Hillary Clinton accuses WikiLeaks of working with Russia

Hillary Clinton has, once again, accused WikiLeaks and Russia of working together to deflect attention from the infamous 'p***y-gate' scandal in the run-up to the election. 

The former secretary of state's devastating election loss to Trump remains raw, and she took another opportunity to lash out at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for his role in damaging her chances. 

Specifically, she claims that Assange worked with Russia to time the drop of the John Podesta emails with the release of the Access Hollywood interview to draw attention away from the crude tapes.

'Assange has become a kind of nihilistic opportunist who does the bidding of a dictator,' she said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, referring to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

'WikiLeaks is unfortunately now practically a fully-owned subsidiary of Russian intelligence.' 

The US intelligence community concluded that Putin ordered an influence campaign to discredit Clinton during last year's presidential election, and that the Russian president had a 'clear preference' for Trump. 

Speaking on Monday, Clinton used the bombshell Access Hollywood tape as an example of how WikiLeaks was able to deflect attention away from a bad news story. 

She brought this up in the wake of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein's fall from grace over his treatment of women - comparing the disgraced producer to the President.   

In the 2005 interview on Access Hollywood with Billy Bush Trump brags about being able to get away with groping women because of how powerful is. 

'When you're a star, they let you do it,' he said. 'Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything,' Trump added.

The tape surfaced last year during the presidential election and initially looked like it was going to cost Trump the election. 

Trump quickly  brushed off the comments as just 'locker-room banter.' 

That same day several women subsequently accused him of sexual misconduct, which he denounced as lies.

And then, within hours of the tape emerging, WikiLeaks published more than 2,000 hacked emails from the personal account of Clinton's campaign chair John Podesta. 

Those emails, Clinton believes, said blunted the impact of the would-have-been damning tapes. 

'WikiLeaks, which in the world in which we find ourselves promised hidden information, promised some kind of secret that might be of influence, was a very clever, diabolical response to the Hollywood Access tape,' she said, referring to the Trump recording.

'And I've no doubt in my mind that there was some communication if not coordination to drop those the first time in response to the Hollywood Access tape.'

Clinton claimed WikiLeaks' actions were motivated by Assange's personal dislike of her.

'I had a lot of history with him because I was secretary of state when WikiLeaks published a lot of very sensitive information from our State Department and our Defence Department,' she said.

'If he's such a martyr of free speech, why doesn't WikilLaks ever publish anything coming out of Russia? You don't see damaging, negative information coming out about the Kremlin on Wikileaks,' Clinton added.

Australian Assange, who has spent five years inside the Ecuador embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges, has denied Russia was the source behind the leaked documents.

Get more stories like this on Twitter & Facebook