WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Fox News' Sean Hannity in an exclusive interview that a teenager could have hacked into Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's computer and retrieved damaging email messages that the website published during last year's election campaign. 
 
 "We published several ... emails which show Podesta responding to a phishing email," Assange said during the first part of the interview, which aired on "Hannity" Tuesday night. "Podesta gave out that his password was the word ‘password’. His own staff said this email that you’ve received, this is totally legitimate. So, this is something ... a 14-year-old kid could have hacked Podesta that way." 
 
 Assange also claimed that Clinton herself made "almost no attempt" to keep her private emails safe from potentially hostile states during her tenure as secretary of state. 
 
 TRUMP RESPONDS TO SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA, SAYS IT'S TIME TO 'MOVE ON' 
 
 "Now, was she trying to keep them secure from Republicans? Probably," Assange said. "But in terms of [nation-] states, almost no attempt." 
 
 Hannity interviewed Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. The Australia native has been holed up there for five years battling extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges, which Assange denies. 
 
 WikiLeaks published more than 50,000 emails detailing dubious practices at the Clinton Foundation, top journalists working closely with the Clinton campaign, key Clinton aides speaking derisively of Catholics and a top Democratic National Committee (DNC) official providing debate questions to Clinton in advance. 
 
 Assange has repeatedly denied claims by the Obama administration that Russia was behind the cyberattacks that exposed the DNC and Podesta emails. Assange also has repeatedly insisted that WikiLeaks' source for the emails was not the Russian government or any "state party," and said the outgoing administration was attempting to "delegitimize" President-Elect Donald Trump by making those claims. 
 
 In the first part of the interview, Assange criticized a Dec. 29 joint analysis of the cyberattacks by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. After the report was released, President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and closed two Russian compounds. 
 
 US GIVES DETAILED LOOK AT RUSSIA'S ALLEGED ELECTION HACKING 
 
 "On the top [of the report], there is a disclaimer, saying … there is no guarantee that any of this information is accurate," Assange told Hannity. "There’s nothing in that report that says that any information was given to us. Nothing." 
 
 Assange also criticized the mainstream media for what he called the "ethical corruption" displayed in the Podesta emails. 
 
 "The editor of the New York Times ... has come out and said that he would do the same thing as WikiLeaks, [that] if they had obtained that information, they would have published it," Assange said. "Now, unfortunately, I don’t believe that is true." 
 
 Assange added that he doubted that partisan sympathy explained the cozy relationship between Podesta and reporters covering the Clinton campaign. 
 
 "It’s more like, ‘You rub my back, I’ll rub yours. I’ll give you information, you’ll come to my – I’ll invite you to my child’s christening or my next big party.’" 
 
 Assange said that the website would not have hesitated to publish embarrassing information about Trump if they had received it. 
 
 "There’s no sources coming out through other journalists … and saying, 'We gave WikiLeaks all this information about Donald Trump or … Vladimir Putin and you know what? They didn’t publish it.' No one has come out and said that," Assange said. "If they did, that would hurt our reputation for trust for our sources." 
 
 The WikiLeaks founder also warned Democrats that criticizing the website for publishing the emails was a "stupid maneuver." 
 
 "It’s the same reason why they lost the election, which is instead of focusing on substance, they focused on other things [like] this attempt to say how outrageous it is that the American public received true information before an election," Assange said. "The public doesn’t buy that. They want as much true information as possible." ||||| CLOSE President-elect Donald Trump is continuing to publicly raise doubts as to Russia's involvement in the election, sparring with intelligence officials. Nathan Rousseau Smith (@fantasticmrnate) has the story. Buzz60 
 
 Donald Trump (Photo: Joe Raedle) 
 
 Gearing up for a high-profile briefing on claims that Russia hacked Democratic officials during last year's election, President-elect Donald Trump is apparently taking the word of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange over that of U.S. intelligence officials who will brief him. 
 
 "Julian Assange said 'a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta' - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!" Trump tweeted Wednesday. 
 
 John Podesta was the Hillary Clinton campaign chairman whose emails were released by WikiLeaks during the campaign, part of an effort that U.S. intelligence officials attributed to the Russians, perhaps in order to help Trump win the election. 
 
