Julian Assange

In January 2020, the Catalan Dignity Commission awarded Assange its 2019 Dignity Prize for what it described as Assange's role in supporting the Catalan people during the 2017 Catalan independence referendum. Assange's statements during the referendum led to objections from the Spanish government, and according to The Guardian increased tension between Assange and the Ecuadorian government.

Former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa condemned Assange's arrest. Bolivian President Evo Morales also condemned it. Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, condemned the indictment. In January 2020, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe voted to oppose Assange’s extradition to the US.

On 17 February 2020, a group of 117 medical doctors from 18 countries published an open letter in the medical journal The Lancet in which they described Assange being in a "dire state of health" and called for an end to his "torture and medical neglect" which could lead to his death. On the same day, the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) media freedoms group posted a separate petition which accused the Trump administration of acting in "retaliation for (Assange's) facilitating major revelations in the international media about the way the United States conducted its wars". The petition said, Assange's publications "were clearly in the public interest and not espionage". Australian MPs Andrew Wilkie and George Christensen visited Assange and pressed the UK and Australian governments to intervene to stop him being extradited.

On 25 March 2020, Assange was denied bail after Judge Baraitser rejected his lawyers' argument that his imprisonment would put him at high risk of contracting COVID-19. She said Assange's past conduct showed how far he was willing to go to avoid extradition.

On 19 February 2020, Assange's barrister told the court that former US Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher had visited Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in August 2017 and, on instructions from President Trump, offered a pardon if Assange said that Russia had no role in the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leaks. The judge ruled that the evidence was admissible in Assange's legal attempts to block extradition to the US. "It is a complete fabrication and a total lie", the White House Press Secretary, Stephanie Grisham, told reporters. "The president barely knows Dana Rohrabacher other than he's an ex-congressman. He's never spoken to him on this subject or almost any subject." Rohrabacher had previously confirmed the 16 August meeting, saying he and Assange talked about "what might be necessary to get him out" and discussed a presidential pardon in exchange for information on the theft of DNC emails. On 20 February 2020, Rohrabacher confirmed that conversation anew. "I spoke to Julian Assange", said Rohrabacher, "and told him if he would provide evidence about who gave WikiLeaks the emails, I would petition the president to give him a pardon." Rohrabacher added that he followed up with then White House Chief of Staff, John F. Kelly, who was courteous but noncommittal. Rohrabacher said he never spoke to Trump about it.

On 4 May 2020, Judge Baraitser postponed the case until September due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In January 2018, he was granted Ecuadorian citizenship. On 11 April 2019, Assange's asylum was withdrawn following a series of disputes with the Ecuadorian authorities. The police were invited into the embassy, and he was arrested. Later that day, he was found guilty of breaching the Bail Act and on 1 May 2019 he was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison in the United Kingdom. On the same day, the United States government unsealed an indictment against Assange for alleged computer intrusion, related to the leaks provided by Chelsea Manning. On 23 May 2019, the United States government further charged Assange with violating the Espionage Act of 1917. Editors from newspapers including The Washington Post and The New York Times criticised the government's decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act. After having been dropped in 2017, Swedish prosecutors reopened their investigation in May 2019, but in November closed it again, saying that the evidence had weakened over time. Assange is incarcerated in HM Prison Belmarsh, reportedly in ill health.

Following Assange's arrest on 11 April 2019, the case was reopened under prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson. In September 2019, she revealed that she had interviewed seven witnesses, two of whom had not been previously heard, but had yet to determine how to proceed in the case. On 19 November, she announced that she had discontinued her investigation into Assange, stating that after a comprehensive assessment, "the evidence is not strong enough to form the basis for filing an indictment". She added that although she was confident in the complainant, "the evidence has weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed". Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson welcomed the decision.

In February 2019, the parliament of Geneva passed a motion demanding that the Swiss government extend asylum to Assange. The move was proposed by the Swiss People's Party and supported by the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland. In the same month, it was revealed that Assange was issued with a new Australian passport in September 2018. His previous passport had expired several years ago.

In 2019, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights rejected a complaint submitted by Assange, requesting that the Ecuadorian government "ease the conditions it has imposed on his residence" at the Ecuadorian embassy in London by monitoring him and restricting his visitors, and not allow him to be extradited to the United States.

On 2 April 2019, Ecuador's president Lenín Moreno stated that Assange had violated the terms of his asylum, after photos surfaced on the internet linking Moreno to a corruption scandal. WikiLeaks denied that it had acquired any of the published material, and stated that it merely reported on a corruption investigation against Moreno by Ecuador's legislature. WikiLeaks subsequently wrote on Twitter that according to a source within the Ecuadorian government, an agreement had been reached to expel Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy and place him in the custody of UK police. The source stated that the expulsion from the embassy would occur in retaliation against WikiLeaks' tweet noting corruption charges against Moreno. On 5 April, Ecuador's Foreign Ministry denied the existence of any planned expulsion.

On 11 April 2019, the Metropolitan Police were invited into the Ecuadorian embassy and arrested Assange in connection with his failure to surrender to the court in June 2012 for extradition to Sweden. Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno stated that Ecuador withdrew Assange's asylum after he repeatedly violated international conventions regarding domestic interference. Moreno referred to Assange as a "spoiled brat" and "miserable hacker". British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt thanked the Ecuadorean president, Lenin Moreno, for co-operation, and the British prime minister, Theresa May, said that "no one is above the law". The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, said that Assange is "not going to be given special treatment  ... It has got nothing to do with [Australia], it is a matter for the US".

Assange was remanded to HM Prison Belmarsh, and on 1 May 2019 he was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court to 50 weeks imprisonment. The judge said he would be released after serving half his sentence, subject to other proceedings and conditioned upon committing no further offences. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued a statement through the website of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights that the verdict contravened "principles of necessity and proportionality" for what it considered a "minor violation". Assange appealed his sentence, but dropped his appeal in July.

