In the months leading up to the election of Donald Trump, WikiLeaks released thousands of leaked emails that damaged Hillary Clinton's campaign. Some say they were so harmful to the Democratic party candidate they decided the outcome of the national vote.

There's now speculation WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in London's Ecuadorian embassy for four years to avoid extradition to the US, where he's under investigation and could face a 45-year jail term, deliberately helped Trump in order to win a presidential pardon.

Speaking to Hack from London, after two days of her client being questioned by prosecutors over rape allegations that were made in Sweden six years ago, Julian Assange's Australian lawyer Jen Robinson acknowledged Trump had been making "positive comments" about Mr Assange.

"Which is a good sign," she said.

"But, at same time, the principle of First Amendment [freedom of speech, and of the press] is the same irrespective of who the President is."

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Whatsapp Australian human rights lawyer Jen Robinson.

Asked whether she hoped the President-elect would be receptive to her pleas to end the six-year investigation into her client, given Mr Assange had released information damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign, she said the case rested on fundamental arguments about freedom of speech, and not the whim of a President who could grant mercy.

She said the legal team may ask the Trump administration to end the investigation into her client, but this was no different to asking the Obama administration.

"We will, of course, continue to make those representations to any future US administration, including the one under President-elect Trump," she said.

Conservatives now like WikiLeaks

Only a few years ago the WikiLeaks founder was the boogie monster of the conservative worldview - a silver-haired hacker undermining the authority of the state. To the left, he was a martyr of resistance to imperialism and mass surveillance - holed up in London's Ecuadorian embassy in order to avoid extradition to the US. Without calling for his release, the Greens have condemned the Australian Government for not ensuring the legal rights of Assange, who is an Australian citizen.

Things became complicated and the usual political binary began to break down in late July, when WikiLeaks began releasing thousands of confidential emails from within the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign.

We'll get to the content of those emails, but there's little doubt they helped Trump. The revelations saw two top Democrats lose their jobs during the campaign, and, in the last few days, key conservatives have been praising WikiLeaks.

This is "intellectual godfather" of The Tea Party movement, Ron Paul:

Pauline Hanson has also weighed in. The One Nation senator is calling on the President-elect to pardon Mr Assange, who she was was "an Australian hero".

So far, so 2016.

In a statement released on the eve of the election, Assange said he had no personal desire to influence the outcome of the vote and that he supported neither candidate. In relation to the timing of the releases, which happened at crucial points in the campaign, he said WikiLeaks published information "as fast as our resources will allow and as fast as the public can absorb it." He also said WikiLeaks had not received any information of political importance on the Trump campaign.

"Publishing is what we do," he said in the statement.

"To withhold the publication of such information until after the election would have been to favour one of the candidates above the public's right to know."

That's the official position - rational, transparent, and without emotion. It's easy to forget that it is written by a man who has been confined to a tiny bedroom with little access to sunlight and few face-to-face companions. He suffers from toothaches, chronic shoulder pain, poor posture, and depression. "Individuals whose movement is restricted can experience a slow unravelling of their cognitive faculties," he told reporters in early October, asked about his apparent affinity for Trump.

Moments of apparent complicity between Assange and the Trump campaign are documented in this long feature article by Bloomberg. It notes:

When Clinton collapsed in early September, WikiLeaks tweeted a poll asking readers to vote on the most plausible theory of what happened. It included the option of conspiracy explanations ("allergies and personality") but not the pneumonia explanation given by the Clinton campaign.

About a month later, US news published a video of Trump making vulgar remarks, ("grab them by the pussy"). Just minutes later WikiLeaks released 2,000 private emails from the Clinton campaign chairman. There's speculation this was to blunt the damage of the video.

Three days later, Trump declared, "I love WikiLeaks".

The leaked emails revealed close relationships between members of the Clinton campaign and top media figures, as well as Democratic party bosses. They showed Clinton had collected millions making speeches to Wall Street, that a CNN commentator had leaked her one of the presidential debate questions, and that her staff had undercut Bernie Sanders's primary campaign. Overall, they supported Donald Trump's unflattering portrait of her as an establishment 'elite' beholden to faceless powerbrokers.

But if Assange was backing Trump to win, he was taking a huge gamble. Few expected Trump would win. Meanwhile, he was making an even greater enemy of the women who was widely predicted to succeed Obama, and hold the power of pardon.

Why is Assange being investigated?

The US opened a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks after the organisation published hundreds of thousands of leaked State Department cables in 2010. Hillary Clinton was the US Secretary of State at the time. An investigation into Assange continues to this day.

Assange also faces a separate, outstanding charge of rape in Sweden, and the UK has ruled he should be extradited to face questioning. Assange and his lawyers say he is willing to return to Sweden to answer the charge; his real fear is extradition to the United States. He has taken refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy while asking Sweden to promise it will not allow the US to extradite him. A UN panel ruled Mr Assange had been "arbitrarily detained" by UK and Swedish authorities since 2010.

This week there was an important development. After years of demanding Assange come to Sweden to be interviewed, the Swedish prosecutor agreed to come to Ecuadorian embassy in London to interview Assange. The prosecution will now decide whether to continue or end the investigation into the rape charge. If this charge is dropped, Assange still faces the separate and more serious US investigation into leaking confidential documents.

Jen Robinson, Assange's lawyer, said the development was "incredibly positive" for Assange's fight against the rape charge, but should have come earlier.

"This could have been done more than six years ago," she told Hack.

She said that until Sweden provided assurance Assange would not be extradited to the US, her client would remain inside the embassy. Asked if that meant he could stay there another four years, she replied that she hoped this would not be the case.

"But the question is really, what's happening inside the United States?" she said.