After three years of telling the most outrageous lies ever associated with an alleged news organization in an alleged democracy, CNN's viewership collapsed.  CNN turned propaganda ministry saw its primetime viewers shrink by 40%.  Even insouciant Americans could see that CNN was nothing but a lie factory.  https://russia-insider.com/en/cnn-continues-implode-after-russiahoax-its-much-worse-people-realize/ri27465 

One would have thought CNN would have learned a lesson.  But apparently not. The scum or fools, whichever it is, that runs CNN decided instead to tell even more lies.  The propaganda ministry concocted an even less believable story than the ones that had driven away 40% of CNN viewers.  The story "reported" by Alex Marquardt goes as follows:

Assange, being a Russian spy, turned the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he had asylum into a command post for arranging a US presidential election outcome that pleased the Russians.  Marquardt spins a fantasy of how Assange from his embassy base, undeterred by Ecuadoran President Correa or the Ecuadoran ambassador to the UK, and aided with deliveries of hacked materials and suspicious meetings with Rusians and world-class hackers, undermined the American presidential election.