On 10 April 2019, WikiLeaks said it had uncovered an extensive surveillance operation against Assange from within the Ecuadorian embassy, asserting that videotapes of Assange taken at the embassy constituted an invasion of privacy. WikiLeaks said that "material including video, audio, copies of private legal documents and a medical report" had surfaced in Spain and that unnamed individuals in Madrid had made an extortion attempt.

On 26 September 2019, the Spanish newspaper El País reported that the Spanish defence and security company Undercover Global S.L. (UC Global) had spied on Assange for the CIA during his time in the Ecuadorian embassy. UC Global had been contracted to protect the embassy during this time. According to the report UC Global's owner David Morales had provided the CIA with audio and video of meetings Assange held with his lawyers and colleagues. Morales also arranged for the US to have direct access to the stream from video cameras installed in the embassy at the beginning of December 2017. The evidence is part of a secret investigation by Spain's High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, into Morales and his relationship with US intelligence. The investigation was precipitated by a complaint by Assange that accused UC Global of violating his privacy and client-attorney privileges as well as committing misappropriation, bribery and money laundering.

In a November 2019 article, Stefania Maurizi said she had access to some of the videos, audios and photos from the embassy showing a medical examination of Assange, a meeting between Ecuadorian ambassador Carlos Abad Ortiz and his staff, a meeting between Assange, Glenn Greenwald and David Miranda and lunch between Assange and British rapper M.I.A. Microphones had been placed in the women's toilets to capture meetings between Assange and his lawyers. Phones belonging to some of the embassy's visitors were compromised. Spanish lawyer Aitor Martinez, who is part of Assange's legal team, said videos were taken of meetings between Assange and his legal defence team. Maurizi concluded that, based on statements from former employees of UC Global, internal UC Global emails and the type of information collected, it was clear that the surveillance was conducted on behalf of the US government and the information gathered would be used by the US to assist in its case for extraditing Assange.

In late November 2019, Britain agreed to allow Judge José de la Mata to interview Assange at Westminster Magistrates Court via video link on 20 December. According to his lawyer, Assange testified that he was unaware that cameras installed by Undercover Global were also capturing audio and suggested the surveillance likely targeted his legal team.

In February 2019, Chelsea Manning received a subpoena to appear before a grand jury in Virginia in a case against Assange. When Manning condemned the secrecy of the hearings and refused to testify, she was jailed for contempt of court on 8 March 2019. On 16 May 2019, Manning refused to testify before a new grand jury investigating Assange, stating that she "believe[d] this grand jury seeks to undermine the integrity of public discourse with the aim of punishing those who expose any serious, ongoing, and systemic abuses of power by this government". She was returned to jail for the 18-month term of the grand jury with financial penalties.

On 11 April 2019, the day of Assange's arrest in London, the indictment against him was unsealed. He was charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion (i.e. hacking into a government computer), a relatively minor crime that carries a maximum 5-year sentence if found guilty. The charges stem from the allegation that Assange attempted and failed to crack a password hash so that Chelsea Manning could use a different username to download classified documents and avoid detection. This information had been known since 2011 and was a component of Manning's trial; the indictment did not reveal any new information about Assange.

On 23 May 2019, Assange was indicted on 17 new charges relating to the Espionage Act of 1917 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The Espionage Act charges carry a maximum sentence of 170 years in prison. The Obama administration had debated charging Assange under the Espionage Act but decided against it out of fear that it would have a negative effect on investigative journalism and could be unconstitutional. The new charges relate to obtaining and publishing the secret documents. Most of these charges relate to obtaining the secret documents. The three charges related to publication concern documents which revealed the names of sources in dangerous places putting them "at a grave and imminent risk" of harm or detention. The New York Times commented that it and other news organisations obtained the same documents as WikiLeaks also without government authorisation. It also said it is not clear how WikiLeaks's publications are legally different from other publications of classified information.

In 2019, British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said that Assange had revealed "evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan" and his extradition to the United States "should be opposed by the British government". In February 2020, Corbyn again praised Assange, demanding a halt to the extradition. Prime Minister Boris Johnson responded vaguely with "it’s obvious that the rights of journalists and whistleblowers should be upheld and this government will continue to do that.”

In October 2019, former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce called for the federal government to take action to stop Assange being extradited from the United Kingdom to the US. Later in October, the cross-party Bring Assange Home Parliamentary Working Group was established. Its co-chairs are independent Andrew Wilkie and Liberal National MP George Christensen. Its members include Greens Richard Di Natale, Adam Bandt and Peter Whish-Wilson, Centre Alliance MPs Rebekha Sharkie and Rex Patrick and independent Zali Steggall.

Since his arrest at the embassy on 11 April 2019, Assange has been incarcerated in HM Prison Belmarsh in London.

After examining Assange on 9 May 2019, the United Nations special rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Nils Melzer, concluded that "in addition to physical ailments, Mr Assange showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma." The British government said it supported the important work of the rapporteur's mandate but disagreed with some of his observations. In a later interview, Melzer criticised the "secretive grand jury indictment in the United States", the "abusive manner in which Swedish prosecutors disseminated, re-cycled and perpetuated their 'preliminary investigation' into alleged sexual offences", the "termination by Ecuador of Mr Assange's asylum status and citizenship without any form of due process", and the "overt bias against Mr Assange being shown by British judges since his arrest". He said the United States, UK, Sweden and Ecuador were trying to make an example of Assange. He also accused journalists of "spreading abusive and deliberately distorted narratives". Shortly after Melzer's visit, Assange was transferred to the prison's health care unit.

On 1 November 2019, Melzer said that Assange's health had continued to deteriorate and his life was now at risk. He said that the UK government had not acted on the issue. In November 2019, an open letter signed by more than 60 doctors said Assange's health was declining to an extent that he could die in prison. On 30 December 2019, Melzer accused the UK government of torturing Julian Assange. He said Assange's "continued exposure to severe mental and emotional suffering ... clearly amounts to psychological torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

On 2 May 2019, the first hearing was held in London into the United States request for Assange's extradition. When asked by the judge whether he consented to the extradition, Assange replied, "I do not wish to surrender myself for extradition for doing journalism that has won many, many awards and protected many people". On 13 June, British Home Secretary Sajid Javid said he had signed the US extradition order. On 14 June, a procedural hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court decided that a full extradition hearing should begin in February 2020.

