Wikileaks’ alleged campaign against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton throughout the election has spurred plenty of bipartisan caution. Yet that hasn’t stopped Fox News personality Sean Hannity from openly embracing the website’s editor-in-chief Julian Assange, who remains sheltered in London’s Ecuadorian embassy while evading calls for his arrest. Hence the anchor’s September interview with him back in September, and the Fox News Channel’s Monday announcement that Hannity will be flying to London to chat with Assange in person.
Politico’s Alex Weprin and other political reporters broke the news on Twitter, explaining Hannity and Assange would meet at the Ecuadorian embassy and record the interview, which is scheduled to air on Fox News Tuesday evening.
Inbox: Sean Hannity traveling to London to interview Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy. Airs tomorrow.
— Alex Weprin (@alexweprin) January 2, 2017
(Interview starts airing tomorrow and snippets continue being broadcast throughout week, per Fox)
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) January 2, 2017
Prior to Wikileaks and Assange’s continued involvement in the American presidential election, Hannity railed against the Australian fugitive back in 2010. At the time, the media watchdog organization leaked hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables to the press — a move Hannity mulled over countless times on his show.
“Then 390,000 other documents were released. Many of them classified documents. And now we have this. What is — why? Why didn’t they go after this guy and why didn’t they arrest him? Why didn’t they stop this from being published when we had so much time to do it?” Hannity exclaimed in reaction to Assange’s sexual assault charges in Sweden. “Why can’t Obama do something about the WikiLeaks? We got this four months ago. You know, we can stop pirating a music and Hollywood movies, but we can’t stop this guy from stealing highly classified documents that puts people’s lives at risk?”
(Via Alex Weprin on Twitter and The Daily Beast)