with love. >> and happy new year, happy 2017 and welcome to "hannity." tonight, we have a short opening monologue. democrats continue to make the claim of the russian government is directly tied to the 2016 election hacking and with weeks to go before he leaves office, president obama announced sanctions against russia. they released a coinciding report supposedly containing evidence that the russian government coordinated all of these cyber attacks. that report gets very few details and a massive big disclaimer. the kratz were also pointing a finger at wikileaks, saying that they provided them thousands of

emails from the dnc and john podesta. exposing corruption, media collusion with the clinton campaign and downright dirty politics all the way around. in light of all these wikileaks founder, julian assange, in an attempt to set the record street. for four and a half years, he has been confined at the ecuadorian embassy where he has not seen the light of day in all that time. so julian assange of course founded the group wikileaks in 2006, he made international headlines after releasing thousands of u.s. classified documents. he was detained in england after swedish officials issued an

arrest warrant that he may have sexually assaulted two women. a charge that he will respond to later in this interview. he was granted asylum in the ecuadorian embassy in the city of london. he has been living there ever sense, and very, very confined tiny quarters. in this wide-ranging interview which we will show for the entire hour tonight, he will expose government and media corruption. >> sean: let me start with the american elections. from your perspective, how big n

campaign, the portion to the degree that the establishment thought she would lose. and she was aggressively projecting that she would be the inevitable winner. she was about five -- ten point points, if they thought she was going to lose, maybe she would have gotten different results. >> sean: it's a very interesting post election. didn't even happen immediately. but the narrative has begun that in fact the u.s. government is accusing wikileaks and having received materials from russia and russian cyber criminals with the political agenda.

they're not just a talking about the john podesta emails, but in other ways. i've asked you before. didn't rush i give you this information or anybody associated with russia? >> they are not a state party. the answer is no. but if we look at the most recent, we had five different branches of government, cia data, presenting their accusations to underpin obama's putting out 35 russian diplomats. what was missing from all of those? it's very strange. my interpretation is not surprisingly, a problem they

feel, we don't know how wikileaks got this information. we don't know when. let's imagine, okay, the problem here is that wikileaks published information. what are they saying? wikileaks published true information that the american public read, that information was the words of hillary clinto hillary clinton. her campaign manager, john podesta and other people in her campaign. and the american public read that information. true information. and it said, we don't like these people. and then voted accordingly. what they want to do instead is conflate our publication of true information with, say, hacking or alleged hacking.

from vote counting machines. even obama admitted there has been no hacking from that. for most americans -- -- go spk department of homeland security, in fact, wikileaks was working with the russian government to influence the election. >> sean: is that true in any shape matter or form? >> no. if you read the statements carefully, it doesn't actually say that. they kind of mention one fact here, one fact they there, and nothing else. in the most up-to-date information from the december 29th statement, what is

completely absent from all those statements is wikileaks. totally absent. what is going on? i believe two things are going on. number one, they don't have the evidence that wikileaks is involved in that way. why my confident about that? because there isn't one person in the world and i think it is actually only one who knows exactly what is going on. without publications. and that is me. >> sean: can be saved to the american people unequivocally that you did not get this information about the dnc, john podesta, that you did not get it from russia or anyone associated with russia? >> over the last two months, our source is not the russian government. it is not state parties. >> sean: there was one report

that someone you are friendly with was handed the documents at a american university in from a disgruntled democrat. because of revelation showed that bernie sanders had been betrayed and they didn't like the corruption of the clinton foundation. can you confirm or deny that? >> it that came from craig mur, a friend of mine. wikileaks is a source of information. we are famous for never having exposed one of our sources. that's why sources trust us. they come to us. and so, i can't comment on other people's statements about our sources except that they -- what we have set. said. which is that our sources are

not state parties. >> sean: have you ever talked to vladimir putin? >> no. >> sean: have you ever talk to any of his surrogates? donald trump? any of his surrogates? >> no. no. no. i think where this claim is coming from is there is a radio guy on wc ai which is a mutual friend who wanted to come see me, to see if -- he didn't come to london, but he didn't leave with me. >> sean: if you say it is false, it did not come from russia, and the president of the united states is advancing the narrative. is the president of the united states lying to the american people? >> well, he is acting like a lawyer. he doesn't say that.

