Pretty much EVERY JOURNALISTIC ORGANIZATION ON EARTH has been swamped with damaging leaks about the goings-on within the Trump administration since before he took office, and you’re trying to convince us that the organization that actually has the word “leaks” in its name hasn’t been able to get a solitary bit of dirt on the Trumps since he declared his candidacy? That seems… less than plausible.
There are only two possibilities for Wikileaks getting all kinds of dirt on the Dems and none on the Trumps:
Assange and Wikileaks have been dishonest about their stated mission and have been intentionally working to further the Putin/Trump agenda
Assange and Wikileaks are grossly incompetent at their stated mission and have been unwittingly co-opted to further the Putin/Trump agenda
For an organization that claims to be “pro-whistleblower” their interests and actions seem suspiciously well-aligned with the Republican politicians who have been screaming for the heads of certain whistleblowers.
Your premise is false. Assange & Wikileaks couldn’t have been either “intentionally working to further the Putin/Trump agenda” or “unwittingly co-opted to further the Putin/Trump agenda” because such a thing is in fact a thoroughly discredited conspiracy theory:
“Putin’s Russia helped get Trump elected” is hardly a discredited conspiracy theory. “Trump personally knew of and coordinated with Putin’s actions” is a largely unproven/unsupported claim, but that’s hardly the same thing. Even the Taibbi article you linked to doesn’t dismiss the assertion of the Russian meddling that ultimately helped Trump, only the claim that Trump was personally involved in it.
The fact remains that Wikileaks helped further the shared goals of Putin and Trump. Whether Trump was a mastermind or a useful idiot in that process is largely beside the point.
“The magazine Foreign Policy also reported that WikiLeaks turned down “a large cache of documents related to the Russian government” during the 2016 campaign, opting instead to publish Democratic documents that had been flagged as stolen by Russian hackers.”
“That’s one hell of a coincidence,” Weiss said, referring to the record of WikiLeaks’ and Russia’s congruent interests. “If you’re a U.S. intelligence officer you don’t believe in such coincidences.”
It’s clear whose team he’s playing for and you don’t have to be in the intel biz to see that.
You DO know that Abramson is one of the leading voices pushing the Trump-Russia collusion theory, yes? That’s hardly a neutral source.
From the Taibbi article linked above:
You know what was fake news? Most of the Russiagate story. There was no Trump-Russia conspiracy, that thing we just spent three years chasing. The Mueller Report is crystal clear on this.
He didn’t just “fail to establish” evidence of crime. His report is full of incredibly damning passages, like one about Russian officialdom’s efforts to reach the Trump campaign after the election: “They appeared not to have preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with senior officials around the President-Elect.”
Not only was there no “collusion,” the two camps didn’t even have each others’ phone numbers!
“By revealing information in the public interest about how the DNC corruptly meddled in the democratic process, Wikileaks helped Putin, which proves he’s a Russia sympathizer.” This is the level of discourse we have now. Anyone whose interests happen to align with Russia’s – opposing American empire, say – is smeared with the new McCarthyite brush as being a Russian asset or a “useful idiot.” That it’s coming now not from the John Birch ultra-Right but from the establishment Left is particularly ironic.
You continue to act as if the only important aspect of the Russia story is whether Trump actively and knowingly conspired with Russia to hack the election. Which is nonsense.
Putin wanted Trump to win the election, or at least hurt Hillary’s standing in the election, because it was to his benefit to weaken the United States on the world stage.
Trump wanted to win the election because he’s an egotistical bastard, and wanted to downplay any role Russia had in helping him win because he can’t stand the idea of anyone thinking he couldn’t have won on his own.
The two camps didn’t NEED each others’ phone numbers because they were working toward the same goals independently of each other. And Wikileaks was happy to help.
Anyone who EXCLUSIVELY leaks information that hurts the DNC but not Trump or Russia is either siding with Trump or is a fucking tool. As I’ve repeatedly stated there have been a flood damaging leaks coming out about the Trump camp since before he got the nomination but Wikileaks hasn’t seemed to get their hands on a single one. So yes, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to conclude that either A) Wikileaks sucks at what they are supposed to be doing or B) Wikileaks is intentionally helping the Trump/Putin side.
Do you know why obstruction of justice is considered such a severe crime; often as severe as the original crime for which the investigation was obstructed?
Because it works. When sufficient effort is made to interfere with an investigation, it can in fact obscure the critical evidence needed to prosecute the crime.
There was no evidence found by the Mueller Investigation that specifically exonerates the Trump Campaign of collaborating with Russian assets. It failed to find a direct link.
The Democratic-majority House could investigate, if only to keep the story in the spotlight.
Revelations of Trump’s corruption and coverups may not get him prosecuted, but it does have an effect. There are LOTS of independent votes up for grabs. Some who remained undecided in 2016, others who voted for Trump, not out of conviction, but out of doubts raised by the last-minute spurious bullshit news about Hillary’s emails.
During the impeachment trial, polls showed 51% of Americans wanted him gone. Trump’s support has nowhere to go but down.
“We need Wikileaks because other media outlets aren’t friendly to whistleblowers. Also, it makes total sense that Wikileaks hasn’t shared a single piece of dirt on Trump since he started campaigning because whistleblowers have so many other outlets to go to.”
On this topic Matt Taibbi is, to use a technical term of art, full of shit.
Wikileaks absolutely worked to further the Trump agenda as Trump associate Roger Stone coordinated with Wikileaks to release John Podesta’s hacked emails after the Access Hollywood tape dropped. Covering that activity up is what Roger Stone was convicted of.
Some media are friendly to R-dirt but not D-dirt. Why didn’t the DNC leakers just toss the stuff over the transom at NYT ot WaPo - do you think they would have published it?
Even if you believe that to be the case it ought to be pretty freaking clear by now that Wikileaks has the opposite problem.
The idea that Wikileaks and Wikileaks alone has been totally unable to find any dirt whatsoever on Trump over the last four years is beyond laughable.
Even BoingBoing managed to unearth long-forgotten dirt on Trump’s dad in 2015 and this blog doesn’t even pretend to be an investigative journalism organization.
Because the hackers for both were Russian. Leak one to Wikileaks, hold the other for kompromat. I would say they flipped a coin, but they’d already invested heavily in the GOP. Better payoff to keep favoring that side, until they get cocky, then knock them down a peg.
They weren’t leakers, they were hackers from a hostile foreign government. Between that and the lack of actual malfeasance in the documents legitimate news outlets were unlikely to publish them, and most certainly not in their entirety.
ETA: Unlike Wikileaks, I’m quite sure The New York Times would not publish people’s SSNs or voicemails left by their kids.
