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WikiLeaks threatens to publish Twitter users’ personal info

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WikiLeaks says it wants to publish the private information of verified users on Twitter.(Photo: Kimihiro Hoshino, AFP/Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO WikiLeaks is taking heat for saying it wants to publishthe private information of hundreds of thousands of verified Twitter users.

A Twitter account associated with the group said an online database would include such sensitive details as family relationships and finances.

"We are thinking of making an online database with all 'verified' twitter accounts & their family/job/financial/housing relationships," the WikiLeaks Task Force account tweeted Friday. The tweet has since been deleted.

The account then tweeted: "We are looking for clear discrete (father/shareholding/party membership) variables that can be put into our AI software. Other suggestions?"

Wikileaks told journalist Kevin Collier on Twitter that the organization wants to "develop a metric to understand influence networks based on proximity graphs."

Twitter bans the use of Twitter data for "surveillance purposes."In a statement, Twitter said: "Posting another person's private and confidential information is a violation of the Twitter rules."

Twitter declined to say how many of its users have verified accounts but the Verified Twitter accountwhich follows verified accounts currently follows 237,000.Verified accounts confirm the identity of the person tweeting by displaying a blue check mark.

Twitter says it verifies an account when "it is determined to be an account of public interest." Twitter launched the feature in 2009 after celebrities complained about people impersonating them on the social media service.

WikiLeaks says what it seeks to do is not different than what Wikipedia or LinkedIn do, mapping relationships.

"The idea is to look at the network of *relationships* that influencenot to publish addresses," it tweeted late Friday.

Twitter users blasted the Wikileaks proposal. Wikileaks has come under fire in the past for disclosing personal information such as social security numbers in the documents it publishes.

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WikiLeaks threatens to publish Twitter users' personal info

The Unraveling of Julian Assange – Bloomberg View

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You almost have to feel sorry for Julian Assange. Shut in at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London without access to sunlight, the founder of WikiLeaks is reduced to self-parody these days.

Here is a man dedicated to radical transparency, yet he refuses to go to Sweden despite an arrest warrant in connection with allegations of sexual assault. His organization retweets the president-elect who once called for him to be put to death. He spreads the innuendo that Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer, was murdered this summer because he was the real source of the e-mails WikiLeaks published in the run-up to Novembers election. And now he tells Fox Newss Sean Hannity that its the U.S. media that is deeply dishonest.

This is the proper context to evaluate Assanges claim, repeated by Donald Trump and his supporters, that Russia was not the source for the e-mails of leading Democrats distributed by WikiLeaks.

We all know that the U.S. intelligence community is standing by its judgment that Russia hacked the Democrats e-mails and distributed them to influence the election. And while its worrisome that Trump would dismiss this judgment out of hand, this also misses the main point. Sometimes the spies get it wrong, like the slam-dunk conclusion that Saddam Hussein was concealing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The real issue is Assange. The founder of WikiLeaks has a history of saying paranoid nonsense. This is particularly true of Assanges view of Hillary Clinton. His delusions have led him to justify the interference in our elections as an act of holding his nemesis accountable to the public.

Bill Keller, the former New York Times executive editor, captured Assanges penchant for dark fantasy in a 2011 essay that described him casually telling a group of journalists from the Guardian that former Stasi agents were destroying East German archives of the secret police. A German reporter from Der Spiegel, John Goetz, was incredulous. Thats utter nonsense, he said. Some former Stasi personnel were hired as security guards in the office, but the records were well protected, Keller recounts him as saying.

In this sense, WikiLeakss promotion of the John Grishamesque yarn that Seth Rich was murdered on orders from Hillary Clintons network is in keeping with a pattern. Both Richs family and the Washington police have dismissed this as a conspiracy theory. That, however, did not stop WikiLeaks from raising a $20,000 reward to find his real killers.

Add to this Assanges approach to Russia. Its well known that his short-lived talk show, which once aired a respectful interview with the leader of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, was distributed by Russian state television. WikiLeaks has also never published sensitive documents from Russian government sources comparable to the State Department cables it began publishing in 2010, or the e-mails of leading Democrats last year.