On 21 October 2019, Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied Assange's defence lawyers' request for a three-month delay so that they could gather evidence. When the judge asked about his understanding of the proceedings Assange replied:

Assange's claims were highlighted by Fox News, The Washington Times and conspiracy website InfoWars. According to a study by Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, Assange's claims set off a spike in attention to the Seth Rich murder. According to the scholars, Assange's claims lent credibility and visibility to what had at that point been a conspiracy theory in the fringe parts of the Internet. According to the Associated Press, the July 2018 indictment of 12 Russian officers by Special Counsel Robert Mueller undermined the idea that Seth Rich was the source for the DNC emails. Similarly, according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Assange knew Seth Rich could not have been his source for the hacked emails, because the emails were transferred to him four days after Rich was murdered and he continued corresponding with the Russian hackers after Rich's death.

Cybersecurity experts and firms attributed the cyberattack to the Russian government. The Central Intelligence Agency, together with several other agencies, concluded in a leaked secret report, that Russian intelligence agencies hacked the DNC servers, as well as the email account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and provided the stolen information to WikiLeaks to bolster Trump's chances of winning the presidency. As a result of the Special Counsel investigation into the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, 12 Russian GRU military intelligence agents were indicted on 13 July 2018 for being behind the attack on the DNC mail-server. According to the special counsel's findings, this group shared these mails using the pseudonym Guccifer 2.0 with WikiLeaks and other entities. The investigation also unearthed direct message exchanges between Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks, in which they coordinated the release of the shared material.

Assange was named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee in April 2018. The lawsuit alleged that WikiLeaks and Russian agents together engaged in a "brazen attack on American democracy" about the hacking and publication of its emails in 2016. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said that the lawsuit "raises several important press freedom questions" including the determination of what activities should "implicate a journalist in a source's illegal behaviour." The organisation cited several First Amendment experts who opined that the lawsuit, if successful, might undermine the Supreme Court's precedents that publishers of information "are not responsible for the illegal acts of their sources," such as Bartnicki v. Vopper. The suit was dismissed with prejudice in July 2019. In his judgement, Judge John Koeltl said that the defendants including Assange and Wikileaks "did not participate in any wrongdoing in obtaining the materials in the first place" and were therefore within the law in publishing the information. He also said that the DNC case was "entirely divorced" from the facts. The suit could not be refiled due to its "substantive legal defect".

On 28 March 2018, Ecuador cut Assange's Internet connection at its London embassy "to prevent any potential harm". Officials said that Assange's recent social media posts denouncing the arrest of Catalonian separatist leader Carles Puigdemont "put at risk" Ecuador's relations with European nations. Assange then went silent on social media.

In May 2018, a team of Guardian journalists, including Luke Harding, reported that over a five-year span Ecuador had spent at least $5 million (£3.7m) through a secret intelligence budget to protect Assange at its London embassy, "employing an international security company and undercover agents to monitor his visitors, embassy staff and even the British police". Visitors included "individuals linked to the Kremlin". Ecuadorian officials had reportedly also devised plans to help Assange escape should British authorities use force to enter the embassy and seize him. The Guardian also reported that documents and "a source who wished to remain anonymous" had indicated that, by 2014, Assange had "compromised" the embassy's communications system and arranged his satellite Internet hookup. "By penetrating the embassy's firewall", Assange was allegedly able to "access and intercept the official and personal communications of staff". According to The Guardian, this claim was denied by WikiLeaks as an "anonymous libel aligned with the current UK–US government onslaught against Mr Assange".

On 21 July 2018, Glenn Greenwald reported that the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry was finalising an agreement to release Assange into the custody of the British government. In a press conference the following week, President Lenín Moreno confirmed that he wanted Assange out of the embassy but also "for his life not to be in danger". This prompted wide speculation that Moreno aimed to strengthen Ecuador's relations with the United States and assist their extradition efforts.

In September 2018, Reuters reported that Ecuador had, in December 2017, granted Assange a "special designation" diplomatic post in Russia – and the cover to leave the embassy and England – but the British Foreign Office did not recognise diplomatic immunity for Assange and the effort was dropped.

On 14 October 2018, ITV News reported that Assange's communications had been partially restored following a meeting between two senior UN officials and Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno.

On 16 October 2018, congressmen from the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs wrote an open letter to President Moreno which described Assange as a dangerous criminal and stated that progress between the US and Ecuador in the areas of economic co-operation, counternarcotics assistance and the return of a USAID mission to Ecuador depended on Assange being "handed over to the proper authorities".

On 19 October 2018, BBC News reported that Assange was starting legal action against the government of Ecuador, accusing it of violating his "fundamental rights and freedoms". Later that month, an Ecuadorian judge ruled against him, saying that a requirement for Assange to pay for his Internet use and clean up after his cat did not violate his right to asylum.

In November 2018, Pamela Anderson, a close friend and regular visitor of Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy, gave an interview with 60 Minutes in Australia in which she asked the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, to "defend your friend, and get Julian his passport back, and take him back to Australia and be proud of him". Morrison rejected the request but his response was described as "smutty" and "lewd" by Anderson who wrote in an open letter to Morrison that "[y]ou trivialised and laughed about the suffering of an Australian and his family. You followed it with smutty, unnecessary comments about a woman voicing her political opinion." She further advised Morrison that "[r]ather than making lewd suggestions about me, perhaps you should instead think about what you are going to say to millions of Australians when one of their own is marched in an orange jumpsuit to Guantanamo Bay – for publishing the truth. You can prevent this."

In December 2018, President Moreno reached an agreement to have Assange leave the embassy in what he called "near liberty". According to a radio interview by Moreno, British sources told him that Assange would be free to live in the United Kingdom without extradition after serving a prison sentence of at most six months. The formal offer was less explicit, simply stating that he would not be extradited to a country with the death penalty. Assange's lawyers declined, citing a need for further protection.

