Documents and surveillance video obtained by CNN reveal that Julian Assange received in-person deliveries of possibly-hacked materials, during some suspicious meetings at London's Ecuadorian Embassy:

The documents build on the possibility, raised by special counsel Robert Mueller in his report on Russian meddling, that couriers brought hacked files to Assange at the embassy.

The surveillance reports also describe how Assange turned the embassy into a command center and orchestrated a series of damaging disclosures that rocked the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States.

Despite being confined to the embassy while seeking safe passage to Ecuador, Assange met with Russians and world-class hackers at critical moments, frequently for hours at a time. He also acquired powerful new computing and network hardware to facilitate data transfers just weeks before WikiLeaks received hacked materials from Russian operatives.

The information comes from surveillance reports collected by UC Global, a Spanish security company, for the Ecuadorian government. The timeline spelled out by the reports lines up with the Mueller report, which listed how WikiLeaks helped the Russians undermine the presidential election in favor of Trump.

The security logs noted that Assange personally managed some of the releases “directly from the embassy” where he lived for nearly seven years. After the election, the private security company prepared an assessment of Assange’s allegiances. That report, which included open-source information, concluded there was “no doubt that there is evidence” that Assange had ties to Russian intelligence agencies.

Watch the video, read the story. This shows something very different from exposing government misdeeds.Taking sides against one American party can't be justified as something in line with Wikileaks' mission.

And it becomes very difficult to equate Assange's arrest as a sinister crackdown on journalists.