The US is debating whether to charge Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, US media report.<\/p>\n
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The organisation, which publishes confidential documents, has been in the cross-hairs of the US for years.<\/p>\n
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Last week, CIA Director Mike Pompeo described it as a \u201chostile\u201d intelligence service abetted by Russia, and Mr Assange as a \u201cfraud\u201d.<\/p>\n
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But the group was last year praised by President Donald Trump for its work during the election campaign.<\/p>\n
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The release of hacked emails belonging to a Hillary Clinton aide were a factor in her losing the election, the Democratic candidate later claimed.<\/p>\n
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US intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia was behind the hack and used Wikileaks to harm the chances of Mrs Clinton and favour Mr Trump.<\/p>\n
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But Mr Assange, who has been staying at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, has said the release was not intended to affect the election.<\/p>\n
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He was granted asylum by Ecuador to prevent his extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges.<\/p>\n
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On Thursday, US officials briefed various media on the latest developments, with ABC News saying it is still at the discussion stage.<\/p>\n
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But according to CNN, US authorities have gone as far as preparing charges as they seek his arrest.<\/p>\n
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The Justice Department has been investigating Mr Assange since his website posted thousands of embarrassing diplomatic cables stolen by a US Army soldier now known as Chelsea Manning.<\/p>\n
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But under President Barack Obama, the department concluded it would be difficult to bring charges, says CNN.<\/p>\n
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The Trump administration has taken a dimmer view and in March, Wikileaks released information on hacking tools it said were used by the CIA.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,\u201d said Mr Pompeo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US is debating whether to charge Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, US media report. The organisation, which publishes confidential documents, has been in the cross-hairs of the US for years. Last week, CIA Director Mike Pompeo described it as a “hostile” intelligence service abetted by Russia, and Mr Assange as a “fraud”. But the group was last year praised by President Donald Trump for its work during the election campaign. The release of hacked emails belonging to a Hillary Clinton aide were a factor in her<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6140,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6141,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6139\/revisions\/6141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}