Fox News is set to air the first part of an interview Tuesday night between Sean Hannity and Julian Assange, who Hannity has said in the past should be arrested for “waging war” against the United States.
“I believe every word he says,” Hannity told his Fox News colleague Bill Hemmer Tuesday morning, defending the WikiLeaks founder against criticism that he published documents that U.S. intelligence officials say were stolen by Russian-backed hackers in order to benefit President-elect Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Hannity flew to London to interview Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy there, where the WikiLeaks founder, facing an outstanding warrant for his arrest in Sweden over rape allegations, has holed up since 2012.
However, in December of 2010, Hannity had criticized the Obama administration on his show for not arresting Assange after WikiLeaks published a quarter of a million confidential U.S. diplomatic cables.
“Assange is apparently not done waging his war against the U.S., at least not yet,” Hannity said at the time.
After WikiLeaks began publishing documents hacked from the servers of the Democratic National Committee this summer, however, Hannity changed his tone.
During a September interview with the WikiLeaks founder, Hannity told Assange: “I do hope you get free one day.”
“In 10 yrs @wikileaks has gotten nothing wrong & no one’s been killed bc of the info released. #freejulianassange #freeinternet for all,” he wrote on Twitter in October.
Hannity addressed the about-face in the interview with Hemmer Tuesday.
“Look, I was a very early critic of him. He’s well aware that I thought he was waging war on the United States. My opinion on it has evolved in large part because of what I have seen that he has done in ten years. Nothing he has published has ever been proven false,” Hannity said. “Nobody’s even questioned the veracity or truthfulness of what he’s doing.”