When an Italian journalist asked him last month why WikiLeaks hasnt published the Kremlins secrets, Assanges answer was telling. In Russia, there are many vibrant publications, online blogs, and Kremlin critics such as [Alexey] Navalny are part of that spectrum, he said. There are also newspapers like Novaya Gazeta, in which different parts of society in Moscow are permitted to critique each other and it is tolerated, generally, because it isnt a big TV channel that might have a mass popular effect, its audience is educated people in Moscow. So my interpretation is that in Russia there are competitors to WikiLeaks, and no WikiLeaks staff speak Russian, so for a strong culture which has its own language, you have to be seen as a local player.

This is bizarre for a few reasons. To start, Assanges description of the press environment in Russia has a curious omission. Why no mention of the journalists and opposition figures who have been killed or forced into exile? Assange gives the impression that the Russian government is just as vulnerable to mass disclosures of its secrets as the U.S. government has been. Thats absurd, even if its also true that some oppositional press is tolerated there.

Also WikiLeaks once did have a Russian-speaking associate. His name is Yisrael Shamir, and according to former WikiLeaks staffer James Ball, he worked closely with the organization when it began distributing the State Department cables. Shamir is a supporter of Vladimir Putin.

This is all a pity. A decade ago, when Assange founded WikiLeaks, it was a very different organization. As Raffi Khatchadourian reported in a 2010 New Yorker profile, Assange told potential collaborators in 2006, Our primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the West who wish to reveal illegal or immoral behavior in their own governments and corporations.

For a while, WikiLeaks followed this creed. The first document published, but not verified, was an internal memo purporting to show how Somalias Islamic Courts Union intended to murder members of the transitional government there. It published the e-mails of University of East Anglia climate scientists discussing manipulation of climate change data. In its early years, WikiLeaks published information damaging to the U.S. as well. But no government or entity or political side appeared to be immune from the organizations anonymous whistle-blowers.

Today, WikiLeakss actions discredit its original mission. Does anyone believe Assange when he darkly implies that he received the DNC e-mails from a whistleblower? Even if you arent persuaded that Russia was behind it, there is a preponderance of public evidence that the e-mail account of Hillary Clintons campaign chairman John Podesta was hacked, such as the e-mail that asked him to give his password in a phishing scam. Assange himself is not even sticking to his old story: He told Hannity that a 14-year-old could have hacked Podestas emails. Good to know.

In short, the founder of a site meant to expose the falsehoods of governments and large institutions has been gaslighting us. Just look at the WikiLeaks statement on the e-mails right before the election. To withhold the publication of such information until after the election would have been to favour one of the candidates above the publics right to know, it said.

Thats precious. WikiLeaks did favor a candidate in the election simply by publishing the e-mails. And the candidate it aided, Donald Trump, is so hostile to the publics right know that he wont even release his tax returns. In two weeks, he will be in charge of an intelligence community that asserts with high confidence the e-mails WikiLeaks made public were stolen by Russian government hackers. Assange, of course, denies it, and Trump seems to believe him. Sad!

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Eli Lake at elake1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net

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The Unraveling of Julian Assange - Bloomberg View

Wolff: The curious case of Edward Snowden and Russian hacks

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Michael Wolff, Special to USA TODAY 7:02 p.m. ET Jan. 8, 2017

In this Feb. 14, 2015 file photo, former National Security Administration contractor Edward Snowden appears on a live video feed broadcast from Moscow at an event sponsored by ACLU Hawaii in Honolulu.(Photo: AP)

The Edward Snowden story wont go away. One reason for its persistence is that everybody who has given it a seconds further thought surely sees something astonishingly weird about it: For goodness sake, Snowden, the mastermind of the greatest theft of U.S. intelligence in history lives in comfort and security in Russia where hes protected from pursuit by the U.S. government. This is a tear in our heros tale that, in liberal society, we aren't supposed to pay attention to.

This heroism, it is important to note, derives from Snowdens own version of his story. The Guardian and The Washington Post effectively partnered with Snowden in publishing his documents and telling his tale (the Guardian, making a big financial bet on Snowden in its expansion into the American market, overtly went into the Snowden promotion business), with The New York Times joining later. Citizen 4,the Oscar-winning documentary about Snowden made by Laura Poitras, one of Snowdens collaborators in the release of the documents, puts Snowden at the center of the film with him as the single source of his heroic narrative. Snowden,the feature film made by Oliver Stone, basically dramatizes the making of that documentary as well as Snowdens own telling of the events. Current media sources for information about Snowden are almost exclusively limited to Snowdens circle of advisers and defenders and to Snowdens own tweets.