he doesn't say wikileaks obtained its information from russia, worked with russia -- >> sean: he is trying to say russia is trying to influence american elections. >> it yes. does say -- he doesn't say russia was trying to influence the election for donald trump. he doesn't say that. we have to be very careful about the language that is used to try to conflate things together. the question is, wikileaks publications. true information that the american people took up and they acted accordingly. did you have a lot of influence? statistically, yes. it was the number one topic on facebook throughout october. the number one topic on twitter.

also throughout october. did it change the outcome? who knows. if it did, the accusation is statement of hillary clinton as her campaign manager, john podesta and the dnc -- they are true statements is what changed the election. >> sean: how do you view yourself? are you a journalist? do you view this as reporting -- for example, it's interesting because at one point in the campaign, "the new york times" got a hold of donald trump's taxes which by the way they obtained a wow illegally. you are not going to reveal your source but no one has said what you released is not true.

they went forward with the story on his taxes. is there any difference? >> there is a difference. our material, the public responded to it more than "the new york times." but the editor of "the new york times," she has come out and said that he would do the same thing with wikileak wikileaks. if they had obtained the information, they would publish it. unfortunately, i don't believe that is true. i believe they would selectively may be published, they would not have done what we did which was present the american public everything that we knew. can you just imagine if wikileaks had information wrecking the primary? and we withheld that information until after the election?

unfortunately, those sorts of acts do happen. not with this organization. >> sean: in 2015, the chinese sold millions of personal documents. classified information on individuals who were seeing and working for our government, et cetera. if they don't say anything about china and they selectively choose this, is it to delegitimize donald trump? what is your interpretation on that? >> if you look at what the allegations are, they don't mention wikileaks. the only mention our publicatio publication. our publication had wide uptake by the american people. they are all true. but that's not the allegation that is being presented. by the obama white house. so why such a dramatic response?

well, the reason is obvious. they are trying to delegitimize the trump administration as it goes into the white house. they're going to try to say that president-elect trump is not a legitimate -- >> sean: is your information -- >> they will harp on it for the next four years. i think that is a mistake. i think that is a mistake not just in fact, that is a mistake for the u.s. democratic party. i think it is a stupid maneuver. it is the same reason why they lost the election. which is instead of focusing on substance, they focused on other things which they think his short-term wins. but it's not strategic. a little comment like here and there from trump. how outrageous it is that the american public received true

information before the election. they want as much information as possible. >> sean: if the information you had was about donald trump and his campaign, would you have released that? >> absolutely. once again, think about it from our perspective. we have won a lot of media awards. we have but trusted our readers. having never got it wrong. >> sean: ten years, not even one evidence of you being proven wrong. >> we have a perfect record, authenticating the information we publish. we try to preserve that reputation. what else do we have a record for? there are no sources coming out through other journalists,

saying, we gave wikileaks all this information about donald trump or president ziyi or vladimir putin. and you know what? they didn't publish it. no one has come out and it sent that. they did, they would hurt our reputation or trust from our sources. >> sean: i know you want to protect your sources and when you first told me on my radio show that it was not russia, you said so reluctantly, can i take it one step further? was the source within the united states? >> i don't want to constrain whether it was someone inside the united states in the dnc, and the service providers, the provides the or outside, i think we have already posted quite a lot. >> sean: more than you would like.

