The he said, she said aspect of where all those DNC and Podesta emails came from is probably never going to end, but there might be a new wrinkle in the story this week. It comes at an interesting time, particularly since Allahpundit examined another story last night indicating that not only were the Russians (in general) involved, but Putin was most likely directing things personally. Now an alternate theory has shown up, assuming we deliver this news with a suitably sized grain of salt.

The outlet breaking the news is the Daily Mail, so… well, take that for what it’s worth. The Washington Times picked up the story as well if that makes you feel any better. We’ll start with the fresh claim before getting to the source. The bottom line is that a former UK ambassador with close ties to Wikileaks is claiming that the emails didn’t come from Russia at all. In fact, he personally received them from a DNC whistleblower in a Deep Throat sort of meeting in a wooded lot in the United States.

A Wikileaks envoy today claims he personally received Clinton campaign emails in Washington D.C. after they were leaked by ‘disgusted’ whisteblowers – and not hacked by Russia.

Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a close associate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, told Dailymail.com that he flew to Washington, D.C. for a clandestine hand-off with one of the email sources in September.

‘Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,’ said Murray in an interview with Dailymail.com on Tuesday. ‘The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.’

His account contradicts directly the version of how thousands of Democratic emails were published before the election being advanced by U.S. intelligence.

If we’re to take Murray at his word, he flew to the United States specifically to meet with an unnamed Democratic National Committee operative. They allegedly made contact “in a wooded area near American University, in northwest D.C.” The Democrat was supposedly disgusted at the DNC’s efforts to tilt the primary in Hillary’s favor and against Bernie Sanders, as well as being worried that corruption at the Clinton Global Initiative could wind up costing them the election.

On its face, there’s nothing particularly disqualifying in the cover story. The Bernie supporters at the DNC were probably not all that thrilled at how the bosses were handling the primary and somebody on the inside might have been able to grab all the data and get it out the door.

But we would be remiss if we failed to note that the source, Craig Murray, is a rather colorful character to say the least. It’s true that he’s a former ambassador to Uzbekistan and a public personality in the British government. But he’s also the same ambassador who was relieved of his duties amidst a number of simmering allegations, including hiring hot young women with dubious qualifications and offering passage to the UK to other young ladies in exchange for… favors. He’s also a big supporter of Wikileaks.

So what are the possibilities here? There’s really only three that come to mind.

Number one: Murray is telling the truth, the only source for the emails was from inside the DNC and the story about the Russians was a red herring. Unfortunately, that requires us to believe that multiple US intelligence agencies are either so incompetent that they shouldn’t be trusted with the keys to the company car or they’ve cooked up this entire story in an effort to make Clinton look better and undermine Trump. Sorry guys, but that takes us so deep into tinfoil hat territory that I’m not signing on.

Number two: Murray is lying about this whole encounter in the woods. Why? Perhaps not to either help Clinton or hurt Trump, but to save the reputation of Wikileaks. He’s a long time supporter and the site was supposed to be a place for insiders to bring hidden truths into the light, not a warehouse for criminals to farm out their stolen goods. The current debate over whether or not the media should report illegally obtained information makes Assange look bad so Murray could be trying to provide cover. I’d rate that one as possible but not provable unless we get a name from inside the DNC who can confirm they didn’t have a leaker.

Final possibility: Could both stories be true? If the Russians did hack into the system it doesn’t absolutely preclude there also being a mole inside the DNC who was really upset over the treatment Sanders received. But if the Russians went to all that trouble to grab up the information, why would they just sit on it? Heading back to tinfoil hat country I suppose you could posit that they planned to hold the information over Clinton’s head if she became president. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence? I don’t tend to trust coincidences in politics but I suppose anything is possible in an infinite universe.

Anyway, a number of people sent this in so I figured it was worth a look. I’ll leave this one up to the reader as to how much significance you wish to assign to it.