The UK’s Guardian newspaper seemed to have quite a scoop this week when it published the claim, from unidentified sources, that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had met with Julian Assange in the Ecuador embassy in London on multiple occasions, including in 2016. Here, perhaps, was the smoking gun connecting the Trump campaign with the Democrat emails stolen by Russia and passed to WikiLeaks.
Except, it’s almost certainly total invention. Both WikiLeaks and Manafort immediately denied it and both threatened legal action.
The problem for The Guardian and its alleged sources is that to get in to see Assange within the embassy you have to pass through a lot of security. When I visited him in 2015, I went through the same security as everyone else. I had to hand over my passport and my phone. My visit, identity and occupation were logged by the embassy staff, and I was searched with a metal detector. Only then was I allowed to move from the entry into a meeting room. Everyone goes through the same treatment, so everyone who visits Assange gets logged.
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Problem is, Manafort doesn’t appear on any of the logs that have been leaked online (they’ve since been removed) and written about by… The Guardian. Isn’t it annoying when your long-running campaign against someone gets undermined by a previous part of the campaign? The Guardian‘s Luke Harding tried to cover this rather inconvenient fact by claiming “Sources in Ecuador, however, say Manafort was not logged.” Convenient. But according to Harding, “a separate internal document written by Ecuador’s Senain intelligence agency and seen by the Guardian lists ‘Paul Manaford [sic]’ as one of several well-known guests. It also mentions ‘Russians’.”
“Russians.” Sounds sinister.
The other problem is that the embassy is closely surveilled, not merely by the Ecuadoreans themselves, but by the British, too. Probably by a range of other governments as well. Everyone who makes their way past Harrods and squeezes through tightly parked Bentleys, Rollers and occasional BMW7s to get into the embassy will be filmed. But no footage of Manafort’s multiple visits has shown up or even been claimed to exist. The whole story is based on anonymous sources with no evidence of any kind.
Tellingly, within hours The Guardian was secretly editing the story to give itself wriggle room. But when it comes to Assange and WikiLeaks, The Guardian just can’t help itself. The red mist descends, and they’ll publish anything critical.
Well they are just another British tabloid.
We’ll just have to wait and find out what it is that Robert Mueller is going to allege Manafort lied about, aren’t we?
“Both WikiLeaks and Manafort immediately denied it and both threatened legal action.”
Wikileaks also denied any contact with Roger Stone; that was a lie.
Manafort has no credibility at all.
Can I believe the Guardian has been sold a lemon on the exact allegations against Manafort? Sure. Why on Earth would Manafort visit Assange IN PERSON ON CAMERA? That’s a very strong point. But not because Wikileaks or Manafort denied it.
There’s some reporting on BBC and CNN that Manafort met with the President of Ecuador, and perhaps that ends up being the story- that Manafort denied talking about Assange but that it turns out he made contact through the Ecuadorians. But that’s another story altogether.
Was this story just another episode in the Anti-Trump mass hysteria or the Anti Assange campaign? When I read it, I had no idea that it was fake news as most of it is. They never apologise which is why the internet is now the place to go for news. The social media giants heavily censor now. On behalf of who is the censoring done?
I wish that I’d copied the grauniad story when it popped up but a quick scan showed that it was clearly crap so I didn’t bother even reading it closely. Too late now.
For what was once a great paper – a couple of generations ago – it is a shame that it has become such a travesty of its former self.
Still pining for bLIAR, esp the ludicrous Tolly Poynbee even today.
It was poisonous on Corbyn right up to day after the 2017 election and without even the grace to say ‘sorry’ during the few weeks of gritted, aging teeth before reverting to type.
They’ve never forgiven Assange for doing what they could not and later would not do and the appalling error (?) it made in publishing the encryption code he’d entrusted to them has never been admitted.
Here you go, AR- the original version of The Guardian article plus the latest version with the qualifying edits, compliments of Newsniffer UK:
https://www.newssniffer.co.uk/articles/1706143/diff/1/2
Many thanks!
Guy spends most of his life in a red mist (well bright pink at least), so it is refreshing to see him exposing what looks like ‘fake news’ from the Left.
Guy should also have a hard look at the slanting and censoring of news at the ABC and its bedmate ‘Guardian Australia’ (where old Fairfaxers go to retire).
Legion ABC examples of failure to call out Islamic terrorism, hiding identities of Indigenous and middle-eastern criminals, persistent slandering of the Nauruan people as the inhabitants of a ‘hellhole’ etc. And of course the cheerleading for any ‘catastrophic climate change’ claim no matter how ridiculous or ill-founded from the Green Left.
To his credit Guy did call out the pre-Meetoo Swedish ladies who conspired to frame a sexual assault claim against Assange for what appeared to be a pretty ordinary couple of one-night stands. Ya don’t want the children and grandchildren of those who supplied Hitler a bit chunk of iron ore and other minerals for the Nazi war machine, gaming the European Court of Justice do ya??
Sorry Bernard….I misread the author thinking it was Guy Rundle…Replace Guy for Bernard where appropriate.