Recent calls for Julian Assange’s incarceration haven’t come without consequences for Sen. Ben Sasse: Hackers and the WikiLeaks publisher alike have set their sights on Mr. Sasse after he advocated last week for Mr. Assange’s arrest.
Mr. Sasse was among the more critical to emerge from Capitol Hill following WikiLeaks’ publication last Tuesday of documents detailing the CIA’s previously unreported hacking abilities, and the Nebraska Republican said in a statement afterwards that Mr. Assange “should spend the rest of his life wearing an orange jumpsuit.”
“I will not take fashion advise from the likes of Senator Sasse,” Mr. Assange fired back from his personal Twitter profile Monday, his first tweet in weeks from the account.
“You can’t hide who you are from an animal,” he wrote in a second tweet accompanied by photographs of each man posing with a cat. “On the left political prisoner @JulianAssange. On the right fashion advisor Senator @BenSasse,” the WikiLeaks publisher wrote.
Mr. Assange’s quips were hardly the only repercussions for the lawmaker’s comments, however. According to Mr. Sasse, hackers mounted multiple attempts to breach his internet accounts over the weekend in the wake of his remarks.
“Heads-up,” Mr. Sasse tweeted Saturday evening. “I’ve been critical of Assange & WikLeaks [sic] this week. So…big surprise: Am having multiple ’password reset’ attempts right now.”
“So…if you see crazy-tweets from me tonight, don’t assume #HeavyBooze,” Mr. Sasse continued.
The apparent hacking attempts affected “basically every device” Mr. Sasse used, including personal and government devices, according to his tweet.
It was not immediately clear if hackers succeeded in breaching any of the senator’s accounts. Mr. Sasse’s office declined to comment further Tuesday beyond his tweets.
“We don’t know what he’s talking about,” WikiLeaks told The Washington Times on Tuesday when asked to comment on Mr. Sasse’s hacking claims.
In addition to calling for Mr. Assange’s arrest last week, Mr. Sasse published an open letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday evening asking for him to clarify the Justice Department’s position on the WikiLeaks chief.
“Does the Department of Justice believe Julian Assange has broken the law, and is the Department aggressively pursuing his detention and prosecution?” he wrote.
The CIA has declined to comment on the latest WikiLeaks disclosures or the documents’ authenticity. Last week, however, one of its former directors, Gen. Michael Hayden, said the leak appeared on the surface to be “incredible damaging.”
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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