>> more than we would like. that was necessary to do because there was a serious attempt to distract from the contents of our publication with its russian narrative. our sources are interested in two things. they're interested in protecting their identity but also not going through all that effort and risking themselves only to have the publication undermined. >> sean: what you make of the president of the united states, in the next 24 to 48 hours, he made a point to impose 12 sanctions, vladimir putin -- you

are saying that russia did not give you this information. he is very closely suggesting that in fact, they did. and he is wrong. so my question is, does he know he is wrong from your perspective? >> he hast to know. he is playing games. >> sean: is he lying to the american people? >> he is playing games by trying to go with the idea that russia "hacked" the american election. for which there is no evidence. then saying without suggesting -- suggesting without saying that our information was part of the plot to get donald trump elected. once again, from our side there is no evidence.

we don't know how wikileaks, or when they got this information. it's a construction to try to erect a topic that donald trump is illegitimately elected. >> sean: more in the interview up next, election hacking, straightahead i love my shop, but my back pain was making it hard to sleep and open up on time. then i found aleve pm. the only one to combine a safe sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. now i'm back. aleve pm for a better am. ♪ ♪

now, back to "hannity" ." >> sean: welcome back to "hannity," during my exclusive interview with julian assange at the ecuadorian embassy in london, i asked him about the fbi and the report on the election hacking, let's take a

look. the department of homeland security, this goes to december 29th of this year, federal investigations lead russian influence to the american election. supposedly they give details, technical details, but they don't give any positives. >> the devising of the five-page description, the rest is just fairly boring. on top, there is the disclaimer. they can't guarantee that any of this is confirmed.

i used to be a computer security expert. that was my job. this is a bad report and you look in the rest of the computer security community, you will see dozens of others -- computer security experts -- there is nothing in that report that says any information given to us. nothing. what they have is what they call indicators. a way to recognize these alleged russian tools have been used on this. in response to that, some engineer found his signature on one of their laptops. okay. then this was -- i've read those

reports in detail. it was discovered this was a commercially available tool. used by ukraine. so it is straight out of the batch. we either have a deliberate attempt or a thoroughly competent work. that story about the laptop at the power generation center, that was picked up by "the washington post" and the administration, pushed everywhere, and it was completely bogus. >> sean: that was bogus? there is another side of this, which is fascinating, which is that hillary rodham clinton had a private server at a mom and pop shop in a bathroom closet that i would argue -- lawyers would make arguments that it was

illegal for her to have. from what we understand, the jump at us the emails were hacked three fishing scheme, and he did so. >> there were a number of tax that the dnc and john podesta -- republished as proud of our full disclosure policy, we published the thorough john podesta emails that shows he was responding to a phishing email. how did they respond? podesta gave out that his password was the word password. this email that you received? this is totally legitimate. this is something a 14-year-old kid could have hacked.

based on computer security and hillary clinton's security. the secretary of state's emails, if you read closely, you'll see had access to them. a variety of technicians. small company, she had over a dozen different devices that had access to them. her ipod, et cetera. she made almost no attempt to keep them secure. was she trying to keep them secure from the republicans? probably. but in terms -- go >> sean: the reason we have these laws though are for transparency. she wanted to avoid congressional oversight.

>> that is that is absolutely my interpretation as well. this is probably actually against our interests as a publisher. but we believe that people have the right to know true information about what the government is doing. the freedom of information act is being subverted. we published sarah palin's emails. why? because she when she was governor of alaska, she maintained an account that was being used intentionally or not to evade the lasting free information act. >> sean: during the 2016 election, i if you head to the bank and wait to get approved for a mortgage, that newly listed ranch will be gone. or, you could push that button. sfx: rocket launching.

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>> sean: welcome back to "hannity," we discussed how wikileaks exposed the mainstream media here in america and the clinton campaign. let's take a look. >> journalism is that, i said it in 2008. because i was investigating barack obama. and his backgrounds. and his associations. in his career. and his lack of knowledge. and his radical belief system. and immediately ignored a lot of it. so my question to you is, knowing what wikileaks revealed about the podesta emails on cleansing corruption, on bernie sanders being cheated, not an lot of this was covered. so what does the state of the american people about media coverage in america? dishonest? >> it is very dishonest. depends on your definition.

