Trump, WikiLeaks and Russia – MENAFN.COM

(MENAFN - Jordan Times) hen a Fox News reporter asked Donald Trump about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange back in 2010, just after Assange had released a huge cache of secret US diplomatic cables, the reality TV star had no doubts: 'I think it's disgraceful, I think there should be like the death penalty or something.'

Circumstances change, however, and smart people with big brains know when it is time to switch sides.

Trump has been having a problem with the main US intelligence agencies, which unanimously insist that the Russians did indeed hack the DNC's e-mails, and that they passed them to WikiLeaks (through an intermediary) in order to damage Clinton's presidential election campaign.

So Trump was very happy to be able to reply (in a tweet, of course) that 'Assange... said Russians did not give him the info!'

Well, there is the fact that Assange has been living in one room in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for the past four years in order to avoid being extradited to the US on espionage charges that could get him up to 45 years in prison.

Assange would not even have to lie outright, because the Russians would obviously never give him the e-mails directly.

Assange might have strong suspicions about who originally hacked the DNC, but he did not necessarily go all out to confirm them.

President Vladimir Putin has been quite open about prefering Trump to Clinton, and the leaks definitely gave a boost to Trump's election campaign in late July and August.

The event that probably did give Trump his very narrow margin of victory (100,000 votes spread among three key swing states) was FBI Director James Comey's bizarre decision to declare that Hillary Clinton was facing another investigation only 11 days before the vote.

He is questioning the intelligence services' conclusions about Russian interference because he believes (wrongly) that they undermine the validity of his election victory.

He said it himself (in another tweet): 'Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only stupid people or fools would think that it is bad. We have enough problems around the world without yet another one.'

Trump's views on China give cause for alarm, but his desire for a reconciliation with Russia makes more sense than the reflex hostility that both Clinton and the US intelligence services bring to the relationship.

In seeking a rapprochement with Moscow, Trump should not make the mistake of accepting Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea. Changing borders by force (even if most of the local population approves of it) has been banned by international law for more than half a century, and we should not start making exceptions to that rule now.

There is much that the US and Russia could usefully cooperate on now, starting with putting an end to the war in Syria.

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Trump, WikiLeaks and Russia - MENAFN.COM