A Leftist Conspiracy To Arrest Julian Assange, Brought to You by Sandy Rios

Sandy Rios speaks at Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., on September 21, 2018. (Photo: Jared Holt for Right Wing Watch)

Sandy Rios, the American Family Association governmental affairs director and a Religious Right radio host, said that she suspects WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may have been arrested on charges of conspiracy to distract from the fact that Attorney General William Barr suggested that he believed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was surveilled. (Barr provided no evidence for his claim.)

On this morning’s episode of American Family Radio’s “Sandy Rios in the Morning” program, Rios reacted to news that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had been arrested in London “on behalf of the United States” after a 2018 U.S. indictment charging Assange with conspiracy to illegally gain access to a Defense Department computer in order to obtain classified material was unsealed. Rios said the timing of Assange’s arrest made her suspect foul play.

“This is just me talking. I haven’t heard anyone else say this and maybe I am just crazy this time,” Rios said, “but I find it very suspicious.”

Rios described Assange as “a huge, worldwide character,” which she said made her wonder if Assange’s arrest was part of a bigger conspiracy to divert attention away from Barr’s remarks.

“The British are up to their ears in this conspiracy—I’m not saying all of the British, I’m telling you that their MI5 personnel, some of them—Christopher Steele, we’ve got Stefan Halper, professor at Cambridge, we’ve got British very much involved in this whole move against Donald Trump. So, I find myself wondering if these frantic leftists in America with their wide-eyed, stunning response to William Barr’s statement, knowing this morning they would have to report this. CNN would have to talk about it, [and] so would CBS, ABC, NBC. They needed something, something, something, to divert interest and to give them an excuse for not really sitting on the implications of what William Barr said yesterday.”