> It's also worth remembering that he disseminated information on the behalf of the Russian state in an effort to get Trump elected.

Not sure why you believe that any more than you would believe the claims that Saddam had WMDs.

Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian intelligence hacker group that hacked the Democratic National Committee emails and delivered to Assange and Wikileaks to publicly release. [1] Wikileaks then dropped the emails in parcels - behavior they had never done before - in order to manipulate news headlines leading up to the 2016 federal elections. [2]

This is confirmed by numerous, independent security firms, such as CrowdStrike, Fidelis Cybersecurity, Fireeye's Mandiant, SecureWorks, ThreatConnect, and others - making it not the same as the WMDs in Iraq smokescreen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guccifer_2.0 [2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/wikileaks-hillary-clint...

I am bit confused, did the hackers falsify/forge anything? Or did they reveal some accurate information about the candidate(s)? If the latter, then what's the problem? Didn't they make American voters more informed? Would this be somehow different (e.g. less evil) had the same thing been done by American journalists?

GP claimed that Wikileaks and Russian promotion of the Trump campaign was on par with the WMD intelligent in Iraq - i.e. the Russian involvement is just a "smokescreen" - which it is not.

It’s not true that WikiLeaks never slowly released information before. That was entirely consistent with how they had been doing things.

No, it wasn't. Read the cited article if you disagree. Assange and wikileaks also reached out to the Trump campaign to coordinate the email leaks.

None of this definitively means it was done 'on behalf of', nor 'for the benefit of'. 'to the benefit of', perhaps, but an unwitting puppet is not necessarily an accomplice.

Per the Mueller Report, Assange attempted to coordinate the leaks with the Trump campaign.

Well, he picked the wrong allies.

Assange working with Russians is a conclusion reached by all US intelligence agencies. Saddam having WMDs was only the conclusion of a stovepiped intelligence team that reported directly to Dick Cheney and created by him (the office of special plans).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stovepiping

'with' and 'for' are two quite different words. which was it?

Both. He had a show on state-sponsored Russian Television.

> war crimes and killing journalists.

and yet, the saudi's are our allies and noone cares when prince so-and-so donates to XYZPQ election via some proxy organization..

i have no doubt russia attempted to influence the election.

the question is: which government really doesnt, and why is russia singled out here?

with a follow up of:

how is foreign policy really decided?

and what happens in the land of entrenched beurocrats and technocrats and their allies when someone is elected who threatens a major shift in FP?

He published evidence of political corruption. It's a good thing he did it too so that US voters could make a fully informed decision about the candidates.

He published altered and forged documents alleging corruption, where said documents were provided by the Russian intelligence agencies for the sole purpose of influencing the US presidential election.

And Assange, knowing this, attempted to coordinate the release of these falsified documents with the Trump administration. While also prohibiting Wikileaks from publishing any negative documents about Trump.

There is no evidence that those emails were falsified or forged. Even the participants didn't dispute their validity.

The story is that Hillary was colluding with the DNC and the mainstream media, not that someone you don't like let everyone know about it.

>It's also worth remembering that he disseminated information on the behalf of the Russian state in an effort to get Trump elected.

And how can you define this as espionage ? Publishing thins you don't like or even publishing false accusations is not espionage.

Published factual information that was damaging to a political candidate because it exposed their wrongdoing.

I believe the findings of the Mueller report, that Trump did not collude with the Russians to sway the election. I'm rather relieved about it. The possibility of Russia hacking our elections was a very serious matter and I'm glad the case is closed. Still, I'm very very distressed about Trump being President. At least the Russians aren't involved. Now, regarding war crimes and killing journalists, Soviet Russia had a long history of that. It's very disturbing the US is going down that path.

The Mueller investigation did not find evidence of collusion, but that is not the same as evidence of no collusion. There was plenty of evidence that Wikileaks and the Russian State were influencing the election in favor of Trump: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-blames-putin...

I don't disagree but how much influence did they have? The biggest culprits for swaying the election is none other than the US media by giving Trump billions of dollars worth of free election coverage for profits. They knew the negative coverage was energizing his base but they did it anyone because money. Blaming the US media however is as useless as blaming Wikileaks or Russia. At some point we need to admit we have our own self inflicted problems and quit blaming everyone else for them. Trump is a symptom we have been going down the wrong path for a very long time. I'm not optimistic about the US ever being introspective about its actions but it's the only way forward. The problem is US, not somebody else.

"What about the US Media" is whataboutism - a deflection. Russian intelligence hacked U.S. political parties and used the illegally obtained information to influence the election for one candidate. The case is not closed as you say because the political party that benefitted from the foreign influence is blocking legislation to fix the problem.

Trump not colliding with the Russians doesn't mean the Russians were not involved in the election. It just means he did not work with them. They could (and probably did) worked on their own because it's their own best interest to see Trump elected.