Nobody, except the federal government which arrived at the exact opposite conclusion from the media regarding Snowdens actions and motives has meticulously scrutinized the Snowden tale, and the federal government is seen not as the rightful protector of the nations secrets, but as the party exposed by them.

But thats the rub. While the government might be fairly tarred for its surveillance overreach by a few of the Snowden documents, there are yet millions more documents in the Snowden heist, according to the government, with secrets that are now in unknown hands. Its the fate of those secrets thats at the heart of Edward Jay Epsteins new book, How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, The Man and the Theft,the first independent investigation of the Snowden affair, to be published by Knopf next week.

Epstein is a legend in the world of secrets in his own right. His first book Inquest,featuring an exclusive set of interviews with most of the players on the Warren Commission, shattered confidence in the commissions report and opened the door for decades of conspiracy theory. Hes the biographer of the CIAs legendary counter-intelligence chief, James Angleton, and, too, of the Russian-connected billionaire and businessman, Armand Hammer.

Epstein in his new book retraces Snowdens route around the world, deconstructing each of the key, and widely accepted, givens in his account: 1) that he acted alone in his extraordinary theft of NSA documents; 2) that his flight to Hong Kong was happenstance; 3) that his escape to Russia and sanctuary there were more happenstance; 4) that he somehow dispatched his millions of documents before his flight to Moscow and that the Russians were gentlemenenough to allow him to arrive empty handed.

At the heart of the book is not only the finding that Snowden gave his secrets to Putins Russia is it possible to imagine a scenario in which Putin and Russian intelligence would not have wrangled the greatest cache of U.S. secrets ever available to them? but that, in every epistemological sense, Snowdens actions and motivations, idealistic or not, track the long history of men and women we regard as having betrayed their countries.

It is, as Epstein vividly shows, a story seen through the topsy-turvy politics of this particular moment. Snowden is a hero to liberals everywhere, except to the liberals who have the maximum amount of information about his actions: almost all members of the Obama administration and every liberal Democrat involved in congressional intelligence oversight, see Snowden as a dangerous national security malefactor (there is, among Snowden defenders, a tacit belief that the intelligence establishment has brainwashed everybody in the Obama administration and all Democrats in Congress).

Trumps election provides an even more peculiar development. The same liberal media that now decries Trump for his purported friendliness toward Putin has been perfectly sanguine about Snowden residing comfortably in Moscow. As confusing, the so-called Kremlin-directed interference by Russian hackers in the U.S. election aided by Wikileaks, now a core liberal media point of outrage, exists side by side with a worshipful acceptance of Snowden, likely Russias greatest hacker, one also assisted by Wikileaks. (In the moral universe of hacking, even without the implicit connection, how are Snowdens hacks different from Russian hacks?)

Snowden has served several intersecting agendas the big-data industrys battle over government interference, the lefts decades-long fight with the national security establishment, and the medias love of leaks and look-the-part heroes without anyone wanting to dig too far into his bona fides.

But then there is Edward Epstein. Throughout his long career his specialty has been to rescue facts obscured or tangled by political bias, self-interest, or plain incompetence (and often all three). The enemy of journalism is journalism, that collection of conventional wisdom, easy log-rolling, popular prejudice, and controlled sources. Epstein, not only exposes Snowden as a callow self-aggrandizer who, in the interests of his own liberal virtue, has made a Faustian deal, but the media as his protector.

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Wolff: The curious case of Edward Snowden and Russian hacks

Who is Julian Assange? – CNNPolitics.com

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His position, conveyed via Twitter, sent various intelligence officials and hawkish public figures reeling.

"Somebody needs to march into his office and explain who Julian Assange is," former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican and CNN contributor, offered Wednesday, in the wake of the controversy.

Assange has cast a wide, blurry shadow over the center of US politics from his seclusion in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he remains holed up to avoid facing sexual assault charges in Sweden and a potential extradition to the United States. And just days before Trump takes office, Assange has become a dividing line in the GOP's emerging intra-party fight over national security.

But many Republicans have made up their minds about Assange and reached the opposite conclusion as Trump.

"I have really nothing (to say) other than the guy is a sycophant for Russia. He leaks. He steals data and compromises national security," said House Speaker Paul Ryan when asked about Assange on Hugh Hewitt's radio show Wednesday morning.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper during Thursday's hearing on Russia's alleged hacks: "Do you think that there's any credibility we should attach to this individual?"