if you look at what we publish -- >> sean: if they are colluding with hillary, is that ethical co-op demonic corruption >> corruption also means taking money in exchange. so i don't think that -- -- >> sean: so, collusion. >> it's more like, you rub my back, i'll rub yours. i will give you information, i'll invite you to my child's christening or my next big party. you know what i mean? i think it is more sadly, i think it's more along those lines. >> sean: i look at those

lists -- >> can i go back to this media question? what is the line now, the line is that wikileaks changed the results of the election. the editor of wiki links, we are happy to have credit for exposing corruption and behavior in that clinton team and the dn dnc. we are quite happy to accept that. >> sean: was that if your to influence the election? what is your motivation? fidelity to truth? >> in ten years with wikileaks, it has been to publish true information that is otherwise unstable.

so we are not in competition --- >> sean: so you have no political agenda? >> it is not a party political agenda. it is a philosophical agenda. we believe that the best type of government comes from a government that is scrutinized by the people, when they have true information, our governmen government, big corporations -- >> sean: as a conservative, one of the things that's shocked me in this election cycle. it drove me crazy for years. the narrative that would be used by the democrats about conservatives like myself that republicans are racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic. as islamic phobic, xena phobic, what was fascinating and not many people want to pay attention to it because of the

media collusion is they were exposed as using racial language. being anti-somatic, homophobic, which led to on the eve of the democratic national convention, she was fired. that to me was the type of thing -- if you sort of open a window and things are not often the way the appear. if that now a new reality going forward in terms of if the media is not going to do their job, they are going to be more wikileaks in the future? >> well, i surely hope so. >> sean: he has released classified documents generating extreme controv hey, it's the phillips' lady! there's a more enjoyable way to get your fiber. try these delicious phillips' fiber gogummies , a good source of fiber to help support regularity. mmm...these are great! my work here is done. phillips', the tasty side of fiber.

>> sean: welcome back to "hannity." julian a sans created international

controversy, julian assange. many, including myself at the time, had criticized him for time, had criticized him for and during our sitdown interview, i asked assange where wikileaks draws the line. take a look. i told you this, when you first came on the scene in 2010, i was afraid you were waging war against the u.s. i said, you know, other people might be -- this classified information -- could put american lives at risk. that was my concern. so in the meantime, what you released at that time, the standard operating procedures, delta, the u.s. army, camp at gitmo, you released a classified video of the baghdad helicopter.

that killed two journalists. you also released the afghanistan war logs, the iraq he war logs, the guantanamo files. more diplomatic cables, wisteria files leading up to -- the syria files. you've done to go things that have been extraordinary helpful. and i think journalism in a way. one, you showed us that we do not have cyber security. acknowledged that. in this election in particular, two, we expose a level of corruption that i -- for 30 years on the radio as a conservative, knew existed and i was shocked at the level of corruption, simplicity, dishonesty, manipulation.

so there is a lot of good here. where does the line -- where is the line for you? if lives are in jeopardy, is that a line? privacy for individuals? is that a line? if you were to be handed information about a private citizen, a hollywood actor. >> let's look at the practice. i am very proud of three things. number one, we have never got it wrong. because of what we say, a document is what it is. what you have printed, not to even it is there allegation. number two, we have never revealed our sources. >> sean: today you could reveal the source of the podesta emails. that will make a lot of news.

you don't like to say that. about russia. >> there is a distraction from the publication, that we kind of have to distance ourselves from it. being fueled by any old rubbish. number three? what are we proud of? we are proud that there is not a single instance of anyone coming into physical harm as a result of our publication. >> sean: have you made constant till conscious decisi, the release of your information was a result in someone's death? >> no, we thought there was a significant risk? >> sean: you are conscious of

that? >> we are always transparent about it. we are withholding this piece of information for a limited time until such time so there is not a significant risk that someone may not pay retribution. unlike other media organization organizations, with huge reductions and no explanation as to why it is being redacted or being withheld. i know from practice, with more than 110 partnerships, information is withheld for political reasons and is then passed off. in order to protect individuals, so reductions are deeply corruptive. we are fighting --