The Ecuadorian government of Rafael Correa requested an advisory opinion from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the issue of "the Institution of Asylum and its Recognition as a Human Right in the Inter-American System," and the court issued its advisory opinion in May 2018, upholding the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits signatories of the American Convention on Human Rights from deporting foreign individuals when such a deportation would likely lead to their persecution. According to Doughty Street, the ruling was made shortly after US Vice-President Mike Pence raised the issue of Ecuador's grant of asylum to Assange while on a visit to Ecuador.

The Working Group again urged the UK to let Assange leave the Ecuador embassy in London freely. In a statement on 21 December 2018, the organisation asserted that the "Swedish investigations have been closed for over 18 months now, and the only ground remaining for Mr Assange's continued deprivation of liberty is a bail violation in the UK, which is, objectively, a minor offence that cannot post-facto justify the more than six years' confinement that he has been subjected to".

In 2012 and 2013, US officials said that Assange was not named in a sealed indictment. On 6 March 2018, a federal grand jury for the Eastern District of Virginia issued a sealed indictment against Assange. In November 2018, US prosecutors accidentally revealed that Assange had been indicted under seal in US federal court; the revelation came as a result of an error in a different court filing, unrelated to Assange.

In April 2017, US officials were preparing to file formal charges against Assange. In early 2019, individuals began to come forward with news of being questioned about Assange by prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia. Legal scholar Stephen Vladeck stated that the prosecutors, after refusing to unseal the indictment, accelerated the case in 2019 due to the impending statute of limitations on Assange's largest leaks. Witnesses named in the investigation included Jacob Appelbaum, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, David House, Jason Katz and Chelsea Manning, all of whom condemned it as a form of government over-reach.

On 19 May 2017, the Swedish authorities suspended their investigation against Assange, claiming they could not expect the Ecuadorian Embassy to communicate reliably with Assange with respect to the case. Chief prosecutor Marianne Ny officially revoked his arrest warrant, but said the investigation could still be resumed if Assange visited Sweden before August 2020. "We are not making any pronouncement about guilt", she said.

In September 2016, Assange said he would agree to US prison in exchange for President Obama granting Chelsea Manning clemency. Obama commuted Manning's sentence on 17 January 2017. The next day, at his final presidential news conference, Obama stated, "I don't pay a lot of attention to Mr. Assange's tweets, so that wasn't a consideration in this instance." The same day, Assange's US-based attorney Barry Pollack asserted (without saying when or where) that Assange "had called for Chelsea Manning to receive clemency and be released immediately". Accordingly, Pollack maintained, the commutation—which specified Manning would be freed four months thence—did not meet Assange's conditions. On 17 May 2017, Manning was released from prison. Two days later, Assange emerged on the embassy's balcony and told a crowd that, despite no longer facing a Swedish sex investigation, he would remain inside the embassy to avoid extradition to the United States.

In April 2017, then CIA director Mike Pompeo, in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called WikiLeaks "a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia". Pompeo's accusation followed a series of "damaging leaks" of confidential documents, codenamed Vault 7, that included details on the CIA's hacking capabilities. Assange accused the CIA of trying to "subvert" his First Amendment rights, saying that "History shows the danger of allowing the CIA or any intelligence agency, whose very modus operandi includes misdirection and lying, to be the sole arbiter of what is true or what is prudent. Otherwise, every day might see a repeat of the many foolish CIA actions which have led to death, displacement, dictatorship and terrorism."

In August 2017, in the midst of the Qatar diplomatic crisis, Saudi-owned newspaper Al Arabiya, based in Dubai, said that Assange "has seven cables about Qatar and only five were published" after Qatar negotiated with WikiLeaks. Assange responded that "The Al Arabiya network (HQ in UAE) has been publishing increasingly absurd fabrications as the UAE v Qatar dispute continues."

A 2017 article in Foreign Policy asserted that in mid-2016 WikiLeaks turned down leaks on the Russian government during the US presidential campaign, stating "the leak organization ignored damaging information on the Kremlin to focus on Hillary Clinton and election-related hacks". This was disputed by Wikileaks which said that as far as it could recall the material was "already public". The cache had previously been reported on by the BBC and other news outlets to reveal details about Russian military and intelligence involvement in Ukraine. The Foreign Policy article also argued that Assange's position on Russia had evolved. Assange's relationship with Russia "started as adversarial" as in he had in October 2010 "teased a massive dump of documents that would expose wrongdoing in the Kremlin, teaming up with a Russian news site for the rollout". However, Assange by 2012 had his own show on the RT network, and in 2016 he publicly criticised Novaya Gazeta's coverage of the Panama Papers, suggesting that "reporters had 'cherry-picked' the documents to publish for optimal 'Putin bashing, North Korea bashing, sanctions bashing, etc.' while giving Western figures a pass." Russian investigative reporter Roman Shleynov said in an interview with the New York Times that it was a surprise for him to hear that "Mr Assange was repeating the same excuse that our officials, even back in Soviet days, used to say – that it's all some conspiracy from abroad."

It was revealed in October 2017 that during the 2016 presidential election, Cambridge Analytica funder and substantial Republican donor Rebekah Mercer had proposed creating a searchable database for Hillary Clinton emails in the public domain and then forwarded this suggestion to several people, including Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix, who personally emailed a request to Assange for Clinton's emails. Assange responded to the report by saying he denied Nix's request.

On 6 June 2017, Assange tweeted his support for NSA leaker Reality Winner, offering a $10,000 reward for information about a reporter for The Intercept who had allegedly helped the US government to identify Winner as the leaker. Assange posted on Twitter: "Reality Leight [sic] Winner is no Clapper or Petraeus with 'elite immunity'. She's a young woman against the wall for talking to the press."

Special counsel Robert Mueller's team had been investigating a meeting between former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and President Lenín Moreno in Quito in 2017. Moreno talked with Manafort about removing Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and his extradition to the United States.

