Assange Says Wikileaks is 'Working On' Hacking Donald Trump's Tax Return (slate.com)

Julian Assange made headlines Friday when talk-show host Bill Maher asked him why Wikileaks wasn't hacking into Donald's Trump's tax returns. "Well, we're working on it," Assange replied. But it was apparently the culmination of a larger back-and-forth. An anonymous reader quotes Slate: Earlier in the interview, Maher said it sure looked like Assange was "working with a bad actor, Russia" to hurt "the one person who stands in the way of us being ruled by Donald Trump." Assange then tried to move the conversation toward what he thought was a smoking gun against Maher, saying he had found there was a "William Maher" who "gave a Clinton-affiliated entity $1 million." Maher explained he had famously given President Obama $1 million in 2012 and he never tried to hide it. When Assange pressed on whether he had also given money to Clinton, Maher shot back: "Fuck no."
Slate has a video of the entire interview, and while Friday WikiLeaks was publicizing Assange's appearance on the show on Twitter, Saturday they were tweeting a clarification. "WikiLeaks isn't 'working on' hacking Trump's tax-returns. Claim is a joke from a comedy show. We are 'working on' encouraging whistleblowers."

Comments

Encouraging Whistleblowers?

[SeattleLawGuy]

A whistleblower is a person who publicizes information his employer or another entity with which he is affiliated does not want published, out of a desire to accomplish meaningful institutional reform.

Employees who hack you on behalf of their rival company or rival nation are not whistleblowers. They are thugs who think it will be useful if they knock you down and take your briefcase.

Hacking

[Dog-Cow]

So Wikileaks has gone from technically illegal activity to morally-wrong activity?

A tax return is not like memos of secret negotiations or illegal spy activities. It is a document filed by a private citizen with its government. There is absolutely no moral ground to insisting it be provided to the public.

Re:Hacking

[phantomfive]

So Wikileaks has gone from technically illegal

I don't think they've done anything illegal in the jurisdictions where they live (although Assange probably did illegal things unrelated to Wikileaks).

It is a document filed by a private citizen with its government.

He doesn't want to be a private citizen.

Re:Hacking

[Dog-Cow]

I don't think anyone should have to provide a moral justification for keeping any data private. Privacy should be the default position, and there should be a moral justification for making anything public.

There is no public good served by making a tax return public information.

Re:Hacking

[quantaman]

So Wikileaks has gone from technically illegal activity to morally-wrong activity?

A tax return is not like memos of secret negotiations or illegal spy activities. It is a document filed by a private citizen with its government. There is absolutely no moral ground to insisting it be provided to the public.

And Assange exposing what he thought was a private donation by Bill Maher?

I found that a bit distasteful, while I can see the public's right to know there's something off about trying to shame someone by surprising them with illicitly obtained private information.

Either way I think the big issue with Wikileaks and the DNC emails is they weren't a leak, they were a hack.

For a leak you need an insider who thinks things are so wrong that they're willing to risk their career, and even jail time, by leaking the information. It's a very random happenstance and tends to happen only when things are particularly bad.

But hacks tend to favour the more powerful entities (like Russia) who can dispatch sophisticated technical resources against their enemies. You don't need a massive egregious wrong, if you have an enemy you just need to hack their servers and go digging until you find bad. Russia didn't leak the DNC emails because the Democratic party was favouring Clinton, they leaked them because they were looking for anything to damage Clinton.

Wikileaks has transitioned from an organization that enabled insiders to hold powerful entities responsible to an organization that helps powerful entities attack opponents.

Re:Hacking

[khallow]

And Assange exposing what he thought was a private donation by Bill Maher?

It's a private donation by a public figure who just so happens to have a likely conflict of interest in this interview.

Wikileaks has transitioned from an organization that enabled insiders to hold powerful entities responsible to an organization that helps powerful entities attack opponents.

What's supposed to be bad about that? The alleged opponents in questions are also powerful entities. Looks to me like Wikileaks is holding true to its mission.

