Though he is decidedly liberal and in exile for stealing state documents, supporters of Donald Trump must consider Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, their next best hope of derailing Hillary Clinton’s bid for President.
On March 16 of 2016 WikiLeaks released a searchable archive of over 30,000 emails and attachments sent both to and from Clinton’s infamous private email server. Thousands of PDFs span the years of 2010 through 2014 when she was Secretary of State.
As a result of the Freedom of Information Act, WikiLeaks was able to procure as many as 50,000 + pages of mostly boring laced with potentially damning correspondence.
Now Assange says he will soon publish enough evidence for the FBI to obtain an indictment. The question remains whether the head of the Department of Justice, Loretta Lynch, will proceed with that indictment or cut some kind of a deal with the FBI.
If that happens, many feel that will offer a boost to Donald Trump’s poll numbers, especially as he places the blaring lens of his plainspoken rhetoric between Clinton and conservative and libertarian voters.
When asked by ITV’s Robert Peston if this potentially damaging information will only serve to add to the likelihood of positive gains for Trump and the Republican party, Assange refused to be pinned down. His only reply, “Trump is a completely unpredictable phenomenon.”
It is ironic that the progressive-minded Assange may prove a bigger bump in the road for Clinton than Trump has ever been. He correctly views her as the quintessential Washington insider, more interested in scoring points with donors than protecting the liberty of Americans and sparing innocent lives.
In 2010, WikiLeaks enabled the release of the infamous Collateral Murder video which showed footage of a Baghdad siege in which innocent Iraqis were gunned down from an American helicopter. Assange sees that incident as an introduction to then new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
Since then, he has released thousands of documents that call into question the credibility of the Obama administration and its supposed commitment to transparency. To Assange, Secretary Clinton was a “liberal warthog” who ignored the Pentagon warnings about the instability that would surely occur if Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown.
There is plenty of blame to go around, but there is no doubt this kind of ignoring of the Pentagon and high-handed cover up helped seed the soil for a murderous group like ISIS to be born.
One has to wonder if it is Trump being an unpredictable phenomenon or perhaps, more and more a predictable one, that has Democrat party insiders worried.
When Clinton, or most likely a staffer tweeted, “Delete your account,” Trump (almost assuredly personally) tweeted back one hour later, “How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up. And where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?”
What began as Clinton’s tweet to Trump to delete his tweet with 14,000 retweets, morphed into more than 183,000 retweets of Trump’s response in less than an hour and a half.
Thus, the reason Clinton’s handling, mishandling, or lack of handling of her emails are very troublesome for her devotees. They know that Donald Trump and his followers will not let this one fade into the sunset. No amount of burying the story in the late night news cycle can work its magic.
So why hasn’t the FBI pushed for an indictment? First off, multiple people connected to the incident including Hillary’s IT manager who installed and maintained the personal server in her home have lawyered up and taken the fifth.
Assange told Peston that he has no doubt the FBI could proceed to an indictment. He also acknowledges that there is no way Obama appointee Loretta Lynch is going to indict Hillary Clinton. Obama and Lynch know that if they indict Hillary they will essentially be handing the election to Donald Trump who they despise. To make matter dicier, Lynch is also leading an ongoing investigation into Wikileaks.
Assange thinks the FBI is hedging its bets that Clinton will win the White House so it can push for concessions in exchange for its lack of an indictment.
The problem with that is that Trump is not going to let go of this one. If his continued insistence for the public to keep its eye on Clinton and her phantom emails forces her hand, “crooked Hillary” will become more than a catch phrase and Trump’s poll numbers will continue to outpace her all the way to the finish line.