In September 2017, Assange released "Spy Files Russia," revealing "how a St. Petersburg-based technology company called Peter-Service helped Russian state entities gather detailed data on Russian cellphone users, part of a national system of online surveillance called System for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM)." According to Moscow based journalist Fred Weir, "experts say it casts a timely spotlight on the vast surveillance operations mounted by Russian security services." The unexpected release of the material during the height of the Special Counsel investigation into the relationship between Wikileaks and Russia has drawn some criticism for not revealing anything groundbreaking and therefore looking more like an "approved release direct from the Russian government" as an attempt to detract from the investigation.

During the 2016 US Democratic Party presidential primaries, WikiLeaks hosted emails sent or received by candidate Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State. The emails had been released by the US State Department under a Freedom of information request.

In July 2016, WikiLeaks released emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) seemingly showing that the DNC favoured Clinton’s campaign and tried to undercut Bernie Sanders, leading to the resignation of party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The U.S. Intelligence Community, as well as a Special Counsel investigation, concluded that the Russian government obtained the DNC documents as part of broader efforts to interfere in the 2016 United States elections. In 2018, twelve Russian intelligence officers, mostly affiliated with the GRU, were indicted on criminal charges by Special Counsel Robert Mueller; the indictment charged the Russians with carrying out the computer hacking and working with WikiLeaks and other organisations to spread stolen documents. Assange has consistently denied any connection to or co-operation with Russia in relation to the leaks, and accused the Clinton campaign of stoking "a neo-McCarthy hysteria".

Later documents included leaked emails from the Turkish government published at the height of Erdoğan's post-coup purges in Turkey in December 2016, and the collection of more than two million emails from Syrian political figures, government ministries and companies. Assange said of the Syria Files that "it helps us not merely to criticise one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts. It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it." In June 2015, Wikileaks began publishing confidential and secret Saudi Arabian government documents.

In March 2015, after public criticism from other Swedish law practitioners, Ny changed her mind about interrogating Assange, who had taken refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. These interviews, which began on 14 November 2016, involved the police, Swedish prosecutors and Ecuadorian officials, and were eventually published online. By that time, the statute of limitations had expired on all three of the less serious allegations. Since the Swedish prosecutor had not interviewed Assange by 18 August 2015, the questioning pertained only to the open investigation of "lesser degree rape", whose statute of limitations is due to expire in 2020.

On 17 October 2016, WikiLeaks announced that a "state party" had severed Assange's Internet connection at the Ecuadorian embassy. The Ecuadorian government stated that it had "temporarily" severed Assange's Internet connection because of WikiLeaks' release of documents "impacting on the US election campaign". In an interview published on 29 December, Assange said, "The Internet has been returned."

On 25 November 2016, WikiLeaks released emails and internal documents that provided details on the US military operations in Yemen from 2009 to March 2015. In a statement accompanying release of "Yemen Files", Assange said about the US involvement in the Yemen war: "The war in Yemen has produced 3.15 million internally displaced persons. Although the United States government has provided most of the bombs and is deeply involved in the conduct of the war itself reportage on the war in English is conspicuously rare."

Assange wrote on WikiLeaks in February 2016: "I have had years of experience in dealing with Hillary Clinton and have read thousands of her cables. Hillary lacks judgment and will push the United States into endless, stupid wars which spread terrorism. ... she certainly should not become president of the United States." On 25 July, following the Republican National Convention (RNC), during an interview by Amy Goodman, Assange said that choosing between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is like choosing between cholera or gonorrhea. "Personally, I would prefer neither." WikiLeaks editor Sarah Harrison stated that the site was not choosing which damaging publications to release, rather releasing information available to them. In an Election Day statement, Assange criticised both Clinton and Trump, saying that "The Democratic and Republican candidates have both expressed hostility towards whistleblowers."

Documents obtained by CNN showed that, during the 2016 election in the United States, Assange met with dozens of people including employees of RT, for which Assange regularly produced media content, and two German hackers.

In a July 2016 interview, Assange implied that Seth Rich, a DNC staffer who was murdered by an unknown assailant earlier that year, was the source behind the DNC emails that WikiLeaks published and that Seth Rich was killed for doing so. WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information about Rich's murder. Assange spoke about sources bringing information to WikiLeaks in the context of Seth Rich, and stated that whistle-blowers are at risk. When an interviewer said that Rich died as a result of "just a robbery", Assange said "No. There's no finding". Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report into Russian interference in the 2016 election said that Assange "implied falsely" that Rich was the source to obscure that Russia was the actual source.

On 22 July 2016, WikiLeaks released emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) seemingly showing that the DNC favoured Clinton’s campaign and tried to undercut Bernie Sanders, leading to the resignation of party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The New York Times reported that "Assange accused Mrs. Clinton of having been among those pushing to indict him  ..." and that he had timed the release to coincide with the 2016 Democratic National Convention. In an interview with Robert Peston of ITV News, Assange suggested that he saw Hillary Clinton as a personal foe. On 4 October 2016, in a WikiLeaks anniversary meeting in Berlin with Assange teleconferencing from his refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, reporters spoke of a supposed promise to reveal further information against Clinton which would bring her candidacy down, calling this information "The October Surprise". On 7 October, Assange posted a press release on WikiLeaks exposing a second batch of emails with over 2,000 mails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

On 5 February 2016, the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Assange had been subject to arbitrary detention by the UK and Swedish Governments since 7 December 2010, including his time in prison, on conditional bail and in the Ecuadorian embassy. According to the group, Assange should be allowed to walk free and be given compensation. The UK and Swedish governments rejected the claim. UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Philip Hammond, said the claim was "ridiculous" and that the group was "made up of lay people", and called Assange a "fugitive from justice" who "can come out any time he chooses". UK and Swedish prosecutors called the group's claims irrelevant. The UK said it would arrest Assange should he leave the Ecuadorian embassy. Mark Ellis, executive director of the International Bar Association, stated that the finding is "not binding on British law". Noah Feldman, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, described the UN Working Group's conclusion as astonishing, summarising the conclusion as "Assange might be charged with a crime in the US. Ecuador thinks charging him with violating national security law would amount to 'political persecution' or worse. Therefore Sweden must give up on its claims to try him for rape, and Britain must ignore the Swedes' arrest warrant and let him leave the country."

By 2015, WikiLeaks had published more than ten million documents and associated analyses, and was described by Assange as "a giant library of the world's most persecuted documents".

