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Comment by pengaru | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like you're confusing Assange and Snowden.

Amazing how Assange suddenly became a Russian asset after 2016, this charge never appeared when he spent years going after the Bush admin

The Special Counsel investigation publicizing a Russian connection to Wikileaks' release of Hillary Clinton's damaging emails was far more recent than 2016 [0]. For myself, and I presume much of the general public, that would be the point in time where awareness of Assange's role in an alleged Russia-involved conspiracy manifest.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Counsel_investigation_...

I said after 2016. Wikileaks is a media company that reports info/intel from their sources, no different from the NYT, CNN, fox etc. There were no questions coming from these sections of the general public and the media you allude to when it was bush and it's very convenient for the intelligence community to discredit where they can. Snowden addresses the case against Assange in his latest episode on Joe Rogan, a very interesting listen.

> Assange suddenly became a Russian asset after 2016

Assange had a TV show on Russian State television in 2012.

Something about Snowden fleeing to Russia makes that confusion difficult to accept.

US govt did that to him. He was trying to get to Ecuador from HK when his passport was revoked mid-route.

Russia gave him asylum, for reasons which are not related to him helping them, purely because it antagonises the US.

He still openly criticised the Russian government, and has expressed strong desire to come back to the US.

Why is it confusing that he would flee to somewhere where the US couldn’t easily extradite him, throw him in a “detention center,” give him an unfair trial, or assassinate him?

Assange and Snowden are widely known to be conflated among the general public. [0]

I don't personally think either of these people are or have ever knowingly been Russian assets.

But that's not the point. Particularly after the Special Counsel investigation, Assange/Wikileaks has been portrayed quite publicly through a credible federal investigation as being used as a puppet for distributing Russian-acquired documents.

Snowden clearly ended up in Russia for lack of options when fleeing HK. There's never been any credible allegations of a Russian affiliation outside of that AFAIK.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M&t=8m

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