Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton might already have her eyes set on the general election match-up against Donald Trump, but WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange believes that the former Secretary of State shouldn’t be looking too far ahead yet.
In an exclusive interview with ITV’s Peston, Assange appeared to deliver a stern warning to Clinton, saying that his organization is on the verge of leaking more potentially damaging emails from her time as the head of the State Department.
Hillary Clinton is currently the subject of two FBI investigations — one for public corruption and the other for espionage — and Assange reckons that imminent leaks dealing with both of those investigations could provide the FBI with enough material to indict the Democratic presumptive nominee.
“We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton. We’ve accumulated a lot of material about Clinton. We could proceed to an indictment.”
Assange’s revelations will likely be met with discomfiture at Clinton’s camp, who have overseen their candidate develop a particularly acrimonious relationship with the WikiLeaks founder over the years.
In March, WikiLeaks released a searchable archive of 30,322 emails sent to and from Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she was Secretary of State, which, although establishing that Clinton had not been entirely truthful about her alleged misuse of the private server, nonetheless proved eventually fruitless in derailing her campaign.
#Assange : #Wikileaks has ‘enough evidence’ to indict Hillary Clinton https://t.co/UfDVr3GytR pic.twitter.com/NUmoXun1Rj
— RT (@RT_com) June 15, 2016
But Julian Assange believes that the upcoming batch of emails will be more damaging.
According to the WikiLeaks founder, the emails that are pending publication highlight not only Clinton’s deliberate misuse of classified information in alliance with her aides at the State Department, but they also bring into sharp focus the operations of the Clinton Foundation, which has been under attack recently for allegedly circumventing proper accounting protocols to the financial benefit of the Clintons.
Charles Ortel, a Wall Street whistle-blower who has been keeping close tabs on the transactions of the Clinton Foundation, recently described it as the biggest “charity fraud” to have been perpetrated in the modern history of the United States.
And Assange believes that the upcoming email leaks contain strong material that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton.
“There’s very strong material, both in the emails and in relation to the Clinton Foundation,” Assange said.
Moreover, Assange outlined his reservations on Hillary Clinton’s potential presidency, describing the Democratic presumptive nominee as a “liberal war hawk” who firmly believes in curbing the freedom of the press. Citing Clinton’s attempts to prosecute his organization for revealing her role in Obama’s aggressive foreign policy during his first tenure, Assange said that her emails showed Hillary Clinton ignored warnings by the Pentagon not to go ahead with the execution of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
According to the emails, the Pentagon was reluctant to overthrow Gaddafi in light of the unstable political atmosphere prevailing in Libya, but Clinton’s insistence to push ahead with the execution, Assange argues, is what eventually resulted in ISIL becoming successful in making political and military inroads in North Africa.
“They [Pentagon] predicted that the postwar outcome would be something like it is.. [but] she has a long history of being a liberal war hawk,” Assange said.
This version of events seems consistent with Barack Obama’s recent admission that he considers ousting Gaddafi as the biggest mistake of his presidential tenure.
The big mistake Hillary made in Libya wasn’t “Benghazi,” but toppling Gaddafi.
— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) May 23, 2016
While Julian Assange maintained that WikiLeaks will go ahead with the release of new Clinton emails, which potentially contain enough material to indict her, he said it is highly unlikely that the U.S. attorney general, Loretta Lynch, would indict Clinton , according to the Guardian .
“She’s not going to indict Hillary Clinton, that’s not possible. It’s not going to happen. But the FBI can push for concessions from a Clinton government,” Assange said.
Assange predicted that the FBI would make deals with the prospective U.S. government (led by Clinton) in return for not indicting her.
It remains to be seen exactly how damning the new set of emails would be for Hillary Clinton, but if WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s warnings are anything to go by, Clinton’s email woes are far from over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhTfR2FnM3I
[Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]