On 3 July 2015, Paris newspaper Le Monde published an open letter from Assange to French President François Hollande in which Assange urged the French government to grant him refugee status. In response to this letter, the French President said: "France cannot act on his request. The situation of Mr Assange does not present an immediate danger." On 4 July 2015, Baltasar Garzón, head of Assange's legal team, said that Assange had sent the open letter to French president François Hollande; but Assange had only expressed his willingness "to be hosted in France if and only if an initiative was taken by the competent authorities".

In 2015, la Repubblica lodged Freedom of Information requests in Australia, England, the United States and Sweden, seeking information about Assange. It said it was trying to discover whether US authorities told their UK counterparts in 2010 that they intended to extradite Assange and also whether the Swedish investigation was used as a way of trying to extradite him to the US. la Repubblica said that its FOI requests had been hindered and delayed in all jurisdictions. However, it said it was able to obtain evidence of the UK's role via the English Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in creating the "legal and diplomatic quagmire" which prevented Assange from leaving the Ecuadorian embassy. la Repubblica sued the CPS in 2017 to obtain further information but its case was rejected with the judge saying "the need for the British authorities to protect the confidentiality of the extradition process outweighs the public interest of the press to know". A further appeal was rejected in September 2019.

Assange was being examined separately by "several government agencies" in addition to the grand jury, most notably the FBI. Court documents published in May 2014 suggest that Assange was under "active and ongoing" investigation at that time.

Moreover, some Snowden documents published in 2014 show that the United States government put Assange on the "2010 Manhunting Timeline", and in the same period they urged their allies to open criminal investigations into the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. In the same documents, there was a proposal by the National Security Agency (NSA) to designate WikiLeaks as a "malicious foreign actor", thus increasing the surveillance against it.

In 2013, Assange analysed the Kissinger cables held at the US National Archives and released them in searchable form. On 15 September 2014, he appeared via remote video link on Kim Dotcom's Moment of Truth town hall meeting held in Auckland.

Assange's book, When Google Met WikiLeaks, was published by OR Books on 18 September 2014. The book recounts when Google CEO Eric Schmidt requested a meeting with Assange, while he was on bail in rural Norfolk, UK. Schmidt was accompanied by Jared Cohen, director of Google Ideas; Lisa Shields, vice-president of the Council on Foreign Relations; and Scott Malcomson, the communications director for the International Crisis Group. Excerpts were published on the Newsweek website, while Assange participated in a Q&A event that was facilitated by the Reddit website and agreed to an interview with Vogue magazine.

In 2013, US officials said that it was unlikely that the Justice Department would indict Assange for publishing classified documents because "it would also have to prosecute the New York Times and other news organisations and writers who published classified material, including The Washington Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper".

After previously stating that she could not question a suspect by video link or in the Swedish embassy, prosecutor Marianne Ny wrote to the English Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in 2013. Her letter advised that she intended to lift the detention order and withdraw the European arrest warrant as the actions were not proportionate to the costs and seriousness of the crime. In response, the CPS tried to dissuade Ny from doing so.

Assange stood for the Australian Senate in the 2013 Australian federal election for the newly formed WikiLeaks Party but failed to win a seat. The party was wracked by internal dissent over its governance and electoral tactics and was deregistered due to low membership numbers in 2015.

In 2013, Assange and others in WikiLeaks helped whistleblower Edward Snowden flee from US law enforcement. After the United States cancelled Snowden's passport, stranding him in Russia, they considered transporting him to Latin America on the presidential jet of a sympathetic Latin American leader. In order to throw the US off the scent, they spoke about the jet of the Bolivian president Evo Morales, instead of the jet they were considering. As a result, Morales' jet was forced to land in Austria in July 2013. Eventually, on Assange's advice, Snowden sought asylum in Russia. In 2015, a Bolivian diplomat accused Assange of putting Morales' life at risk. Assange stated that the plan "was not completely honest, but we did consider that the final result would have justified our actions. We weren't expecting this outcome. The result was caused by the United States' intervention. We can only regret what happened."

The deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Robert Mahoney, said "With this prosecution of Julian Assange, the US government could set out broad legal arguments about journalists soliciting information or interacting with sources that could have chilling consequences for investigative reporting and the publication of information of public interest." According to Yochai Benkler, a Harvard law professor, the charge sheet contained some "very dangerous elements that pose significant risk to national security reporting. Sections of the indictment are vastly overbroad and could have a significant chilling effect – they ought to be rejected." Carrie DeCell, staff attorney with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said the charges "risk having a chill on journalism". She added, "Many of the allegations fall absolutely within the first amendment's protections of journalistic activity. That's very troubling to us."

Cypherpunks was published in November 2012. In 2012, Assange hosted a television show called the World Tomorrow on RT, a network funded by the Russian government.

In January 2015, WikiLeaks issued a statement saying that three members of the organisation had received notice from Google that Google had complied with a federal warrant by a US District Court to turn over their emails and metadata on 5 April 2012. In July 2015, Assange called himself a "wanted journalist" in Le Monde, in an open letter to the French president. In a December 2015 court submission, the US government confirmed its "sensitive, ongoing law enforcement proceeding into the Wikileaks matter".

On 19 June 2012, the Ecuadorian foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, announced that Assange had applied for political asylum, that his government was considering the request, and that Assange was at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Just before Assange was granted asylum, the UK government wrote to Patiño stating that the police were entitled to enter the embassy and arrest Assange under UK law. Patiño criticised what he said was an implied threat, stating that "such actions would be a blatant disregard of the Vienna Convention". Officers of the Metropolitan Police Service were stationed outside the building from June 2012 to October 2015 to arrest Assange for breaching the bail conditions and to compel him to attend court to face the Swedish extradition appeal hearing, should he leave the embassy. The police guard was withdrawn on grounds of cost in October 2015, but the police said they would still deploy "several overt and covert tactics to arrest him". The cost of the policing for the period was reported to have been £12.6  million.

