WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange on Tuesday said his website will publish “significant material” involving the U.S. presidential race before the Nov. 8 general election.
Speaking during a news conference commemorating the website’s 10th anniversary, Mr. Assange said WikiLeaks is working against the clock to assure election-related documents are released before Americans hit the polls next month and pick either Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton or her GOP rival Donald Trump as the next U.S. president.
“Our upcoming series includes significant material on war, arms, oil, Google, the U.S. elections and myself,” Mr. Assange said.
“We hope to be publishing every week for the next 10 weeks. We have on schedule, and it’s a very hard schedule, all the U.S. election-related documents to come out before Nov. 8,” he continued.
There are “enormous expectations in the United States” with respect to the election-related documents, Mr. Assange acknowledged, and “some of that expectation will be partly answered” with “a lot of fascinating angles” when they’re released in the coming weeks.
“Do they show interesting features of U.S. power factions? Yes they do,” he added.
Mr. Assange, 45, delivered the remarks to attendees at an anniversary event in Berlin by way of a video-feed broadcast from his residence inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.
Swedish prosecutors have wanted to interview Mr. Assange since 2010 over sexual assault accusations, but the WikiLeaks publisher has refused to meet with prosecutors in Oslo because he fears he’ll be subsequently extradited to the U.S. and tried for espionage over his website’s past publications. Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa granted asylum to Mr. Assange in 2012, but an active arrest warrant has prevented him from leaving its London embassy ever since.
The WikiLeaks’ domain name was registered on Oct. 4, 2006, and it began publishing leaked documents two months later. Material released by WikiLeaks in the decade since include millions of U.S. diplomatic reports, internal Syrian government correspondence and, most recently, thousands of emails pilfered from the Democratic National Committee and published on the eve of the party’s nominating convention this summer.
The DNC emails hosted by WikiLeaks directly led to the ousting in July of its former chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, spurring concerns that any additional disclosures prior to Nov. 8 could pose problems for either Democrats or Republicans.
Interest in the election-related material promised by WikiLeaks surged in recent days after Trump supporter and longtime Republican strategist Roger Stone predicted the website will release material that will negatively impact Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.
“Wednesday@Hillary Clinton is done. #WikiLeaks,” Mr. Stone tweeted Sunday.
“I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon #LockHerUp,” he said in a follow-up Twitter post.
The idea that “we intend to harm Hillary Clinton, or I intend to harm Hillary Clinton, or I don’t like Hillary Clinton — all those are false,” Mr. Assange said at Tuesday’s news conference.
“I certainly feel sorry for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump,’’ he added. “These are two people that are tormented by their ambitions in different ways.’’
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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