 Julian Assange said "a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta" - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017 
 
 Trump, who has questioned the potential involvement of Russia, is scheduled to receive his special intelligence briefing Friday. 
 
 As lawmakers in both parties criticized Trump for promoting Assange over the American intelligence community, the president-elect sent out more tweets wondering why the Democratic National Committee didn't have the the same "hacking defense" as the Republican Party did. 
 
 The Assange tweet came the morning after Trump claimed — without evidence — that intelligence officials had delayed a briefing on the allegations against Russia. 
 
 Tweeted Trump late Tuesday: "The 'Intelligence' briefing on so-called 'Russian hacking' was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!" 
 
 Intelligence officials told reporters that the special briefing has always been scheduled for Friday; it is part of a review ordered by President Obama, who has also accused the Russians of seeking to intervene in the 2016 election. 
 
 Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied involvement in the email hackings of Democratic Party and Clinton campaign officials. 
 
 In an interview with Fox News, Assange said the WikiLeaks source was not a "state party." He also said the accusers are seeking to "de-legitimtize" Trump's win, a claim also made by the president-elect and his aides. 
 
 U.S. intelligence officials have said WikiLeaks takes information anonymously, and that Russians took advantage of that system. 
 
 The White House stood behind the assessments of the intelligence community and said Trump has a choice to make. 
 
 “On the one hand, you’ve got the Russians and the aforementioned Mr. Assange," said Obama spokesman Josh Earnest. "On the other side you’ve got the 17 intelligence agencies of the United States government, (and) outside cyber experts who have looked at this situation." 
 
 Earnest added: "You have Democrats on Capitol Hill, you’ve got Republicans on Capitol Hill, and at least one adviser to Mr. Trump expressing concern about Russia's malicious activity in cyberspace in the context of the election.” 
 
 Trump aides, including Vice President-elect Mike Pence, said skepticism about the Russia case is justified. Pence, speaking with reporters on Capitol Hill, cited the "intelligence failures" of recent years, presumably a reference to erroneous claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. 
 
 "He's skeptical about conclusions from the bureaucracy," Pence said of the president-elect. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 Pence will also attend Friday's meeting. Their briefers are scheduled to include Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey, said Trump transition spokesman Sean Spicer. 
 
 Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers in both parties questioned Trump's criticism of the U.S. intelligence community. 
 
 "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "So even for a practical supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he's being really dumb to do this.” 
 
 Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., also on MSNBC, said that "I have a lot more faith in our intelligence officers" than in "people like Julian Assange." 
 
 Critics noted that WikiLeaks has been under investigation over the leaking of classified information, while Assange himself faces sexual assault allegations in Sweden. He has been living in the Ecuadoran embassy in London; Ecuador's government granted him asylum in 2012, saying he faced the prospect of political persecution. 
 
 House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told radio host Hugh Hewitt that he would not “start commenting on every little tweet or Facebook post" by Trump, and "that is just not what I do with the president-elect or when he’s president.” 
 
 Ryan also called Assange "a sycophant for Russia" who "steals data and compromises national security," and suggested that Trump would become “better informed” at Friday's intelligence meeting. 
 
 “I think he has not received his Russia briefing yet,” Ryan said. “So hopefully he’ll get up to speed on what has been happening and what Russia has or has not done, and he’ll be better informed on that.” 
 
 Contributing: Gregory Korte and Craig Gilbert 
 
 Stay with USA TODAY for full coverage of the 2017 inauguration. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2hRSyXO ||||| Mr. Assange and Mr. Hannity did not address that, in addition to WikiLeaks, the leaked Democratic material was published by two mysterious websites, DCLeaks.com and a blog written by someone called Guccifer 2.0. American intelligence agencies say they believe both were created by Russian agents. 
 
 In addition to American intelligence agencies, most private researchers also say they believe that the D.N.C. and Podesta hackings were carried out on orders of Russian government officials, though a few skeptics say they believe the case is unproven by the evidence made public. Mr. Assange’s statement is unlikely to change that conclusion. 
 
 Intelligence officials will brief Congress on their Russia inquiry on Thursday, ahead of a briefing for Mr. Trump in New York on Friday. Senator John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, will hold the first hearing on the matter on Thursday as well. 
 