On 16 August 2012, Patiño announced that Ecuador was granting Assange political asylum because of the threat represented by the United States secret investigation against him. In its formal statement, Ecuador reasoned that "as a consequence of Assange's determined defense to freedom of expression and freedom of press… in any given moment, a situation may come where his life, safety or personal integrity will be in danger". Latin American states expressed support for Ecuador. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa confirmed on 18 August that Assange could stay at the embassy indefinitely, and the following day Assange gave his first speech from the balcony. An office converted into a studio apartment, equipped with a bed, telephone, sun lamp, computer, shower, treadmill, and kitchenette, became his home from then until 11 April 2019.

In February 2011, he won the Sydney Peace Foundation Gold Medal for Peace with Justice, previously awarded to only three people—Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, and Buddhist spiritual leader Daisaku Ikeda. Two weeks later, he filed for the trademark "Julian Assange" in Europe, which was to be used for "Public speaking services; news reporter services; journalism; publication of texts other than publicity texts; education services; entertainment services." Assange is a long standing member of the Australian journalists' union, of which he was made an honorary member in 2010. He was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in June 2011, having earlier won the Amnesty International UK Media Award (New Media) in 2009.

In 2011, the Walkley Foundation awarded WikiLeaks the Walkley Award for "Most outstanding contribution to journalism". It commended WikiLeaks and Assange for their "brave, determined and independent stand for freedom of speech and transparency that has empowered people all over the world".

In December 2011, prosecutors in the Chelsea Manning case revealed the existence of chat logs between Manning and an alleged WikiLeaks interlocutor they claimed to be Assange; he denied this, dismissing the alleged connection as "absolute nonsense". The logs were presented as evidence during Manning's court-martial in June–July 2013. The prosecution argued that they showed WikiLeaks helping Manning reverse-engineer a password, but the evidence that the interlocutor was Assange was circumstantial, and Manning insisted she acted alone.

In her 2017 documentary on Assange, Laura Poitras included a scene of him calling the Swedish sexual assault allegations a "radical feminist conspiracy"—a comment which she says led them to part ways. In 2011, Assange criticised a Private Eye article for portraying WikiLeaks contributor Israel Shamir as anti-Semitic. According to editor Ian Hislop, Assange called the article "an obvious attempt to deprive [WikiLeaks] of Jewish support and donations" and went on to point out that several journalists involved were Jewish. On 1 March 2011, Assange released a statement in which he said,

In November 2010, Sweden issued an international arrest warrant for Assange, after questioning him months earlier about allegations of sexual assault. Assange denied the allegations, and said they were a pretext for him to be extradited from Sweden to the United States because of his role in publishing secret American documents. Assange surrendered to UK police on 7 December 2010, but was released on bail within ten days. Having been unsuccessful in his challenge to the extradition proceedings, he breached his £340,000 bail in June 2012 and took refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. He was granted asylum by Ecuador due to fears of political persecution and extradition to the United States. Assange remained in the Embassy of Ecuador in London for almost seven years.

Controversy surrounding WikiLeaks reached its greatest intensity after Assange published a quarter of a million U.S. diplomatic cables, known as the "Cablegate" files, in November 2010, initially working with established Western media organisations, and later with smaller regional media organisations, while also publishing the cables upon which their reporting was based. The files showed United States espionage against United Nations and other world leaders, revealed tensions between the U.S. and its allies, and exposed corruption in countries throughout the world as documented by U.S. diplomats, helping to spark the Arab Spring. The Cablegate and Iraq and Afghan War releases impacted diplomacy and public opinion globally, with responses varying by region.

The year 2010 culminated with the Sam Adams Award, which Assange accepted in October, and a string of distinctions in December—the Le Monde readers' choice award for person of the year, the Time readers' choice award for person of the year (he was also a runner-up in Time's overall person of the year award), a deal for his autobiography worth at least US$1.3 million, and selection by the Italian edition of Rolling Stone as "rockstar of the year".

Assange visited Sweden in August 2010. During his visit, he became the subject of sexual assault allegations from two women. He was questioned, the case was initially closed, and he was told he could leave the country. In November 2010, however, the case was reopened by a special prosecutor who said that she wanted to question Assange over two counts of sexual molestation, one count of unlawful coercion and one count of "lesser-degree rape" (Swedish: mindre grov våldtäkt). Assange denied the allegations and said he was happy to face questions in Britain.

On 20 November 2010, the Swedish police issued an international arrest warrant via Interpol for Assange. On 8 December 2010, Assange gave himself up to British police and attended his first extradition hearing where he was remanded in custody pending another hearing. On 16 December 2010, at the second hearing, he was granted bail by the High Court and released after his supporters paid £240,000 in cash and sureties. A further hearing on 24 February 2011 ruled that Assange should be extradited to Sweden. This decision was upheld by the High Court on 2 November and by the Supreme Court on 30 May the next year.

From 2009 to 2012, Assange was in a relationship with British journalist Sarah Harrison. In a 2015 open letter to then-French president François Hollande, he stated that another of his children lives in France with the child's mother. He also said his family had faced death threats and harassment because of his work, forcing them to change identities and reduce contact with him. In 2020, Assange's fiancée, South African-born lawyer Stella Moris-Smith Robertson, announced that the couple have two children together, conceived during the time he resided in Ecuador's London embassy and she was handling his legal interests. They began a relationship in 2015 and have been engaged since 2017.

In 2009, WikiLeaks released a report disclosing a "serious nuclear accident" at the Iranian Natanz nuclear facility. According to media reports, the accident may have been the direct result of a cyberattack at Iran's nuclear program, carried out with the Stuxnet computer worm, a cyberweapon built jointly by the United States and Israel.

WikiLeaks published internet censorship lists, leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources, including revelations about drone strikes in Yemen, corruption across the Arab world, extrajudicial executions by Kenyan police, 2008 Tibetan unrest in China, the "Petrogate" oil scandal in Peru.

WikiLeaks first came to international prominence in 2008, when "most of the US fourth estate" filed an amicus curiae brief—through the organisational efforts of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP)—to defend Wikileaks against a DMCA request from the Swiss bank Julius Baer, which had initially been granted.

