Ridiculous. Manafort was canned from Trump campaign in summer of 2016, and was already under Mueller’s thumb in May 29017. Who in “Washington” would have engaged him?
Here is the Times story: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/us/politics/manafort-assange-wikileaks-ecuador.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
They don’t discuss the issue of Manafort turning over Assange to the US in a deal with Ecuador goes against the idea of Manafort and Assange in collusion.
And maybe Mueller asked him to do that. Mueller would love to get Assange in jail and have him admit to Russian collusion and implicate Trump (in exchange for a lighter sentence)
Fake story. Try connecting the dots to these pieces and they go nowhere. Maybe Manafort intended to have fake US agents show up and take possession of Assange and whisk him off to some tropical isle in the Pacific.
Someone from the DS?