2. Even if Russia had provided Wikileaks with the Democratic Party emails (which it probably didn't), that wouldn't matter, i.e. Wikileaks was still quite justified in publishing them.
2) Agreed. That was not a point of contention.
This is untrue:
As we’ve repeatedly stated, we stand by the findings and analysis of our investigation, and, as detailed in our company statement, we’ve provided all forensic evidence and analysis to the FBI as requested. Additionally, our findings have been supported by the U.S. intelligence community and other cybersecurity companies.
https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...
> Assange... say[s] "It wasn't the Russians"
Has he actually said that? The actual quotes I've seen have not been definitive:
"The same day, Assange told NBC News that "it's what's in the emails that's important, not who hacked them." When asked by NBC News if WikiLeaks might have been used to distribute documents stolen as part of a Russian intelligence operation, Assange replied: "There is no proof of that whatsoever. We have not disclosed our source."[1]
and
"On Sean Hannity’s radio show, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said that hacked Democratic documents sent to reporters at Gawker and The Hill may have come from Russia. But, he said, he is confident the emails he received did not come from the same source.".. "“Our source is not the Russian government,” said Assange, later claiming WikiLeaks did not receive its material from any state actor, Russia or otherwise."[2]
(Note "state actor" - which would align with the idea that the hacking group is just under direction of Russian intel, not that it is part of it)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guccifer_2.0
[2] https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/310654-assange-some...
Re: Assange - yes - he is quite circumspect.
All the evidence points to it being the Russians, Putin himself said it might have been "patriotically minded" Russians, all US intel agencies say it was the Russians, all non-US agencies say it was the Russians.
And you claim to be baffled as to why people say it was the Russians?
Maybe it wasn't, but it's not exactly baffling why people say it is. There are no real counter theories at all - the only counter claims sort of say "Deep State" but nothing else.
Where is the direct, observable, undeniable evidence?
If you don't have it, then don't keep parroting the nonsense.
b) What kind of evidence wouldn't you deny?
It doesn’t matter what Assange said, the only thing he could possibly know is who gave it to him. He doesn’t know where his source got it, even if his source was not Russian.
I’m also pretty sure that no LEOs said any such thing.
Who else examined the servers? The US Government stated in court that it relied exclusively on their analysis and never examined the servers at issue. One might think this was normally something they should be doing, but it's getting more common (e.g. with Bezos' phone, where the private company failed to decrypt the supposed malware, despite there being open source tools for WhatsApp decryption).
Given that they failed to identify the Ukranian P.A.S. malware or a bunch of Tor exit nodes, it's legitimate to question how definitively they were able to pin this on a specific APT.
> It doesn’t matter what Assange said, the only thing he could possibly know is who gave it to him.
A fair point, but one you should make to the US Government and the media who promulgated the myth that he would somehow get a pardon for saying exactly what he's repeatedly said in public for years now when the real story was that someone hoped to convince Trump of that and never actually got to talk to him.
Also, we do have some evidence against. The exfiltration happened at almost exactly the speed of a USB drive. That doesn't seem likely to be coincidental, or likely to randomly happen for internet exfiltration of data.