‘Obsessive and obscenity-laden’: Assange hits back at Intercept claims he backed Trump

WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has rejected claims by The Intercept that he backed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. He accused the outlet of furthering one of the authors' personal obsession.

“The editorial propriety of letting Micah F Lee, of all people, instrumentalize the Intercept to further his obsessive, obscenity laden campaign against WikiLeaks must be questioned,” Assange said on Thursday.

Assange added that Lee was “formally behind cutting off WikiLeaks' US tax deductible donations,” referring to the Freedom of the Press Foundation cutting off WikiLeaks’ access to funding.

In Wednesday’s story, Lee and Cora Currier of The Intercept claimed to have seen private Twitter messages from WikiLeaks staff from November 2015 onwards.

READ MORE: 'Sadistic sociopath': Leaked chats reveal Assange's extreme disdain for Hillary Clinton

“We believe it would be much better for GOP to win,” said a message they attributed to Assange. “Dems+Media+liberals would then form a block to reign in their worst qualities.”

“With Hillary in charge, GOP will be pushing for her worst qualities. Dems+media+neoliberals will be mute,” another message said. “She’s a bright, well connected, sadistic sociopath.”

“GOP will generate a lot opposition, including through dumb moves. Hillary will do the same thing, but co-opt the Liberal opposition and the GOP opposition,” a third message said. “Hence Hillary has greater freedom to start wars than the GOP and has the will to do so.”

On Thursday, Assange said Lee had a long-standing vendetta against his whistleblowing organization, and he was instrumental in blocking tax-deductible donations to the site.  

Assange, who is still confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London after his appeals against a UK arrest warrant failed, insisted Wikileaks does not save such messages. He added that the writers of the article did not even contact him to check the veracity of the comments, and that they admitted the group who sent the messages had “low security” and was not set up by Wikileaks.

The Wikileaks Twitter account was not just run by him, Assange noted, but a “rotating team” of staff members. He also said that some of the alleged messages featured in the story were sent after October 2016, when he famously had his internet access cut off by the Ecuadorian government. During that time, WikiLeaks was publishing emails from the private account of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, further damaging her disastrous presidential campaign.  

Assange also accused The Intercept’s billionaire owner, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, of having a long-running campaign to “neuter Wikileaks.”