WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has declined to provide documents to the House Judiciary Committee’s broad inquiry into actions by President Trump, his lawyer confirmed
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has declined to provide documents to the House Judiciary Committee’s broad inquiry into actions by President Donald Trump, his lawyer confirmed Thursday morning.
“The First Amendment dictates that an inquiry by Congress should not begin by issuing requests to journalists for documents pertaining to its newsgathering,” the attorney, Barry Pollack, said in an email.Assange has long parried criticism that he acted on behalf of Russia when he posted hacked Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee emails in 2016 by suggesting his actions were no different than journalists accepting and publishing private documents.
But the U.S. intelligence community has assessed that WikiLeaks was an active participant in the effort to obtain and post Democratic emails, partnering with Russian propaganda outlets and acting as a tool of the Russian government. Assange has denied such claims. Assange, who has lived as a fugitive in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for years, was unlikely to cooperate voluntarily with congressional investigators. He’s the latest of 81 individuals and entities called upon by the Judiciary Committee to decline to provide documents.
So far, the committee has received upward of 25 responses to its document requests. About a dozen witnesses have publicly confirmed that they had or intended to provide documents – including former Trump aide Hope Hicks, National Enquirer parent company AMI, Trump confidant Thomas Barrack, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, and the lobbying firm of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
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