Can we go back to the "Why now?" question for a bit? I think the "October Surprise" thing, as a tactic, for a political party, is disgusting, but at least it's understandable. They are concerned about 'winning' not the good of the country. I get that. This does not, quite, seem to be that.
I've never looked at the wiki-leaks web site until about a couple hours ago. I was curious about what their agenda might be. They claim to be basically opposed to secrets. There are pages of stuff, categorized files of stuff, on a variety of US topics. Lots of Hilary Clinton topics. (Another site I looked at said that Assange considers Hillary Clinton to be a personal enemy.) There's not a lot of leaked Russian documents. Pretty much none I could easily find. I'm wondering if that's because they're harder to hack, have less people willing to risk stealing files, or just a less interesting target. Also a shortage of leaked Trump stuff. So, maybe they're interested in shining light in dark corners. But maybe they aren't equally interested in all corners or maybe all corners aren't equally accessible, or maybe something else?
If they had all this stuff on Clinton, and they were just interested in truth and justice, seems to me it would have been better to trot it out during the primaries and give her a chance to get beat then, and give Bernie Sanders, who's been questioning things like her connections with big banks all along, a better shot at the job. I mean, if you're offended by her hypocrisy and connections, wouldn't you want her to not be the candidate at ALL?
I haven't found anything on who leaked the Trump video. Obviously SOMEONE knew that existed for years. I suppose you could consider that an "October Surprise", except it's not exactly a surprise. It's just a more extreme example of his level of class. If you're going to support him through rape allegations, why would this make any difference? It MIGHT have made a difference during the primaries.
I'm wondering what dog it is Julian Assange has in this hunt. I would imagine he'd like to be able to leave the Ecuadorian embassy and avoid extradition to either the US or Sweden. Does this get him any closer to that, somehow? Does any of this have anything to do with hacking of the DNC, or attempts to hack into state voting systems?