Assange denies backing Trump, liking either candidate

WikiLeaks head Julian Assange posted a front-page statement to his site looking back on its involvement in the presidential election Tuesday, in which he lashed out at claims that the site backed any candidate or timed releases to damage Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. 

“We publish as fast as our resources will allow and as fast as the public can absorb it,” he wrote in the thousand-word post titled “Assange Statement on the US election.”

{mosads}”That is our commitment to ourselves, to our sources, and to the public. This is not due to a personal desire to influence the outcome of the election. The Democratic and Republican candidates have both expressed hostility towards whistleblowers.”

Throughout the campaign, WikiLeaks released several emails damaging to the Clinton campaign, which the United States intelligence services have stated were acquired by the Russian government.

The timing appeared to have been chosen for maximum impact; the first batch of emails was posted immediately before the Democratic National Convention, and others came out only hours after a controversial tape of Republican nominee Donald Trump surfaced, stealing its thunder.  

Assange said the only reason the site did not publish documents about Trump was the site did not receive any documents about Trump. 

Throughout the post, Assange slammed perceived persecution of the site from political elites, including Clinton and President Obama.

“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. The campaign was unable to invoke evidence about our publications—because none exists,” Assange wrote. 

“In the end, those who have attempted to malign our groundbreaking work over the past four months seek to inhibit public understanding perhaps because it is embarrassing to them – a reason for censorship the First Amendment cannot tolerate. Only unsuccessfully do they try to claim that our publications are inaccurate.”