Re:Hacking

[poity]

It seemed to me that Assange mentioned Maher's donation as a way to reflect the "impure motivation" red herring back at Maher. Maher had, just a second before that, questioned Assange's motives by saying that he had, through his past dealing with the US government, developed a personal animus towards Clinton. This has been the common attack against Assange from the media in the aftermath of the DNC leak -- it goes like this: Assange's motives are not sufficiently pure, therefore the contents of the DNC email leak, no matter how true, must not be discussed, else we would play into the hands of someone else's agenda. This, of course, is fallacious thinking, and Assange tried to show Maher, through his own example, that a million dollar donation to a Democrat does not and should not cast a shadow upon Maher's brutal and regular take-downs of Republican people and ideas. The truth remains the truth, no matter who speaks it.

And that reminds me of something:

At best, the obscurantist attitude of saying that it is an undesirable document and better suppressed. And if for some reason it were decided to issue a garbled version of the pamphlet, denigrating Trotsky and inserting references to Stalin, no Communist who remained faithful to his party could protest. Forgeries almost as gross as this have been committed in recent years. But the significant thing is not that they happen, but that, even when they are known about, they provoke no reaction from the left-wing intelligentsia as a whole. The argument that to tell the truth would be ‘inopportune’ or would ‘play into the hands of’ somebody or other is felt to be unanswerable, and few people are bothered by the prospect of the lies which they condone getting out of the newspapers and into the history books.

-- George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature

Re: So the tax returns aren't public?

[Anonymous Coward]

Donald Trump has a right to keep his tax returns private. Nobody has a right to hack into a system to obtain them. As former President Bill Clinton said after Republicans impeached him, "even presidents have private lives." If you don't like Trump keeping his tax returns private, you're free to vote for someone else. However, you don't have a right to see his tax return without his consent. I don't like Trump, but I completely support him standing up for his privacy on this issue.

Re: So the tax returns aren't public?

[Anonymous Coward]

If he didn't have such a scandalous history I might agree, but this is someone running for president who filed for bankruptcy as recently as 2009. I'm pretty sure he has already asked Obama to present his.

Re: So the tax returns aren't public?

[ScentCone]

You're confusing personal bankruptcy with one of many businesses doing so. Those are not the same thing. The businesses file their own taxes. Any business that isn't a pass-through LLC has to. If someone owns a bunch of business entities, and one or several of them fail to the point where bankruptcy protection is involved, then there are public records involved - because the matter goes before a court. Which doesn't have much to do with the personal income taxes of the person (or one of the people) who owned shares of that company.

If you really want scandalous, pay attention to the giant money-laundering operation that is the Clinton Foundation.

Re:Maher is an idiot

[ChrisMaple]

The whole essence of the United States constitution is that the government doesn't rule us. That Bill Maher thinks it should is an indication of how corrupt his mind is.

Wikileaks: Propaganda arm of Russian intelligence

[beamdriver]

Everything they and Assange have done pretty much confirms this.

I mean, come on, every day Assange is telling us that he's going to release some new leak about Clinton that's going to lead to her indictment. He's essentially the Russian version of our old friend, The Iraqi Information Minister.

Re: So the tax returns aren't public?

[covalamin]

No one believes an anonymous coward! Post with your main account if you want to have a n intelligent discussion. Anyway, your main reason for voting for the other guy is wrong. Trump would be prevented from doing much of anything by the House and Senate. Hillary is the one who could do some damage .... or maybe some good. Thus the question is do you really believe Hillary is going to do more good than harm? Personally, I'd rather have a phony outsider who has a love for his country than a corrupt politician who has repeatedly turned their back on Americans.

Re:So the tax returns aren't public?

[Rei]

Meh, learn to store all your money in Panama like we do over here in Iceland ;)

Re:So the tax returns aren't public?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Every Republican nominee since Nixon has made his tax returns public.

Re:So the tax returns aren't public?

[tlhIngan]

Trump has refused to show his returns until after he is elected. Could be he has something to hide or could be he just doesn't want people to know he details should he lose. Difficult to be sure!

Well, the problem is D. Trump is apparently a terrible businessman - most of his businesses have failed. Excepting his corporate raider tactics on existing companies and cashing in on celebrity status, none of his ventures have made money. He's worth less today than in the past. He's riding the family fortunes to the ground. Luckily for him, there's a lot of it.

Well, slight correction, apparently his Russian businesses are quite profitable, if you ever wondered where the love for him in Russia comes from.

So there's that - people *assume* he's a good businessman simply because everyone has hear about him. (His flashy plane and other things also help advertise him). The truth is different, and hiding the tax returns is one way to prevent people from knowing it.

