News / Politics

We have more material on Clinton: Assange

Sunday, 31 July 2016 9:52 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 31 July 2016 10:13 AM ]

People attend a video conference of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the International Center for Advanced Communication Studies for Latin America (CIESPAL) auditorium in Quito on June 23, 2016. (AFP)

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said that his group has more information about US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign which could be released soon.

"We have more material related to the Hillary Clinton campaign," Assange told CNN, the broadcaster reported on Saturday. "That is correct to say that."

Assange was speaking from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been residing for several years.

WikiLeaks leaked thousands of emails last week which showed that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz had unduly backed Clinton during the party’s presidential primary.

The email exchanges between seven top DNC members point to an insider effort to undermine the presidential campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, including several stinging denunciations of him and his organization.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Justice Department are investigating a hacking of Clinton's presidential campaign as well as examining intrusions by hackers into other Democratic Party organizations, two law enforcement officials told CNN.

Assange said the release of the documents was timed to coincide with the start of the DNC.

"That's when we knew there would be maximum interest by readers, but also, we have a responsibility to," Assange said. "If we published after, you can just imagine how outraged the Democratic voting population would have been. It had to had to have been before (the convention)."

US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at the American Federation of State on July 19, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (AFP photo)

CNN's Anderson Cooper asked Assange if the hacking was connected to his personal hostility toward the former secretary of state.

Assange said he was not intentionally trying to target Clinton. “I never said I wanted to do harm to Hillary Clinton, anything like that.”

Assange has also been under investigation in the US since his website WikiLeaks released secret US military and diplomatic documents in 2010.

He has been in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012 and has secured political asylum from the South American country after he lost a legal battle against extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sexual assault.

It is believed that Assange’s extradition is a cover for sending him to the US, where he is wanted over the release of thousands of classified US documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on his whistleblower website.

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