Wikileaks Quid Pro Quo

Media's "Trump pardon offer to Julian Assange/Wikileaks" was debunked, and media got all the details wrong.

Media claims Trump offered Julian Assange a pardon in exchange for covering up Russian Hacking. Facts: "Hack" is in dispute. Assange reached out to share them, but was rebuffed. There was no pardon asked or granted. Media was completely wrong.

ℹ️ Info

~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 02/19/2020

Details[edit | edit source]

A few FakeNews outlets like The Daily Beast, Sky News, Bloomberg and CNBC claimed that "Trump (through Dana Rohrabacher as the intermediary) offered WikiLeaks' Julian Assange a pardon... if he covered up Russian hacking of Democrats, his lawyer tells court in the U.K."... only the meeting happened 10 months AFTER Assange had stated multiple times that "he was 1000% sure the Russians" weren't his source, the Trump administration denied it, and Assange's lawyer that informed Gen. Kelly that "Assange would provide information about the purloined DNC emails in exchange for a pardon," but he never heard back from the White House (not the other way around). So instead of a scandal, it exonerates Trump as behaving better than Democrats (who did reach out to Russians over potential oppo-research / dirt). But other than getting the story bass-backwards, and failing to correct it (or correct it slowly), good job.

🔗 More

Fake News
While the term goes back 100 years, the history is summed up well by Sharyl Attkisson.

Bloomberg
Privately held financial, software, data, and media company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan.

USA Today
A long history of dumb, and they should have been renamed USSA Today (United Socialist States of America).

🔗 Links

Tags: FakeNews CNBC Daily Beast Wikileaks Bloomberg USA Today