Russian intelligence are presumably quite capable of laundering it through an intermediary, which would make his statement literally true but misleading.
If only WaPo had applied this sort of scrutiny and skepticism to their 'Russians hacked the power system' story; millions of people wouldn't be misled today and perhaps the White House wouldn't be harassing Russian diplomats.
Trust is not binary. You don't have to "trust" WikiLeaks to wonder if there's something sketchy going on.
(In particular, I don't trust Wikileaks to know whether they are being played or not. Attribution seems difficult.)
because he might actually know? it was his organization that received the documents, after all.
is he lying about it? possibly, but what incentive does he have to lie about it?
was he deceived himself? possibly, but if that's the rabbit hole you're going down than what would establish confidence that _any_ claim on this subject is a truthful one?
because the various people claiming the opposite have a clear political agenda that is consistent with the narrative they have been aggressively promulgating through a complicit media? Assange isn't the one trying to start a new cold war. the Clinton faction of the state department and the CIA on the other hand...
What is CrowdStrike's "clear political agenda" and where is evidence of it?
After it came out from a number of sources, starting with CrowdStrike and later including the US intelligence community that the leaks were a Russian intelligence operation, WikiLeaks has proffered a shifting set of explanations, including for a while intimating that there was no hacking involved and that their source was an insider leak.
Obviously, WikiLeaks has an interest in not being seen as a pawn or dupe of Russia's intelligence services; OTOH, there's no shared common interest between the various parties that have attributes the hack to Russia in so doing if it is false.
I'm old enough to remember when a Russian disinformation campaign also said that MH17 was shot down by the Ukrainian military...
I'll trust the experts in this case, thanks.
Fictions built upon fictions. Assange has stated again in another interview, airing tonight, that it wasn't Russia. It wasn't any 'state' actor.
The same people that took the fantastic and easily debunked claims of a power company and amplified it into a diplomatic dispute with Russia will not emphasize this; if they can't somehow discredit it then they'll bury it.