U.S. prosecutors target Assange
Reports: WikiLeaks founder wanted
WASHINGTON — U.S. prosecutors are preparing or closely considering charges against the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks and founder Julian Assange for revealing sensitive government secrets, according to media reports.
CNN reported authorities are preparing to seek Assange’s arrest.
The Washington Post reported prosecutors are weighing charges against the organization’s members after the Obama-era Justice Department declined to do so.
Democrats have accused the group of acting for Russian intelligence in releasing embarrassing emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Possible charges include conspiracy, theft of government property and violating the Espionage Act, the newspaper said, though any charges would need approval from highranking officials in the Justice Department.
The move comes after WikiLeaks last month released nearly 8,000 documents that it says reveal secrets about the CIA’s cyber-espionage tools for breaking into computers, cellphones and even smart TVs.
It previously published 250,000 State Department cables and embarrassed the U.S. military with hundreds of thousands of logs from Iraq and Afghanistan.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo last week denounced the group as a “hostile intelligence service” and a threat to U.S. national security.
And Attorney General Jeff Sessions told reporters yesterday that Assange’s arrest is a priority as the Justice Department steps up efforts to prosecute people who leak classified information to the media.
“We’ve already begun to step up our efforts and whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail,” Sessions said.
Their condemnation of WikiLeaks differed sharply from President Trump’s past praise. Before last year’s election, Trump said he was happy to see WikiLeaks publish the emails from Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. Trump condemned the release of CIA tactics, which the White House noted involved information about secretive national security tools.