Donald Trump’s running mate and Governor of Indiana Mike Pence denied claims that the Republican campaign had anything to do with the hacked Clinton campaign emails released through the whistleblower website Wikileaks.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Pence said when asked by Fox News anchor Steve Doocy about rumored collusion between the Trump campaign and Wikileaks. “All of us have, you know, have had concerns about WikiLeaks over the years and it’s just a reality of American life today, and of life in the wider world.”
Earlier this week, a trove of emails were leaked from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta’s email and from speeches that she gave to members of Wall Street, both released through Wikileaks.
When his emails were leaked, Podesta blamed Russia.
“This definitely is the first campaign that I’ve been involved with in which I’ve had to tangle with Russian intelligence agencies,” he said, “who seem to be doing everything that they can on behalf of our opponent.”
Later in the week he said he had come to the “reasonable conclusion” that Trump ally and friend of Julian Assange, Roger Stone, had “advance warning” of the email releases.
“Stone pointed his finger at me, and said that I could expect some treatment that would expose me and ultimately sent out a tweet that said it would be my time in the barrel,” Podesta said Tuesday night, according to Politico.
“So I think it’s a reasonable assumption to—or at least a reasonable conclusion—that Mr. Stone had advance warning and the Trump campaign had advance warning about what Assange was going to do . . . I think there’s at least a reasonable belief that Mr. Assange may have passed this information onto Mr. Stone,” the Clinton Chairman continued.
The leaked emails and speeches came out around the same time that reports surfaced of Trump’s alleged sexual advances on women, which Pence pushed back against, saying that they’re unsubstantiated and that they’re only a distraction from the documented evidence in the leaks of emails in the Clinton campaign.
“Here you see the national media chasing after unsubstantiated allegations, the allegations that Donald Trump has categorically denied, and ignoring hard evidence, documented evidence, of deeds by the secretary of state,” he said in the Fox News interview.
“The American people need to look at the evidence and understand that we have an opportunity to make America great again but we’ve got to have new leadership and that begins the day that Donald Trump becomes president,” he continued.
Pence also promised that there would be more information about the allegations that would prove them to be false.
“There will be more evidence coming out” Pence said about Trump’s allegations. “The campaign is working on bringing that information out,” he continued without elaborating.
In another interview on the Today Show, he said that the evidence would come out within “hours“ of the Friday morning interview.