"Not in my view," Clapper said.

So who is Julian Assange?

It was set up as a repository and distributor of leaked information, vowing to uphold the anonymity of its sources.

In 2007-2008, it posted a wide range of materials from Guantanamo Bay, the Church of Scientology and some of 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's stolen emails.

In 2010, WikiLeaks made available a classified video of a 2007 US helicopter attack killing civilians and journalists in Iraq. The video, known as "Collateral Murder," generated an uproar from human rights activists against the US for killing innocent people and from US defense officials against WikiLeaks for generating anti-US sentiment.

The US military detained Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, then known as Bradley Manning, for sending the footage to WikiLeaks. Over the next few months, WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of classified military documents and State Department cables.

WikiLeaks continued for years to release millions of documents, including emails from Stratfor -- a global intelligence company -- and Syrian politicians, before lying relatively low for years.

Then in July 2016, WikiLeaks launched itself into the middle of the US presidential election when it posted thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee just days before the party's nominating convention began.

The emails from several senior staffers demonstrated bias against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in favor of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the primary and threatened to throw the entire convention into turmoil. Before the weekend was out, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said she would resign her position as chairwoman of the DNC.

But WikiLeaks' part in the election was not yet over: A month ahead of Election Day, the organization began posting emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The steady release of emails brought renewed scrutiny to Clinton and her inner circle, particularly regarding the controversy over her use of a private email server to conduct State Department business.

The US government said Russia was behind the hacks that led to both of these document dumps, an allegation Assange has denied.

His espoused views against the power structures of Western government and corporate behemoths made up the public persona of the organization, one that became inseparable from Assange himself.

As WikiLeaks' dumps quickly reached the hundreds of thousands, the sheer volume of documents Assange's organization released, along with his provocative statements, made him a famous -- or infamous -- figure on the international stage.

Assange resided in London as the charges progressed and submitted himself to UK authorities. He was taken into custody and then put under house arrest. Sweden called for his extradition from the United Kingdom, a request Assange took to the UK Supreme Court.

About two years into this process, Ecuador used its diplomatic authority to grant Assange asylum. While this afforded Assange the ability to stave off going to Sweden, where he risked prison time over the sexual assault charges, it left him stuck in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he remains to this day as he continues his leadership of WikiLeaks and navigates the criminal process facing him.

Well before he was accused of sexual assault, Assange faced the ire of people the world over.

Some argued WikiLeaks' use of stolen documents was unethical and others said its disclosures harmed the national security of countries involved. Others argued Assange had an immoral, anti-American agenda.

A more nuanced debate grew out of those sympathetic with Assange's aims over whether what WikiLeaks was doing constituted journalism. Assange has regularly argued WikiLeaks is a journalistic organization, performing a journalism function through its leaks. But others, including former media partners of Assange, The New York Times and the Guardian, viewed WikiLeaks as a source for information, rather than a news outlet. Although WikiLeaks once worked with those organizations in advance of publishing documents, it has since moved to make its findings available on its site, without a media partner or intermediary such as The Times.

Many journalists and advocates said massive document troves must be sorted through before they are released so as to avoid the unneeded exposure of personal information potentially put people in harms way.

Assange has asserted his organization's actions have not put people in harm's way.

But other leakers have argued against the mass dumps Assange favors. Edward Snowden, the man behind the National Security Agency leaks, worked with journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald for the stated reason of avoiding improper information going out alongside newsworthy documents. Even though WikiLeaks helped Snowden to find safe harbor in Russia, the former contractor took to Twitter in the summer of 2016 to make the argument in favor of "curation" over massive data dumps.

WikiLeaks fired back, accusing Snowden of cozying up to the Democratic Party for a pardon.

In the years since WikiLeaks' founding, Assange has built a massive global backing. The independent organization is able to fund itself off the donations of its supporters and its online following stands in the millions.

Its supporters used to come from largely left-leaning circles, human rights groups opposed to the Western military-industrial complex and the power of a handful of US corporations, like Google.

Meanwhile, national security hawks of all political stripes had for years railed against him.

But by 2016, as WikiLeaks' disclosures of the DNC and Podesta emails took its toll on Democratic Party unity and Clinton's poll numbers, major Republican figures turned around.

Trump said he "loved" WikiLeaks at an October campaign rally, and Fox News commentator Sean Hannity praised Assange repeatedly.

