SMOKESCREEN

Nigel Farage Refuses to Explain Meeting With Julian Assange

Trump associate spent 40 minutes in Ecuador embassy.

Nigel Farage, a British associate of President Trump, refused to explain why he held a meeting with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London Thursday. After a global guessing game over the subject of the secretive summit—which included a question to Sean Spicer during the White House briefing—Farage declined to explain his meeting during an hour-long live radio show. Assange has been accused of acting in concert with Russian hackers to help Trump win the presidential election. Farage, the former leader of the U.K. Independence Party, was spotted by a Twitter user going into the embassy, where Assange has spent the last four years in self-imposed exile. When he emerged after 40 minutes, reportedly with his radio presenter, he refused to tell a BuzzFeed reporter whether he had met Assange. A UKIP source later confirmed to the Independent newspaper that Farage had met Assange.