>> sean: you are describing abc, nbc, cbs, political. you are describing the mainstream media in america. >> we have similar problems with the guardian, they are often find fine journalists who did good work. but they were critical cases where information that we shared in a partnership agreement under the basis that it would only be redacted for human rights reasons, we are protecting some of life, it was redacted to protect oil companies working in kazakhstan. or the former leader who was accused of awful murders in ukraine. here is the basic problem with censorship. once again, it creates a system where people can't see what were the reasons for the censorship?

in the justice system, we say that there must be open justice where there is justice. to be judged while trying, before the public. it doesn't happen one media organization is engaged in sweeping things under the rug. >> sean: is it fair to say wikileaks is more interested in impacting the lives of people, not superfluous scandalous lives of big stars? >> we don't publish that. we haven't actually been put in a position where we've had to make that determination. because that's not what we do. most people go to tmc, for example. >> sean: julian assange has not stepped outside the ecuadoran embassy in london since 2012, i will ask him about i need to promote my new business and do it on budget.

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>> sean: welcome back to "hannity," so back in 2010, swedish authorities issued an arrest warrant for julian assange for separate sexual assault allegations. he sought asylum at the ecuadoran embassy in london. i asked him about the allegations and more. >> let's put this in context. the situation where we are toda today -- >> sean: these are two swedish women. >> the women did not make the allegations. the state made the allegations. it is agreed although we have two the supreme court, it is the

state of sweden that brought the case. not the women trying to file charges. there are no charges. >> sean: why would the state do that and not get the women on them? you must be confronted by your accuser. >> sean: not the case here. >> they admit in their own filing, a woman says that she was railroaded by the police and others. in course material. the police made up the accusation and i've already been previously cleared by the chief prosecutor, there are no charges and twice this year, the u.n. revealing the whole situation has set that i was illegally detained and i should be immediately acquitted.

it's a very important topic. the case in the u.s. continues. the department of justice continues the whole thing. >> sean: even though they said they concluded -- >> this is the sneaky behavior of this administration. as we were complaining, look, the obama administration is refusing to release any document status. erecting a giant dam for all the material involvement. the reason no journalist can have this is because we are bringing prosecution. this is the end of investigative journalism if journalists can't say, hey, we heard a rumor. that there was a journalist

killed in a drone strike. you know anything about that? and then you go and you prove i it. >> sean: but america, if you go back to watergate, they had a source. it was called deep throat. big source. >> under the obama administration, he would have been prosecuted. i have been detained illegally for six years, under house arrest, four and a half years vicinity. it is tough. it is tough but that is the mission that i set myself on. i am willing to accept that. i understand the kind of games being played with big, powerful actors. they try to take revenge. it is a bit different thing for my family. i have young children, under ten

years old. they didn't sign up for that. okay? they didn't sign up for that. that's not something i like and i think that is fundamentally unjust as an outcome for my children. it's not a good situation for other people as well. but that would be my one concer concern. i know what i'm doing, i am prepared where the consequences in dealing with powerful individuals. my family is innocent. in that equation. in that equation. they did not sign up forstart yr one choice of dentists. philips sonicare removes significantly more plaque versus oral-b 7000. experience this amazing feel of clean. innovation and you. philips sonicare. save now when you buy philips sonicare.

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. >> time for our question of the day, now that you've heard from julian assange, who do you believe?

julian, or president obama and hillary clinton. we want to hear from you, go to facebook.com/sean hannity. we'll see you back here tomorrow night. thanks for being with us. interesting. chris: i'm chris wallace, vladimir putin ordered a cyber-attack to interfere in our presidential election and help donald trump win. as tension rises between the president elect and the nation's spy chiefs. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> i don't think that we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process. >> today incoming chief of staff reince priebus on mr. trump's rocky relationship with the intelligence community. and the president elect seems to have an ally in the founder of wikileaks. >> the notion that the elected