Following Assange's recent sit-down interview with Hannity, Palin -- once the target of a WikiLeaks disclosure -- apologized to the WikiLeaks founder and threw in a recommendation for Oliver Stone's movie "Snowden."

The US intelligence community has uniformly said the Russian government was behind the Democratic Party hacks and is the source of WikiLeaks' blockbuster 2016 disclosures.

Assange has denied this, but the US government has said it is certain, and a private cybersecurity group called Crowdstrike has also said Russia was behind the hacks.

The declassified version of the Intelligence Community's comprehensive review ordered by President Barack Obama into hacks connected to the US election is expected to be released Monday, US officials told CNN.

And accusers have pointed to Assange's regular appearances on Russia's English-language news channel RT -- where he hosted a show -- as well as WikiLeaks' lack of Russian disclosures and role in delivering Snowden in Moscow as evidence of their collusion.

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Who is Julian Assange? - CNNPolitics.com

Intel report says US identifies who gave emails to WikiLeaks

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In a Fox News interview earlier this week, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange denied that Russia was the source of leaked Democratic emails that roiled the 2016 election to the detriment of President-elect Donald Trump's rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, US intelligence has received new information following the election that gave agencies increased confidence that Russia carried out the hack and did so, in part, to help Trump win.

Included in that new information were intercepted conversations of Russian officials expressing happiness at Trump's win. Another official described some of the messages as congratulatory.

Officials said this was just one of multiple indicators to give them high confidence of both Russian involvement and Russian intentions. Officials reiterated that there is no single intercepted communication that qualifies as a "smoking gun" on Russia's intention to benefit Trump's candidacy or to claim credit for doing so.

Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview with PBS NewsHour that an unclassified version of an intel report provided to him will be released "very shortly" and will "lay out in bold print what" the US knows about the hacking.

"I think it will probably confirm what a lot of the American people think," he said, adding that it would "state clearly" the Russians involvement in the hacking.

In response to the interview, Trump tweeted on Wednesday, "Julian Assange said "a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta" - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!"

CNN's Daniella Diaz contributed to this report.

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Intel report says US identifies who gave emails to WikiLeaks

Sarah Palin, Donald Trump warm up to Julian Assange – cnn.com

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Trump tweeted Wednesday morning, hours after the broadcast of an interview Assange gave Fox News' Sean Hannity, to blame Democrats for not having tighter cybersecurity.

"Somebody hacked the DNC but why did they not have 'hacking defense' like the RNC has and why have they not responded to the terrible things they did and said (like giving the questions to the debate to H). A total double standard! Media, as usual, gave them a pass."

Trump's comments again put him at odds with Republican leaders on the Hill -- including Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan -- who have shown support for the Intelligence Community's uniform assessment that Russia hacked American political targets with the intent of disrupting US elections.

The Vice President-elect said Wednesday at a press conference that Trump has a "healthy American skepticism" about the conclusions made by the intelligence community.

"I think that the President-elect has expressed his very sincere and healthy American skepticism about intelligence conclusions," said Mike Pence, who said he's received regular intelligence briefings.

When asked about Assange on Hugh Hewitt's radio show Wednesday morning, Ryan responded, "I have really nothing (to say) other than the guy is a sycophant for Russia. He leaks. He steals data and compromises national security."

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Wednesday that Americans -- including the President-elect -- should stay away from giving Assange much credibility considering his views of the United States.

"I don't believe any American should give a whole lot of credibility to what Mr. Assange says," the South Carolina Republican said on CNN's "At this Hour."

"In Julian Assange's world, we're the bad guys -- not the Iranians, not the Russians, not the North Koreans. You gotta remember who this guy is."

US intelligence agencies are a far more reliable source on foreign involvement in an American election than Assange, Graham said.

"Mr. Assange is a fugitive from the law, hiding in an embassy, who has a history of undermining American interest. I hope no American will be duped by him," he said.

"I hope the President-elect will get his information and trust the American patriots who work in the Intelligence Community who swear oaths of allegiance to the Constitution and not some guy hiding from the law who has a record of undercutting and undermining American democracy."

The DNC responded to Trump's message Wednesday, saying the President-elect is " is putting his own insecurities ahead of national security because he is sensitive about how he won."

"It's nothing short of terrifying that Trump has chosen to take the word of an enemy of our country over the word of 17 United States intelligence agencies including the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA," Adrienne Watson, DNC national press secretary, said in a statement. "Trump is jeopardizing America's future with his fear of offending Vladimir Putin."

