking conspiracy that includes hacks on US targets for which 5+ other people did time. https://t.co/AC0oMHEvnR” / X (twitter.com)

Expand the Court on X: “Not for the first time” / X (twitter.com)

emptywheel on X: “There’s a lot we don’t know about Assange — such as how MUCH of the stuff people leaked to him thinking it would serve the public good got shared in advance w/Belarus and RU, tho we know he did that more than once.” / X (twitter.com)

Pekka Kallioniemi on X: “Julian’s activism probably comes from his father, John Shipton, an “anti-war activist” who’s helped Julian with launching WikiLeaks and the WikiLeaks Party. He also arranged a trip to Syria to meet with Bashar al-Assad and even planned to open an office for the party there. 2/22 https://t.co/HHpL37SyvH” / X (twitter.com)