US President Donald Trump, who said he loved WikiLeaks during his election campaign, tried to distance himself from the arrest of Julian Assange, which was carried out by Britain on the request of the US.

Speaking to journalists in the Oval Office on Thursday, hours after the arrest of Assange in London, Trump said:

I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing.

Trump was far less reluctant to speak about the transparency site in 2016, when it played a major role in the US presidential election after it published a number of documents leaked from the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Then-candidate Trump called the work of the site "amazing" and said he "loved" what it was being doing.

Ironically, those statements were used against Trump by proponents of the now-debunked Russiagate conspiracy theory, which said his campaign colluded with the Russian government to steal the election. Russia was accused of hacking into DNC computer networks and releasing stolen documents via WikiLeaks - an allegation that both Moscow and the website deny.

Trump officials at one point were accused by the US media of having foreknowledge of the contents of one of the batches of documents published by WikiLeaks. The story soon flopped after it turned out that several outlets, which claimed to be reporting separately, based their reporting on a mis-read date of a tweet, which was actually sent by a random person to the Trump campaign to draw attention to a fresh release of leaked materials.

Former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa explained to RT why he calls his successor Lenin Moreno the "worst traitor" in the country's history for handing over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to British authorities.

Correa spoke to RT Spanish to explain why he publicly branded Moreno the "greatest traitor in Ecuadorian history." The former president says his successor is no better than the disciple Judas Iscariot or Ephialtes of Trachis, the man accused of betraying Greek forces defending the pass of Thermopylae from invading Persians.

Unconstitutional deal with the US

"It was not Rafael Correa, who gave asylum to Julian Assange. It was the state of Ecuador. And the state of Ecuador had to protect the person it pledged to protect according to international law and its national pride. Instead they gave him up, allowed the British police to enter our embassy," he said.

He added that the move also violated the constitution of Ecuador, since Assange is now a citizen of the Latin American country and is owed protection accordingly. "This is unheard of. These actions cannot leave one not outraged," he said.

Correa said Moreno basically sold "Assange's head" to the Americans. The US wants to prosecute Assange for allegedly conspiring with former US Army soldier Chelsea Manning in her leaking of classified US documents to WikiLeaks.

Revenge for allegedly publishing documents incriminating Moreno

Moreno's decision was partially motivated by various benefits Ecuador and the president personally got in return, Correa believes. But another motive was revenge on WikiLeaks, he told RT. Moreno believes that the site was responsible for publication of explosive documents, which implicate him and his family members in corruption.

"Paul Manafort, the head of the Trump presidential campaign, visited Ecuador on May 30, 2017, weeks after Moreno took the office of the president. And even then Moreno offered to hand out Assange in exchange for financial enrichment from the US," Correa said.

"In 2018, [US Vice President] Mike Pence visited Ecuador, and he and Moreno agreed on three things. Isolate Venezuela, which Moreno did with great enthusiasm. Drop a case against Chevron, which he gladly did as well. And hand over Assange," the ex-president said. "WikiLeaks publishing documents about [Moreno's] blatant corruption was the latest straw."

The corruption case Correa referred to is dubbed "INA Papers" after the name of an offshore company, which was allegedly used by the incumbent president for corrupt dealings. Materials exposing the link between the firm owned by the president's brother and various shady operations were leaked in February and triggered a congressional probe in Ecuador. WikiLeaks denies being behind the leak, but Moreno insists otherwise.

"Moreno knows that he and his family will go to prison for corruption and money laundering. So before he leaves, he wants to harm as many people as possible, including Julian Assange," Correa alleged. "He decided to ruin another person before going to prison. He is moved by pathological hatred and in his desire to take revenge, that's why he gave out Assange to the British police."

Moreno tried to break Assange and make him leave

Correa added that Moreno's government previously tried and failed to break Assange, hoping to get rid of him in a less explicit way.