 As for that “terrible” information mentioned by Mr. Trump, the CNN commentator Donna Brazile did send Mr. Podesta an email ahead of a Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Mich., tipping him off that a woman in the audience would ask why the government was not doing more to help clean the city’s lead-contaminated water supply. That was, in fact, reported widely and often, here and here and here and here, among other places. 
 
 And that was hardly an unexpected query — for Mrs. Clinton or for her rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. It did cause Ms. Brazile to lose her CNN post. ||||| "Russians did not give him the info!” President-elect Donald Trump tweets. | AP Photo Trump sides with Assange on Russia hacking 
 
 President-elect Donald Trump is seemingly taking the word of Julian Assange over that of the U.S. intelligence community, writing on Twitter that the WikiLeaks founder “said it was not the Russians who gave” him the leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee and other prominent political officials. 
 
 “Julian Assange said ‘a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta’ - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!” Trump wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning. That post replaced an earlier one with similar language in which Assange’s name was misspelled. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 Minutes later, Trump cited a Twitter post from Fox News in which Assange is quoted as labeling American media coverage as "very dishonest." The president-elect added his own commentary, writing that media coverage in the U.S. is "more dishonest than anyone knows." 
 
 He followed that tweet with another series that renewed criticism of both the DNC and the media. 
 
 “Somebody hacked the DNC but why did they not have 'hacking defense' like the RNC has and why have they not responded to the terrible things they did and said (like giving the questions to the debate to H),” he tweeted. “A total double standard! Media, as usual, gave them a pass.” 
 
 The president-elect quoted Assange from an interview he gave to Fox News’ Sean Hannity that aired Tuesday night, in which the WikiLeaks founder said that the emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and other prominent political figures were not given to him by a foreign government. The interview was held inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Assange has been for five years in order to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted on charges of sexual assault. 
 
 Trump's decision to side with Assange and Russia over the intelligence community he will soon lead has irked even some in his own party. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) have been clear in identifying Russia as the culprit behind the cyberattcks, as has Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who said Wednesday that he does not dispute the assessment of the intelligence community that the Kremlin is to blame. 
 
 "I have a lot more faith in our intelligence officers serving around the world, very smart and experienced analysts that we have here in the nation's capital than I do in people like Julian Assange, I can tell you that much," Cotton said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." 
 
 Trump has thus far been unwilling to accept the assessment of 17 U.S. intelligence agencies that it was the Russian government that was responsible for the wave of cyberattacks during the 2016 presidential election. He has instead suggested that it would be nearly impossible to know the true culprit and that “I also know things that other people don’t know” when it comes to the cyberattacks. 
 
 He and his surrogates have also suggested that concern about the cyberattacks from the intelligence community and media are actually thinly-veiled efforts to delegitimize the Trump administration before it even begins. Trump had announced plans to receive a briefing on those attacks early this week but announced Tuesday night that that briefing had been postponed until Friday. He wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night that “The ‘Intelligence’ briefing on so-called ‘Russian hacking’ was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!” 
 
 Authors:
– The American intelligence community had concluded Russia is to blame for cyberattacks during the US election, including those targeting Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange disagrees. And in a move one Republican political consultant sees as "mocking American men and women who … put their lives on the line for us," Donald Trump is siding with the latter, reports the New York Times. In a tweet Wednesday, Trump repeated claims Assange made on Fox News on Tuesday, reports USA Today: "Julian Assange said 'a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta' - why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!" The tweet didn't go over well, including with members of his own party. "Let's stare this reality square in the face: PEOTUS is pro-Putin and believes Julian Assange over the @CIA. On Jan. 20 we will be less safe," tweeted former Pentagon and CIA spokesman George Little in response, per CNN. "I have a lot more faith in our intelligence officers … than I do in people like Julian Assange," added Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, per Politico. House Speaker Paul Ryan didn't address Trump's tweet, but did call Assange "a sycophant for Russia" and suggested Trump would become "better informed" once Friday's intelligence briefing about Russian hacking occurred. Trump on Tuesday night tweeted the meeting was "delayed" to Friday, suggesting the reason was "more time needed to build a case." Intelligence officials, however, say the meeting was always planned for Friday.