Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort reportedly had multiple meetings with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in his refuge inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, including during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.
The Guardian reported that sources told them that Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015, and in the spring of 2016 – around the time Manafort joined the Trump campaign as its manager.
But the newspaper could not establish precise dates for the alleged meetings and said that what the pair discussed was unclear.
According to the report, which was written in London and Ecuador, the last meeting took place in March 2016, right before WikiLeaks released hacked Democratic National Committee emails in the summer of 2016. Manafort was hired by Trump on March 29, 2016.
Manafort and Wikileaks denied the report, and Manafort’s lawyers declined to answer the Guardian’s questions.
Sources in Ecuador told the Guardian that Manafort’s visit was not logged at the embassy, as is mandated.
Assange, who faces extradition to the U.S., was granted diplomatic asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 after being wanted in Sweden for alleged sexual assaults. Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation in May 2017.
WikiLeaks denied the report in a tweet, saying it “is willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor’s head that Manafort never met Assange.”
Remember this day when the Guardian permitted a serial fabricator to totally destroy the paper’s reputation. @WikiLeaks is willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor’s head that Manafort never met Assange. https://t.co/R2Qn6rLQjn
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 27, 2018
Manafort is currently being held in jail in Virginia stemming from two federal cases brought against him by special counsel Robert Mueller. In September, Manafort took a plea deal in Washington and said he would cooperate with Mueller.
On Monday, however, the special counsel said Manafort had repeatedly lied to the FBI, in breach of his plea agreement. Lawyers for Manafort denied their client did so in a filing and said he “has provided information to the government in an effort to live up to his cooperation obligations.”
Trump responded to the Manafort news by lashing out at Mueller, and accusing him of being “a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue” on Twitter.
During his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly touted the hacked WikiLeaks emails.
At a July 2016 campaign rally, Trump called on Russia to “find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” referring to the emails Hillary Clinton deleted from her personal server during her time as secretary of state.
That same day, the Russians made their first effort to hack into the servers used by Clinton, according to an indictment unsealed in July 2018 by special counsel Robert Mueller. However, the indictment did not address the question of whether the Russians’ actions were actually in response to Trump.
