Assange Denies Trying to Influence U.S. Election

Julian Assange on Tuesday released a statement defending WikiLeaks’ decision to post documents from the Democratic Party during the presidential election campaign. Assange insisted he would have published documents from Donald Trump’s campaign if he had access to them. “This is not due to a personal desire to influence the outcome of the election,” he wrote. “The Democratic and Republican candidates have both expressed hostility towards whistleblowers… Publishing is what we do. To withhold the publication of such information until after the election would have been to favor one of the candidates above the public’s right to know.” Assange also said his organization is not working with Russia, as has been reported. “The Clinton campaign, when they were not spreading obvious untruths, pointed to unnamed sources or to speculative and vague statements from the intelligence community to suggest a nefarious allegiance with Russia,” he added. “The campaign was unable to invoke evidence about our publications—because none exists.”