Another day, another data dump. In what is now a daily routine, moments ago Wikileaks released yet another roughly 1,150 emails in Part 7 of its ogoing Podesta Email dump, which brings the total number of released emails to 10,169.
RELEASE: The Podesta Emails Part 7 https://t.co/2yG9TNArqi #HillaryClinton #imWithHer #PodestaEmails #PodestaEmails7 http://pic.twitter.com/NfTC3VK1mU
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 14, 2016
In a tangent, earlier today, The Hill had a hit piece noting that “Assange grudge against Clinton shapes US election“, reporting that the Wikileaks founder’s “grudge against Hillary Clinton is playing out on the grandest stage possible.”
Between now and Election Day on Nov. 8, WikiLeaks is expected to release more than 40,000 more emails about Hillary Clinton that are meant to damage her run for the White House — possibly in batches on a near-daily basis.
The emails, from hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton confidante John Podesta’s email account, may be the best chance Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has of knocking off Clinton, the heavy favorite to win the White House.
That makes Wikileaks founder Assange one of 2016’s biggest wild cards.
Assange appears to relish the role. “He has become which is what I think he always wanted to be: an alternative statesman,” said Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former spokesperson from the organization’s early days. “He’s not officially elected, but he’s involved in the highest level of political debate. He can have an influence on the U.S. election. It doesn’t really get much bigger than this.”
Assange has repeatedly vowed to release information expected to be damaging to Clinton, and on Thursday made public the sixth installment of material allegedly stolen from Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.
* * *
It’s unclear why Assange has such a grudge against Clinton, though it appears to be rooted in part in the prosecution of former Pvt. Chelsea Manning for the leak of hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables during Clinton’s tenure at the State Department.
* * *
In February, Assange, who is living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and is avoiding a rape charge he claims is politically motivated, published an editorial on WikiLeaks calling Clinton a “war hawk with bad judgment who gets an unseemly emotional rush out of killing people.” “She shouldn’t be let near a gun shop, let alone an army. And she certainly should not become president of the United States,” he wrote.
Shortly after Clinton, sick with pneumonia, staggered leaving a Sept. 11 memorial event, the account tweeted a public poll inviting users to speculate whether she had an allergy problem, Parkinsons, MS or head injury complications. WikiLeaks later deleted the tweet shortly thereafter, saying that “the possibilities are too speculative.”
For some former employees who believed in WikiLeaks’ stated mission of transparency, the attacks on Clinton have been deeply demoralizing. Domscheit-Berg and others left the organization over concerns that Assange’s autocratic grip over the organization had led him to use it as a platform to promote his own agenda, not root out abuses of power.
So far the releases, while incriminating, have not been crushing from a legal standpoint, especially when considering the captured US judicial system. Although, with some 40,000 emails more to go, this may change in the coming days.
via http://ift.tt/2dPhzBD Tyler Durden