Julian Assange Thought He Was Messaging Sean Hannity When He Offered ‘News’ on Democrat Investigating Trump-Russia
The head of Wikileaks told @SeanHannity__ to seek ‘other channels’ for information on Sen. Mark Warner. Turns out ‘@SeanHannity__’ was a woman in Texas.
At about 4 a.m. on Saturday morning, a couple hours after she started pretending to be
Sean Hannity, Dell Gilliam says she got a direct message back from the head of WikiLeaks,
Julian Assange. That’s when she said she “kind of panicked.”
“I felt bad. He really thought he was talking to Sean Hannity,” said Gilliam.
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During the election, WikiLeaks’ dumped Democratic emails stolen by Kremlin hackers, even leading President Donald Trump’s CIA director to brand Assange’s organization a “hostile intelligence service” last year.
Just minutes after @SeanHannity disappeared, several accounts quickly sprung up posing as the real Hannity, shouting from Twitter exile. None were as successful as Gilliam’s @SeanHannity__ account, which has since amassed over 24,000 followers.
Gilliam then used her newfound prominence to direct message Assange as Hannity within hours.
“I can’t believe this is happening. I mean… I can. It’s crazy. Nothing can be put past people,” Gilliam, posing as Hannity, wrote to Assange. “I’m exhausted from the whole night. What about you, though? You doing ok?”
“I’m happy as long as there is a fight!” Assange responded.
Gilliam reassured Assange that she, or Hannity, was also “definitely up for a fight” and set up a call for 9:30 a.m. Eastern, about six hours later.
“You can send me messages on other channels,” said Assange, the second reference to “other channels” he made since their conversation began.
“Have some news about Warner.”
Less than 48 hours later,
Warner made headlines claiming that the Senate intelligence committee received “end-of-the-year document dumps” that “opened a lot of new questions” about Trump and Russia.
When reached by The Daily Beast about the messages, Warner’s spokesperson pointed to WikiLeaks’ ties to the release of recent document drops performed by Russian entities, like Kremlin cutout Guccifer 2.0.
“Give me a break. WikiLeaks is a non-state hostile intelligence service with longstanding ties to the Russian government and Russian intelligence.”
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Citing mysterious sources and to-be-revealed bombshells, Hannity has been alleging he will unveil “the biggest scandal in American history” for weeks on his primetime Fox News show that has devolved into mostly a recitation of conspiracy theories about a “secret society” and the “deep state.”
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“To all the lib haters, know that I am back and here to stay. You can’t silence the truth and you have no idea what’s coming,” her first tweet read. “To all my loyal supporters - follow me on my new account to stay updated. Twitter can try to knock us down but we will keep rising up!
#SeanHannity”
That tweet, which had 1,800 retweets and 3,500 likes, was retweeted by dozens of verified journalists and Twitter personalities.
Chrissy Teigen took a shot at Gilliam’s version of Hannity in front of her 9.67 million followers.
“Settle down, braveheart,” she wrote. Over 8,000 people retweeted it.
