Assange itching to get leaks on Trump

From: The Hill

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says his organization is eager to get any inside information on Donald Trump.

“If anyone has any information that is from inside the Trump campaign, which is authentic, it’s not like some claimed witness statement but actually internal documentation, we’d be very happy to receive it and publish it,” he said in an interview aired Wednesday on NPR's "Morning Edition."

Assange also said WikiLeaks is careful not to tip its hand over sensitive information it receives.

“We try to avoid talking too much about pending publications because it kind of — you know, we don’t want to accidentally scoop ourselves,” he told host David Greene.

Assange also said the unprecendented interest in the White House race has been a boon for WikiLeaks.

“We have two pretty much reviled candidates, having the lowest approval ratings of any pair of candidates in the last hundred years, going into the U.S. election,” he said of Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

“[It] is generating a desire by various sources, inside and outside campaigns, to contribute information to WikiLeaks and the rest of the news media.”

Assange was also asked if he could understand why many in the U.S. government see him as a security risk.

“There’s great people in the U.S. government — many of whom are our sources — and there’s terrible people in the U.S. government,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the U.S. government is a, you know, reflection, to some degree, of the rest of society. So it’s filled with its share of paranoid and sociopathic power climbers, people who make errors of judgment, etc.”

WikiLeaks published a trove of nearly 20,000 Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails in late July.

Some of the messages showed top DNC officials suggesting ways to undermine Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in his primary fight with Clinton.

Assange insisted earlier this month that his organization was not trying to hurt Clinton by publishing those emails.