William Hague to the Swedish authorities who had requested his extradition; thus Swedish prosecutors, unwilling to break diplomatic protocol, have deferred from interrogating Assange at the Embassy of Ecuador, London. Hague confirmed the British Government's position – that it is lawfully obliged to extradite Julian Assange. "We're disappointed by the statement by Ecuador's Foreign Minister today that Ecuador has offered political asylum to Julian Assange. Under our Laws, with Mr. Assange having exhausted all options of appeal, the British authorities are under a binding obligation to extradite him to Sweden. We must carry out that obligation and of course we fully intend
Julian Assange claimed that Russian intelligence had hacked the e-mails and leaked them to WikiLeaks. This statement was repeated in the Russian media outlet RT. On 4 October 2016, in a WikiLeaks anniversary meeting in Berlin with Assange teleconferencing from his refuge in the Ecuador embassy in London, reporters spoke of a supposed promise to reveal further information against Hillary Clinton which would bring her candidacy down, calling this information "The October Surprise". On 7 October, Assange posted a press release on WikiLeaks exposing over 2,000 emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The emails, ranging from 2007–2016, revealed excerpts of Clinton's