Thread by @caitoz

Reminder: WikiLeaks Has Always Been Open To Publishing Leaks On Trump

"It’s also worth reminding the world that WikiLeaks itself has for years been soliciting the same tax information that The New York Times is being praised for exposing." #FreeAssange
medium.com/@caityjohnston…

The NYT publishing a report on the president’s tax information revealing that Trump often paid little or no federal income taxes during the period the information covers, that his companies are hemorrhaging money, and that he is responsible for hundreds of millions in debt.

The report also contradicted years of mainstream speculation that Trump’s tax returns would reveal evidence of Russian collusion if made public.

So it looks like the president is every bit the corrupt kleptocratic oligarch that everyone has always suspected, except the roots of his deception lie not in Moscow but in home-grown, American-as-apple-pie end-stage capitalism.

Surprise, surprise.

These revelations by the Times are certainly newsworthy and most certainly should have been published, and this would be the case even if the information they are based on was obtained illegally.

You can probably see where I'm going with this.

As the liberal commentariat applauds Times for its journalistic accomplishment, it’s worth remembering that across the pond another journalist is being prosecuted in a corrupt and deceitful show trial for exposing not mere tax information, but evidence of actual war crimes.

It’s also worth reminding the world that WikiLeaks itself has for years been soliciting the same tax information that The New York Times is being praised for exposing.

Following the NYT publication the WikiLeaks Twitter account re-shared a request it had made in January 2017 for anyone with access to Trump’s tax returns to submit them to WikiLeaks, with a reminder that it remains open to any similar leaks.

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/823212055322853382

This is not even the first time WikiLeaks made this request; they made it prior to the election as well:

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/780582100990828544?s=20

This invalidates the common criticism that WikiLeaks has never published information on Trump. WikiLeaks is a leak publishing outlet; it only publishes what people give it. If people know they can safely leak information through mass media outlets like NYT, they will.

We learned in 2013 that Chelsea Manning tried to publish her historic leaks through mainstream media outlets and turned only to WikiLeaks because those outlets didn’t take her seriously.
theguardian.com/world/2013/feb…

Those outlets failed Manning while WikiLeaks came through. This is because Manning was not merely seeking to publicize information on an unpopular president to a powerful outlet which openly opposes him, but the largest stash of US military secrets that anyone had ever leaked.

The criticism that WikiLeaks has never published incriminating information on Trump has always been baseless, and not just due to a scarcity of leakers coming to them:

https://twitter.com/Suzi3D/status/1310392155404480513?s=20

People who claim WikiLeaks “never publishes” information about a given subject are usually only saying so because they’ve never typed the name of that subject into the search bar on the WikiLeaks website (and that goes for Russia, too).

https://twitter.com/MrsC_Assange/status/1307826751708389376?s=20

It’s also worth noting that the 2017 Vault 7 CIA leaks were a Trump administration publication. It enraged the Trump administration so much that the next month Mike Pompeo gave a speech declaring WikiLeaks a “hostile non-state intelligence service”.
cia.gov/news-informati…

Assange smearers don’t like to count the CIA leaks because they don’t contain any videos of Trump with well-hydrated Russian prostitutes, but they were indisputably a blow to this administration and it’s stupid to pretend otherwise.

If you care about journalism, support Assange. The powerful need to be held to account, and we shouldn’t have to rely on the permission of other factions of power to allow us to do that.