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Comment by btgeekboy | Hacker News Reader

In 2016, Julian Assange intentionally timed the release of Hillary Clinton's emails in an attempt to harm her presidential campaign, after she condemned the diplomatic cable releases during her tenure of Secretary of State.

Whether directly or otherwise, even if only the smallest amount, his vendetta led to her loss, and Trump's subsequent win. In 2016, the NYT wrote, "First, citing his 'personal perspective,' Mr. Assange accused Mrs. Clinton of having been among those pushing to indict him after WikiLeaks disseminated a quarter of a million diplomatic cables during her tenure as secretary of state. 'We do see her as a bit of a problem for freedom of the press more generally,' Mr. Assange said." (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/assange-timed...)

Is there any evidence that he's shown a reconsideration for that position?

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That is not the view of the European press. Even the Guardian, which obviously generally supports the Democrats, cites economic and a host of other reasons:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/hillary-clin...

I think what is also missing often is that Hilary Clinton is not a particularly likable character who has made any number of unwise statements:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/clinton-on-qaddafi-we-came-we-s...

So she would not sail through like charismatic Obama, but the Democrats kind of took her win for granted, which is always a mistake.

Only her campaign chief John Podesta's emails were ever actually leaked (after he fell for a trivial phishing attack)

I don't get the accusation at all.

If anyone here remembers 2016, the vast majority of people, especially in Europe, believed that Trump's chances of winning were miniscule and that he was a joke candidate who only ran to satisfy his ego, not because he even wanted to become president.

If Assange, like basically every other journalist, believed that sabotaging Clinton's campaign was essentially impossible, then it provided a great opportunity to showcase corruption and gain support for his cause.

Additionally sitting on documents and dropping them closely before elections is a very common tactic. In the same way you would have to condemn the top AfD candidate being confronted with allegations, which the leakers had known for months, very shortly before the EU election. Certainly not any coincidence.

I’m not saying Assange is fully responsible for the outcome of the 2016 election. But when you directly attack one party of a two party race, you’re actively giving the edge to the other. He clearly held a grudge against Clinton (https://wikileaks.org/hillary-war/) and continued to act upon it.

Now that this multi-decade saga is coming to an end, and we have the benefit of hindsight, I’m wondering if he still thinks that the blast radius of his actions were acceptable, or if perhaps he thinks he should have been more cautious before standing for his principles and acting upon that grudge. From what I know, I’d be remorseful and regret having done it, but I am not him.

> But when you directly attack one party of a two party race, you’re actively giving the edge to the other. He clearly held a grudge against Clinton (https://wikileaks.org/hillary-war/) and continued to act upon it.

So you also agree that the German press publishing damaging allegations directly before the European election against the top AfD candidate was also unacceptable?

This is just a very common tactic in journalism. Leaking stuff directly before the election is just normal and happens all the time.

Why is this important?

Isn't it obvious why it's important?

It hints at motivation behind the actions.

Motivation is perhaps not as important as defending the principle, but it's not nothing either.

I also think it’s a bad look when the purported mission of your organization is transparency. Assange comes across as playing favorites.

Yeah ... because the 2016 presidential election was completely one-sided.

(rolls eyes)

[from the UK by the way... wouldn't want to vote either Clinton or Trump. Despite this I can be reasonable towards them without the emotional attachment.]

Just undo that Brexit thing and we'll talk.

Brexit or no Brexit, I know my country is falling apart.

Does not change my original post. Stop being a "lefty" or "righty" then we'll talk.

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