In the end, the real irony is when people talked about celebrity presidents, everyone assumed it would be something like a Kardashian or Justin Bieber or other entertainment celebrity. Trump IS a celebrity, except aimed at the more general voter base. So there you have it - the beginning of change in US politices from lying and cheating politicians to celebrities. Maybe in 10 years there really will be Kardashians running, when all those people grow up and become a solid voting bloc.

Re: So the tax returns aren't public?

[reboot246]

The posters here are also confusing wealth with income. His tax returns will show how much he makes per year (income), not how much he owns (wealth).

Some posters are also exaggerating how many bankruptcies he's had. Even CNN reports exactly FOUR, not six, not seventeen, not dozens. If you take the risks and start a lot of companies, a few are going to fail. That's just part of business. Only the government can get away with failing over and over and over.

I can't believe so many people are this stupid

[poity]

It's been a decade since Wikileaks captured the public's attention, and most people still don't seem to understand that it's only a publisher that relies on others to provide info. I figured Bill Maher would know better. I figured journalists would know better. But they've all been speculating on the "Why hasn't Wikileaks hacked Trump yet?" question for the past week, as if they didn't know what Wikileaks is about.

Are they all this stupid, or just pretending to be fucking obtuse?

No... they MUST be pretending. Bill Maher has interviewed Assange in the past -- without questioning his motives or insinuating that Assange/Wikileaks exfiltrated secret documents themselves. He has demonstrated in the past that he knows Wikileaks is only a publisher. As well, there have been thousands of articles in the mainstream press since Collateral Murder and Cablegate, and they did not cast Assange/Wikileaks as hackers or to insinuate that they were enemy collaborators. Journalists have demonstrated in the past that they know Wikileaks is only a publisher.

No... they DO know better, I'm certain ALL of them know better. But they're so full of rage that no one has yet leaked Trump's info to Wikileaks while their favorite Clinton is being undermined, they've become the mirror image of the Fox-watching "Fairness and Balance"-demanding trogs that the left so often mocks and derides.

Re:So the tax returns aren't public?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Well, Nixon's tax avoidance/evasion is the reason why the tradition evolved. He was the first president(al candidate) to do so, albeit after he was elected.

Also, his "I am not a crook" line was about his tax issues, not Watergate.

Re: So the tax returns aren't public?

[Anonymous Coward]

Romney released a single year of his tax returns, and that was only after considerable pressure from the left. Do not try to pretend that Republican candidates are some kind of bastion of transparency.

The Clintons have released their tax returns dating back to 1977 -- 40 years worth -- and have always been open with the information (ie: they were releasing this information publicly back when Bill Clinton was running for presidency).

So, Trump, where are your tax returns?

Re: So the tax returns aren't public?

[ITRambo]

I'm more concerned about Hillary's current inability to continually focus for long periods of time during campaign speeches. Maybe she's tired. But there are recent videos of her speeches where she just freezes up and needs to be nudged to continue talking. The long brain farts scare me more than whether she's corrupt or not.

Re:So the tax returns aren't public?

[Enigma2175]

The thing is if you start 20 businesses and 17 of them go bankrupt, you are still doing ok as a businessman.

Most businesses have, regardless of who started them, failed. The majority of those failures occur within the very first year of operation. Thats what average looks like.

While all businesses do fail eventually (over the timespan of "forever", it's hard not to eventually fail), but it's certainly not in the first year. Most small businesses fail just because they are not worth anything to someone else. When the owner of a small business dies or retires, his business usually fails -- because nobody wants to pay money to buy "Henry Adelson Landscaping" when they can just start their own landscaping company. From a Washington Post Article on the subject:

As far as we can tell, there is no statistical basis for the assertion that nine out of 10 businesses fail. It appears to be one of those nonsense facts that people repeat without thinking too clearly about it.
...

About half of all new establishments survive five years or more and about one-third survive 10 years or more. As one would expect, the probability of survival increases with a firm’s age. Survival rates have changed little over time.

Donald Trump's bankruptcies are the classic "heads I win, tails you lose" scam. If the building project does well, he makes a bunch of money. If it doesn't, he just has the development company declare bankruptcy and all the subcontractors and suppliers that provided the labor and supplies to build the project get screwed.