"I'm inclined to think they're legitimate," Daniel Lazare told Sputnik. "How's that for a waffle? I mean, I think I haven't seen any strong evidence that they're not. So I assume they are. But there's always a possibility that someone is playing a trick on somebody else. As [for] the damage to the US, I don't think it's very great, but I think it does. In a few instances it could be significant. I mean, the stuff on Israel, the fact they have inside information that Mossad, the Israeli spy agency, was encouraging anti-government demonstrations against Netanyahu. And that's pretty something if true. But the Israeli government has denied it. And so we're sort of left in the dark. So I don't know what to make of it. Is it much ado about nothing? Is it something real? I can't see anything terribly earth-shattering here, but I could be wrong."
"I don't know that the fact that they're photographs rather than the original documents, (…) that may have been an attempt to disguise their origin, to throw investigators off the track," suggested Lazare. "That sounds possible. I don't know. It could also indicate that they have a roundabout way of reaching the Internet. That's also possible. And the fact that they weren't released to a journalist, but rather to a gamer or a gaming site is certainly strange."