Julian Assange Claim of ‘Working on’ Hacking Trump’s Tax Returns Was ‘a Joke’ (Video)

Hours after WikiLeaks founder told Bill Maher that Trump was also a target, a tweet came out backpedalling

Head of WikiLeaks Julian Assange made a promise to Bill Maher on Friday telling the “Real Time” host he’s planning on hacking into Donald Trump’s tax returns.

Speaking from the embassy of Ecuador in London, Assange told Maher he was “working on it.” But he’s really not.

Just a few hours later, Wikileaks tweeted his assertion was all in jest.

“WikiLeaks isn’t ‘working on’ hacking Trump’s tax-returns. Claim is a joke from a comedy show. We are ‘working on’ encouraging whistleblowers,” said the tweet.

Trump has refused to disclose his tax returns, something every major party nominee has done since the late 1970s. The Republican candidate has cited an IRS audit as the reason for withholding the information.

Maher also asked Assange — who briefly hosted his own talk show on the Russian government-funded RT channel, a propaganda arm of President Vladimir Putin — why WikiLeaks seemed to be helping Trump’s campaign.

“We know these came from Russia and we also know that you don’t like Hillary Clinton,” Maher said. “So it looks like you are working with a bad actor to put your thumb on the scale and basically f— with the one person who stands in the way of us being ruled by Donald Trump.”

Assange defended the DNC hack, insisting that he was “super happy” with the outcome of the leak, calling it “great fun.”

At one point on “Real Time,” Assange tried to put Maher on the hot seat, attempting his own gotcha moment.

“Just before I came in here,” Assange said, “we thought we’d do a little search in our files and I do notice that a William Maher gave a Clinton-affiliated entity $1 million. Now, it’s a William Maher that’s in L.A. where the money came from. Perhaps you’d like to comment — is that you?”

But Maher shot back, “I don’t think you have to look in your files to find that, Julian. I gave Obama a million dollars. I made it public. The whole point of it was to make it public so people in 2012 would understand that the game had moved to the millio- dollar level after our Citizens United ruling. I wasn’t trying to hide it, I was trying to publicize it. I don’t know what your point is.”

Assange then asked, “Is there another million dollars going to Hillary, or equivalent?”

“F— no. I can’t give a million dollars anytime somebody runs for president,” Maher replied.

Watch the full interview above.

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