In the Fox News interview, Assange denied that Russia was the source of leaked Democratic emails that roiled the 2016 election to the detriment of Trump's rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Instead, Assange said the documents -- which were stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's email -- were easily obtained through a "phishing" solicitation, whereby Podesta mistakenly gave up his password.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- an early Trump supporter -- responded to Assange's interview with an apology and a reversal.

Palin lavished praise on Assange in a Facebook post after watching Assange on Fox. She wrote that Podesta's emails contained "important information that finally opened people's eyes to democrat candidates and operatives" and which "would not have been exposed were it not for Julian Assange."

Palin had previously been a strident critic of Assange and WikiLeaks: The site had published some of Palin's personal emails in 2008, which were hacked while she was a candidate for vice president, and Palin accused Assange of endangering US military personnel by publishing a raft of State Department cables containing highly sensitive information.

"Let's stare this reality square in the face: PEOTUS is pro-Putin and believes Julian Assange over the @CIA. On Jan. 20 we will be less safe," tweeted George Little, who served under former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama.

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Sarah Palin, Donald Trump warm up to Julian Assange - cnn.com

WikiLeaks’ Assange: ‘A 14-year-old kid could have hacked …

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Fox News' Sean Hannity in an exclusive interview that a teenager could have hacked into Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's computer and retrieved damaging email messages that the website published during last year's election campaign.

"We published several ... emails which show Podesta responding to a phishing email," Assange said during the first part of the interview, which aired on "Hannity" Tuesday night. "Podesta gave out that his password was the word password. His own staff said this email that youve received, this is totally legitimate. So, this is something ... a 14-year-old kid could have hacked Podesta that way."

Assange also claimed that Clinton herself made "almost no attempt" to keep her private emails safe from potentially hostile states during her tenure as secretary of state.

TRUMP RESPONDS TO SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA, SAYS IT'S TIME TO 'MOVE ON'

"Now, was she trying to keep them secure from Republicans? Probably," Assange said. "But in terms of [nation-] states, almost no attempt."

Hannity interviewed Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. The Australia native has been holed up there for five years battling extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges, which Assange denies.

WikiLeaks published more than 50,000 emails detailing dubious practices at the Clinton Foundation, top journalists working closely with the Clinton campaign, key Clinton aides speaking derisively of Catholics and a top Democratic National Committee (DNC) official providing debate questions to Clinton in advance.

Assange has repeatedly denied claims by the Obama administration that Russia was behind the cyberattacks that exposed the DNC and Podesta emails. Assange also has repeatedly insisted that WikiLeaks' source for the emails was not the Russian government or any "state party," and said the outgoing administration was attempting to "delegitimize" President-Elect Donald Trump by making those claims.

In the first part of the interview, Assange criticized a Dec. 29 joint analysis of the cyberattacks by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. After the report was released, President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and closed two Russian compounds.

US GIVES DETAILED LOOK AT RUSSIA'S ALLEGED ELECTION HACKING

"On the top [of the report], there is a disclaimer, saying there is no guarantee that any of this information is accurate," Assange told Hannity. "Theres nothing in that report that says that any information was given to us. Nothing."

Assange also criticized the mainstream media for what he called the "ethical corruption" displayed in the Podesta emails.

"The editor of the New York Times ... has come out and said that he would do the same thing as WikiLeaks, [that] if they had obtained that information, they would have published it," Assange said. "Now, unfortunately, I dont believe that is true."

Assange added that he doubted that partisan sympathy explained the cozy relationship between Podesta and reporters covering the Clinton campaign.

"Its more like, You rub my back, Ill rub yours. Ill give you information, youll come to my Ill invite you to my childs christening or my next big party."

Assange said that the website would not have hesitated to publish embarrassing information about Trump if they had received it.

"Theres no sources coming out through other journalists and saying, 'We gave WikiLeaks all this information about Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin and you know what? They didnt publish it.' No one has come out and said that," Assange said. "If they did, that would hurt our reputation for trust for our sources."

The WikiLeaks founder also warned Democrats that criticizing the website for publishing the emails was a "stupid maneuver."

"Its the same reason why they lost the election, which is instead of focusing on substance, they focused on other things [like]this attempt to say how outrageous it is that the American public received true information before an election," Assange said. "The public doesnt buy that. They want as much true information as possible."