"They tried to make him leave the embassy voluntarily with this ruthless isolation and harsh rules. They couldn't make him. They hope he would get ill and require treatment at a hospital so that he could be arrested there. And again they failed," he said.

Likud's PR Firm Boasts Hidden Cameras Lowered Arab Voter Turnout

[...]

"After a long preparation period, an amazing logistical base and deep and close partnership with the best people in Likud, we put together an operation that contributed crucially to one of the most important achievements of the right-wing bloc: Keeping the Arab vote legal!" the post continues.

The firm also praised "the 1,350 field operatives, activists of all ages and types, from the south to the north, who were present at polls throughout the country, from the smallest villages to the largest Arab cities."

"Now it's official - the Likud tried to lower the Arab turnout through illegal means. Hidden cameras, monitoring and voter suppression," MK Ayman Odeh, head of the far-left Hadash-Ta'al slate, told Haaretz. "This is what de-legitimization of a fifth of the citizenry looks like. What started out as unleashed racist incitement continued in the nation-state law and could end with a transfer government and revoking rights."

Haaretz reported that Kaizler Inbar is run by Sagi Kaizler, a former head of a West Bank settlement residents' council, and noted that in 2015, he said: "Arabs are sitting alone in the polling station; we don't trust them. We let them vote in our country even though it's our country. They should at least vote truthfully."

Word emerged of the plan on Tuesday, the date of Israel's Knesset elections, throwing civil rights groups and pro-Palestinian groups into a frenzy.

Central Elections Committee chair Justice Hanan Melcer filed a complaint with Israeli police, who attempted to crack down on the cameras where they found them, but it seems the damage was done: Arabs stayed away from the polls in record numbers.

Al Jazeera noted that in 2015, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was narrowly re-elected to a fifth term in Tuesday's vote, warned Likud supporters to get out and vote, as "Arab voters are heading to the polls in droves."

​Outgoing MK Jamal Zahalka, from the Arab Balad party, told the Times of Israel the cameras were an "illegal" action by the "extremist right" to try and deter Arabs from voting. The Times noted that nobody they interviewed said the cameras intimidated them, but admitted that by 9 p.m. Tuesday, turnout in Arab communities stood at only 46 percent, when it had been 63.7 percent in 2015.

Likud maintained that the purpose of the cameras was to crack down on fraud.

"The problem is with those people in the Arab sector," Likud lawyer Kobi Matza flatly stated to the Times. "The cameras were intended to preserve the integrity of the vote."

"The cameras were not hidden, they were out in the open, and were in places where there is a high suspicion of fraud," Matza said. "I get reports from all over the country that our representatives are being kicked out of polling stations in Arab areas."

Haaretz reported that a government source said Tuesday that "the move was aimed to preserve the purity of the election and to assure that Ra'am-Balad won't pass the electoral threshold through falsifications."

However, both Arab-majority slates, Hadash-Ta'al as well as Balad-Ra'am, still managed to pass the electoral threshold, retaining 10 seats of the 13 they had before.

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'Greatest traitor in Ecuadorian history': Ex-President Correa slams Moreno over Assange's arrest

© Reuters/Mariana Bazo
Ecuador's President-elect Lenin Moreno (L) and President Rafael Correa sit together during Moreno's inauguration ceremony.

[...]

Tweeting shortly after the arrest, which saw a white bearded Assange being dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy by several men and stuffed into a police car, Correa said that things had gotten far more serious than Moreno's alleged corruption.

"Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget."

The harsh words didn't stop there. After Moreno announced that he had made a "sovereign decision" in giving Assange to British police, Correa responded by calling the decision a "scoundrelly," "cowardly" and "heinous" act which is the "fruit of servility, vileness and vengeance."

"From now on worldwide the scoundrel and betrayal can be summarized in two words: Lenin Moreno."

Correa initially offered Assange asylum while still president in 2012, fearing the whistleblower would face the death penalty if extradited to America, where he was wanted for espionage.