Hours after British police arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London, President Trump denied knowing anything about the secrecy-breaking website.
“I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It’s not my thing,” the president told reporters.
He was lying.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, says the Huffington Post, “Trump repeatedly praised the organization … saying ‘I love WikiLeaks’ for the information it provided against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.”
NBC News says it counted, and Trump actually cited WikiLeaks 141 times at 56 events in the final month of the campaign.
Trump “even hung a poster of Assange in his debate war room,” reports. It read: “Dear Hillary, I miss reading your classified emails.”
Despite all this, Trump said he’ll leave it to Attorney General William Barr to deal with the matter, reports the Washington Post, again adding that “I know nothing really about it. It’s not my deal in life.”
Assange spent nearly seven years in Ecuador’s London embassy, claiming political asylum. Ecuador rescinded that asylum on Thursday, leaving him open to arrest.
The arrest came “in response to an American extradition request,” says the Washington Post, noting that a U.S. federal court “unsealed an indictment charging him with a single count of conspiracy to hack a classified Defense Department computer.”
Assange’s lawyers say they’ll fight extradition to the U.S.