In September 2008, during the 2008 United States presidential election campaigns, the contents of a Yahoo! account belonging to Sarah Palin (the running mate of Republican presidential nominee John McCain) were posted on WikiLeaks after being hacked into by members of Anonymous. After briefly appearing on a blog, the membership list of the far-right British National Party was posted to WikiLeaks on 18 November 2008.

Assange and others established WikiLeaks in 2006. Assange became a member of the organisation's advisory board and described himself as the editor-in-chief. From 2007 to 2010, Assange travelled continuously on WikiLeaks business, visiting Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.

The material WikiLeaks published between 2006 and 2009 attracted various degrees of international attention, but after it began publishing documents supplied by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley), WikiLeaks became a household name. The Manning material included the Collateral Murder video (April 2010) which showed United States soldiers fatally shooting 18 people from a helicopter in Iraq, including journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. This material also included the Afghanistan War logs (July 2010), the Iraq War logs (October 2010), and the Guantánamo files (April 2011).

Assange describes himself as an advocate of information transparency and market libertarianism. He has written a few short pieces, including "State and terrorist conspiracies" (2006), "Conspiracy as governance" (2006), "The hidden curse of Thomas Paine" (2008), "What's new about WikiLeaks?" (2011), and the foreword to Cypherpunks (2012). Cypherpunks is primarily a transcript of the World Tomorrow episode eight two-part interview between Assange, Jacob Appelbaum, Andy Müller-Maguhn, and Jérémie Zimmermann. In the foreword, Assange said, "the Internet, our greatest tool for emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen". He also contributed research to Suelette Dreyfus's Underground (1997), and received a co-writer credit for the Calle 13 song "Multi_Viral" (2013).

Assange stated that he registered the domain leaks.org in 1999, but "didn't do anything with it". He did publicise a patent granted to the National Security Agency in August 1999, for voice-data harvesting technology: "This patent should worry people. Everyone's overseas phone calls are or may soon be tapped, transcribed and archived in the bowels of an unaccountable foreign spy agency."

In 1993, Assange gave technical advice to the Victoria Police Child Exploitation Unit that assisted in prosecutions. In the same year, he was involved in starting one of the first public Internet service providers in Australia, Suburbia Public Access Network. He began programming in 1994, authoring or co-authoring the TCP port scanner Strobe (1995), patches to the open-source database PostgreSQL (1996), the Usenet caching software NNTPCache (1996), the Rubberhose deniable encryption system (1997) (which reflected his growing interest in cryptography), and Surfraw, a command-line interface for web-based search engines (2000). During this period, he also moderated the AUCRYPTO forum, ran Best of Security, a website "giving advice on computer security" that had 5,000 subscribers in 1996, and contributed research to Suelette Dreyfus's Underground (1997), a book about Australian hackers, including the International Subversives. In 1998, he co-founded the company Earthmen Technology.

In September 1991, Assange was discovered hacking into the Melbourne master terminal of Nortel, a Canadian multinational telecommunications corporation. The Australian Federal Police tapped Assange's phone line (he was using a modem), raided his home at the end of October and eventually charged him in 1994 with 31 counts of hacking and related crimes. In December 1996, he pleaded guilty to 24 charges (the others were dropped) and was ordered to pay reparations of A$2,100 and released on a good behaviour bond. The perceived absence of malicious or mercenary intent and his disrupted childhood were cited to justify his lenient penalty.

Assange has four children. While in his teens, Assange married a woman named Teresa, and in 1989 they had a son, Daniel, who is now a software designer. The couple separated and initially disputed custody of their child. During the time of the custody dispute, Julian's brown hair turned white. Julian was Daniel's primary caregiver for much of his childhood.

In 1987, aged 16, Assange began hacking under the name Mendax (Latin for "liar"). He and two others—known as "Trax" and "Prime Suspect"—formed a hacking group they called "the International Subversives". He is thought to have been involved in the WANK (Worms Against Nuclear Killers) hack at NASA in 1989, but he does not acknowledge this.

Christine and Brett Assange divorced about 1979. Christine then became involved with Leif Meynell, also known as Leif Hamilton, a member of Australian cult The Family, and they had a son before breaking up in 1982. Julian had a nomadic childhood, living in over 30 Australian towns and cities by the time he reached his mid-teens, when he settled with his mother and half-brother in Melbourne.

Assange attended many schools, including Goolmangar Primary School in New South Wales (1979–1983) and Townsville State High School in Queensland as well as being schooled at home. He studied programming, mathematics and physics at Central Queensland University (1994) and the University of Melbourne (2003–2006), but did not complete a degree.

On the afternoon of the day of his arrest, Assange was charged with breaching the Bail Act 1976 and was found guilty after a short hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court. Judge Michael Snow said Assange was "a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest" and he had "not come close to establishing reasonable excuse".

Most cases brought under the Espionage Act have been against government employees who accessed sensitive information and leaked it to journalists and others. Prosecuting people for acts related to receiving and publishing information has not previously been tested in court. In 1975, the Justice Department decided after consideration not to charge journalist Seymour Hersh for reporting on US surveillance of the Soviet Union. Two lobbyists for a pro-Israel group were charged in 2005 with receiving and sharing classified information about American policy toward Iran. The charges however did not relate to the publication of the documents and the case was dropped by the Justice Department in 2009 prior to judgement.

Julian Paul Assange (/ə ˈ s ɑː n ʒ / ; né Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. These leaks included the Baghdad airstrike Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), and Cablegate (November 2010). After the 2010 leaks, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks.

Assange was born Julian Paul Hawkins on 3 July 1971 in Townsville, Queensland, to Christine Ann Hawkins (b. 1951), a visual artist, and John Shipton, an anti-war activist and builder. The couple separated before their son was born.

After WikiLeaks released the Manning material, United States authorities began investigating WikiLeaks and Assange personally to prosecute them under the Espionage Act of 1917. In November 2010, US Attorney-General Eric Holder said there was "an active, ongoing criminal investigation" into WikiLeaks. It emerged from legal documents leaked over the ensuing months that Assange and others were being investigated by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia.