According to the BBC, Trump has agreed with Assange's assessment, so time to lock this thread up. the god-emperor has spoken!

You trust a guy who is holed up an embassy because he refuses to face charges in his homeland to not lie?

I wouldn't want to face charges in USA, if I did something against this country, even if I had every proofs that I'm innocent, and even if that move was the right one for the world and american people

Of course he doesn't come back for a trial, his life expectancy in the USA is probably < 1 year

What?

Sweden =/= America

Sweden is where is facing charges.

I thought I was very obviously being sarcastic, although if you've never read any of my posts (not even the others in this thread) you can be forgiven for missing that.

Of course Assange has many reasons to lie.

Assange says he is afraid of being extradited to America if he returns to Sweden.

So?

The UK would have to agree to it too and there's harsh opposition to that in the past.

I feel like Assange just said what a Russian asset would say. Additionally it leaves him an easy exit: maybe he didn't get it from the Russians but the person who gave it to him did?

This is non-news for the same reason that the CIA making assertions about Russian hacking without proof is really non-news. I'm defining news here as 'containing new information I could possibly find useful'.

You seemed to be unaware of the link to America thought I would help.

The news is one thing, the bold-face denial and Trump's incoming battle with the intelligence community is another.

To be maybe a little bit too cynical, what work exactly is the word "falsely" doing in your question? Why isn't it basically asking the same thing even if it did happen? There still must be some specific gain that they see to it. I mean sure you could just believe that in thatcase they are just slaves to truth and honesty and have no choice despite the fact that it does nothing for them, if that's what you wanna do.

The real gist of your point seems to me to be that if they are falsely blaming russia, the gain to them has to be higher to make up for the risk of getting caught lying. And I guess that would then depend on if there really is any such risk, i.e. if it's conceivable to prove it WASN'T russia who directed the hacking. I'd guess that it is not really possible to prove such a thing in any way that would be convincing to, for example, lowkey

Yes, but only one of these two things has happened. People keep intentionally forgetting that.

Last August, WikiLeaks tweeted that a London coroner had found that the death of John Jones QC, a barrister who had worked on Assange's case, was not suicide. Assange and his groupies have tried to suggest it was murder.

John Jones, who was under treatment for severe mental difficulties, walked out of a private psychiatric hospital early on the morning of 18 April and later threw himself under a train at West Hampstead station. The train driver told the inquest that it appeared to be a deliberate act. The coroner accepted this and also found as fact that no one else was involved: she had reviewed the CCTV footage of the incident, though it was not shown in court to spare the feelings of Mr Jones's family. The coroner ruled, however, that Mr Jones's mental state was so poor that he was not necessarily capable of the degree of intent required for a verdict of suicide, even though he clearly killed himself.

So I wouldn't trust Julian Assange if he told me it was raining outside, no.

He's not Swedish, he's Australian. It's Sweden that wants him on rape charges, not Australia.

I thought he was living there permanently and not visiting. My bad.

I was perfectly aware of that. I think the American link is a poor cop out on the Assange part and a way to evade public backlash over rape charges.

It's not quite like that. Assange's pretence is that the US could more easily extradite him from Sweden than from Britain, which isn't the case. Britain fulfils about 90% of American extradition requests and Sweden is bound by European human-rights law just as much as Britain is. If anything he'd be safer in Sweden because Swedish law doesn't allow anyone wanted by the Swedish authorities to be extradited to another country. He just doesn't want to face the rape charges and he's a self-dramatising personality.

This isn't convincing. Like at all.

Did anyone read the FBI hacking report that was published he same day Obama sanctioned Russia. Completely unconvincing and a malware was used that anybody could have bought commercially.

The whole Russian hack episode is a joke.

Wikileaks gearing up to sue CNN over the 'Clinton-linked 'pedo-plot'

The answer is B. And the funny thing is you are correct, none of this Russian hacking agenda will amount to anything.

Read the FBI report that came out last week. Dont forget the massive disclaimer at the top saying they provide no warranties about the information in the report.

Does this mean that you don't think this is evidence pointing to Russia at all? That it's misrepresented?

Of course, when it comes to hacking I wouldn't expect to ever see 100% airtight proof. So I'm not perfectly convinced by the evidence, but it seems to me that either the hacking originated from Russia or someone wanted it to look like the hacking originated in Russia.

If the hacking originated from Russia, then I'd say it's extremely likely (>90%) that the hacking is connected to the Russian government.

If someone wanted the hacking to appear to originate from Russia...I'm stumped at who could pull this off. China, perhaps Iran. Israel...Saudi Arabia? Some terrorist org? I think we can rule out 14 year old kids. Maybe a whistleblowing org such as Wikileaks itself or Anonymous? Why make it look like Russia, then?

The US behind the hacking? Why? Definitely possible, but doesn't make any sense.

Trump-aligned hackers? Seems above their capability, but can't rule it out.

DNC leaker? Completely implausible.

I'm going to have to go with Occam's razor here. I'd say it's over 80% that this was a Russian job. Convince me I'm wrong.

We're going back to pretending there's only been one piece of evidence ever?

Fun! That hasn't happened many times over in this thread already!

A good analogy would be that you guys are arguing against the idea that sometimes it rains and sometimes it doesn't. We can't look at any historical weather data other than the current day we're on. So it's either always raining or it never rains. Considering multiple data points is misleading!

The disclaimer is clearly referring to the advice about the prevention of hacking. Why would anyone assume a warranty over what group hacked what? Would I get to sue the government if it was Apartment 227 instead of Apartment 29?