Assange says Clinton leaks might come as early as next week
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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Tuesday that he plans to release several batches of documents pertaining to the Hillary Clinton campaign within the next few weeks and the first could come out as soon as next week.
“The first batch is coming reasonably soon,” Assange said in an interview on “Hannity.” “We’re quite confident about it now. We might put out some teasers as early as next week or the week after.”
Assange didn’t give specifics about what would be in the leak, but has promised that WikiLeaks would release documents on the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee that would have a significant impact on the looming general election.
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The WikiLeaks founder also remarked on Clinton telling the FBI that she couldn’t “recall” specific details or events when she was questioned by the FBI in July about using a private email server while secretary of state.
Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, said she could not recall specific emails. But she also said that she could not recall the details of briefings on how to handle classified information.
According to official documents released Friday, Clinton claimed to have relied on the judgment of her aides and other officials to handle classified material appropriately. She even told investigators -- when asked what the “C” marking meant before a paragraph in an email marked “Confidential” – that “she did not know and could only speculate it was referencing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order.”
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The FBI document notes that the email was in fact marked “classified at the Confidential level.”
Assange called her excuses absurd and held up a document on "Hannity" that he said has Clinton’s signature and had a marking on top of the page to determine that the document was in fact “confidential.”
He added that WikiLeaks had released thousands of examples where she had used the classified marking and signed off on paper work with the marking and there were 22,000 other examples of when she received information from others with the marking.
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“It’s incredible for Clinton to lie about not knowing what (the marking) is. And it’s a little bit disturbing (FBI Director) James Comey is along with that game.”
Clinton's server was found to have more than 2,000 emails with classified material. Most were retroactively classified, but Comey has disputed Clinton’s insistence that none of them were marked as such at the time.
Clinton has repeatedly said her use of private email was allowed. But in July she told FBI investigators she "did not explicitly request permission to use a private server or email address," the FBI wrote. They said no one at the State Department raised concerns during her tenure, and that Clinton said everyone with whom she exchanged emails knew she was using a private email address.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.