But the main point is this one: London itself is one of the world’s most surveilled, if not the most surveilled, cities. And the Ecuadorian Embassy in that city – for obvious reasons – is one of the most scrutinized, surveilled, monitored and filmed locations on the planet.

In 2015, Wired reported that “the UK is one of the most surveilled nations in the world. An estimated 5.9 million CCTV cameras keep watch over our every move,” and that “by one estimate people in urban areas of the UK are likely to be captured by about 30 surveillance camera systems every day.” The World Atlas proclaimed that “London is the most spied-on city in the world,” and that “on average a Londoner is captured on camera about 300 times daily.”

For obvious reasons, the Ecuadorian Embassy in central London where Assange has been living since he received asylum in 2011 is subjected to every form of video and physical surveillance imaginable. Visitors to that embassy are surveilled, photographed, filmed and recorded in multiple ways by multiple governments – at least including both the Ecuadorians and the British and almost certainly by other governments and entities. Not only are guests who visit Assange required to give their passports and other identification to be logged, but they also pass through multiple visible cameras – to say nothing of the invisible ones – on their way to visit Assange, including cameras on the street, in the lobby of the building, in the reception area of the Embassy, and then in the rooms where one meets Assange.

In 2015, the BBC reported that “Scotland Yard has spent about £10m providing a 24-hour guard at the Ecuadorean embassy in London since Wikileaks founder Julian Assange claimed asylum there,” and that “between June 2012 and October 2014, direct policing costs were £7.3m, with £1.8m spent on overtime.”

Meanwhile, just a few months ago, the very same Guardian that now wants you to believe that a person as prominent as Manafort visited Assange without having you see any video footage proving this happened, itself claimed that “Ecuador bankrolled a multimillion-dollar spy operation to protect and support Julian Assange in its central London embassy, employing an international security company and undercover agents to monitor his visitors, embassy staff and even the British police,”

This leads to one indisputable fact: if Paul Manafort ( or, for that matter, Roger Stone), visited Assange at the Embassy, there would be ample amounts of video and other photographic proof demonstrating that this happened. The Guardian provides none of that.

So why would any minimally rational, reasonable person possibly assume these anonymous claims are true rather than waiting to form a judgment once the relevant evidence is available? As President Obama’s former national security aide and current podcast host Tommy Vietor put it: “If these meetings happened, British intelligence would almost certainly have video of him entering and exiting,” adding: “seems dubious.”