There is no doubt that Julian Assange and Wikileaks have become a major thorn in the side of Hillary Clinton. Every day we are regaled with more and more evidence of the extent to which Hillary Clinton is corrupt and the endemic corruption within the Democrat party. So when the nation of Ecuador cut off internet access to Julian Assange in his refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, there was more than a little suspicion that the US government played no small role.

We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assange's internet access Saturday, 5pm GMT, shortly after publication of Clinton's Goldman Sachs speechs.

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 17, 2016

BREAKING: Multiple US sources tell us John Kerry asked Ecuador to stop Assange from publishing Clinton docs during FARC peace negotiations.

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 18, 2016

The second tweet, about the US leaning on Ecuador to shut down Assange has now been verified as true to the extent that it happened though there is no reporting on the linkage to the FARC talks.

Quiet pressure from the U.S. government played a role in Ecuador’s decision to block WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from using the internet at Ecuador’s London embassy, U.S. officials told NBC News. And the decision to drop the hammer on Assange was brought on by Wikileaks releasing hacked emails from John Podesta’s account which are hurting Hillary.

“It was a bit of an eviction notice,” said a senior intelligence official.

Ecuador’s government said Tuesday it had partly restricted internet access for Assange, the founder of anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, who has lived in the South American country’s London embassy for more than four years. A source familiar with the situation says the Ecuadoran government has been frustrated with Assange and his presence at the embassy in London for months and has been considering how best to proceed.

The action came after U.S. officials conveyed their conclusion that Assange is a willing participant in a Russian intelligence operation to undermine the U.S. presidential election, NBC News has learned. U.S. intelligence officials believe Assange knows he is getting the information from Russian intelligence, though they do not believe he is involved in helping plan the hacking, officials told NBC.

“The general view is he is a willing participant in the Russian scheme but not an active plotter in it. They just realized they could use him,” said a senior intelligence official.

Now comes to the twisted part. It looks like Assange was the target of an operation launched by someone, be it intelligence, law enforcement, or a powerful and rich individual like a Clinton that had as its goal having him charged as a pedophile and tying him more firmly to. Take it away McClatchy News Service:

The alleged smear campaign centers on a Houston company, toddandclare.com, that describes itself as an online dating site for single women.

A representative for the company, Hannah Hammond, wrote to Assange’s legal team in London and Sweden with an offer to pay him to appear in a tongue-in-cheek five-minute television advertisement for the company that it said would air on the Lifetime channel.

“The source of the $1 million is the Russian government. It will be wired to Mr. Assange’s nominated account, upon his cooperation, and before filming of the ToddandClare.com ad by the SoHo camera crew,” Hammond wrote in a Sept. 16 email, according to a copy WikiLeaks published.

Hammond described how the ad would start with burlesque dancers gossiping backstage at a Las Vegas revue about men who’ve used the dating site to text them. One dancer receives a ping on her cell phone, and tells the others Julian Assange has asked for a date. She holds up the phone with Assange’s moving image.

The ad would air Nov. 7, one day before U.S. presidential elections, Hammond noted.

“Your email appears to convey an elaborate scam designed to entrap Mr. Assange’s reputation into unwanted and unwarranted publicity,” a member of his legal team, identified only as James, responded Sept. 16, demanding that “you immediately cease any plans that you have to use Mr. Assange’s name to draw attention to your business.”

According to Wikileaks and other folks, the ToddandClare business looks like a front ginned up for one purpose: ensnaring Assange.

The company listed its address as a shipping dock at a warehouse in Houston, and no records of the company exist with the Texas Secretary of State, the Better Business Bureau of Houston, or the Harris County Clerk, the WikiLeaks report says.

The website for toddandclare.com suggested that more than 100,000 single women use the service. WikiLeaks says the site lifted photos from elsewhere on the internet and mirrored them left to right to prevent image searches.

Then comes the crazy part.

On Oct. 4, [Toddandclare.com] filed a statement asking to bring to the attention of the U.N. body “criminal child sex offenses” that purportedly were under investigation by the Royal Bahamas Police Force involving Assange.

It said it had been contacted by the Canadian father of the 8-year-old, whose 22-year-old sister was a toddandclare.com client.

The problem? The Bahamas police have never heard of the case.

And now no one can find this company:

Phone numbers associated with toddandclare.com appear to have been disconnected.

But there is, naturally, another turn:

It said that an archival internet search linked toddandclare.com to an address in San Francisco that until a year or so ago was used by Premise Data, a data crunching firm whose cofounder and chief executive, David Soloff, is seen in a photo earlier this year with Clinton. He denied any connections to the smears or the Clinton campaign.

Still, it seems a tad odd that the builiding used by this guy’s company ended up being the address record for the front group behind the plot, or whatever, against Assange.

The odd thing is that we’re at a point where we don’t know quite what to believe. Did Wikileaks concoct this whole framing conspiracy as a way of creating sympathy? Entirely possible. Was Assange the target of the US government or a private actor with immense resources? Again possible. From what we’ve seen of the FBI we know they are politically malleable and have an immense talent for screwing the pooch. Did the Russians construct an easily deconstructed conspiracy to discredit criticism of Assange? Not beyond the possible. Was Kerry leaning on the Ecuador government related or merely an unconnected incident that enabled Assange to get attention for the other scam? Who knows? But I’m betting with Clinton headed to the White House that the next four years will be damned interesting.