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WikiLeaks' Assange: 'A 14-year-old kid could have hacked ...

Julian Assange: Russia didn’t give emails to WikiLeaks …

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The Obama administration, citing US intelligence sources, has accused Russia of orchestrating the hacking of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in an attempt to influence the election's outcome.

In an interview that aired Tuesday on Fox News' "Hannity," Assange was asked if WikiLeaks' source of the hacked material was "Russia or anyone associated with Russia."

"Our source is not a state party. So the answer -- for our interactions -- is no," Assange told anchor Sean Hannity from his quarters at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has lived under diplomatic protection since 2012.

Pressed on the source of the emails leaked by WikiLeaks in the weeks and months leading up to the November election, Assange repeated, "Our source is not the Russian government. It is not state parties."

He was not asked directly if he believed Russia orchestrated the hacking.

Reacting to the Hannity interview, 2008 US vice presidential candidate and one-time Fox News contributor Sarah Palin, once a vociferous opponent of WikiLeaks, posted an apology to Assange on Facebook.

"This important information (the emails) that finally opened people's eyes to democrat candidates and operatives would not have been exposed were it not for Julian Assange," she wrote.

"I apologize for condemning Assange when he published my infamous (and proven noncontroversial, relatively boring) emails years ago.

"Julian, I apologize."

Trump weighed in on Twitter on Wednesday morning, saying "Julian Assange said 'a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta -- why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!"

As with Palin's about-face, the President-elect's citation of the WikiLeaks founder represents a markedly different attitude toward the whistleblowing organization.

Speaking on camera to preview Kilmeade's radio show, Trump said: "I think it's disgraceful, I think there should be like death penalty or something," during the quick exchange.

Assange also denied talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin, his surrogates or anyone associated with the Trump campaign.

He suggested that President Barack Obama was "acting like a lawyer" with the hacking allegations.

"If you look at most of his statements, he doesn't say ... WikiLeaks obtained its information from Russia, worked with Russia."

He said the content of the emails that WikiLeaks published was germane to the US election and the concerns of the electorate, and dominated much of the election cycle in the weeks leading up to November 8.

"Was (the leaked information) influential? Did it have a lot of influence? Statistically, yes. It was the No. 1 topic on Facebook throughout October. The No. 1 (political) topic on Twitter, also, throughout October.

"Did it change the outcome? Who knows. It's absolutely impossible to tell."

Assange also told Hannity he would have "absolutely" released information about Trump and his campaign if he had received it.

He added that the White House's "dramatic response," directly accusing Russia of orchestrating the hacks, is an attempt to "delegitimize" Trump's presidency, something he believes the defeated party will continue to do.

"(The Democratic Party) will seize on this and harp on it for the next four years," he said.

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Julian Assange: Russia didn't give emails to WikiLeaks ...

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Sean Hannity Lands Julian Assange Interview on Fox News …

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Sean Hannity has landed a sit-down interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that will air Tuesday on Fox News Channel, the network announced Monday.

According to a Fox News release, the two will discuss Russian hacking, the 2016 presidential election, and both the Obama and upcoming Trump administrations. It will air at 10 p.m. on Jan. 3, with additional portions of the interview airing throughout the week.

Assange is currently living under political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he sought refuge from a Swedish investigation into rape allegations stemming from his 2010 visit to the country.

The interview will mark Assanges first face-to-face cable news appearance. It is not, however, the first time hes spoken publicly to Hannity. Most recently, in December, Assange called into Hannitys radio show, in which the host gushed to Assangethat youve done us a favor in exposing gaps in U.S. cybersecurity.

Hannitys tone on Assange has seemingly changed over the past few years. Previously a critic of WikiLeaks, Hannity has since interviewed him multiple times via radio and phone. In a satellite interview on Fox News in September, Hannity told Assange, Part of me, in the beginning, was conflicted about you.

Assange and WikiLeakswere heavily involvedin the political sphere ahead of Election Day, with WikiLeaks steadily publishing emails from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. There were also embarrassing emails from Democratic Party officials spread by WikiLeaks just before the Democratic National Convention in late July.

Much of the recent news on the election has focused on Russias role in the email hacks. Assange has claimed that he did not receive the hacked emails fromRussia, and previously released a statement saying that WikiLeaks was not trying to influence the outcome of the election, though hes been highly critical of Clinton.

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