Julian Assange submission, the United States confirmed its "sensitive, ongoing law enforcement proceeding into the Wikileaks matter." On 13 April 2017, CIA Director Mike Pompeo called WikiLeaks "a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia." On 20 April 2017, US officials told CNN that they were preparing to file formal charges against Assange. United States prosecutors accidentally revealed the existence of criminal charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in an unrelated ongoing sex crime case in the Eastern District of Virginia. Assange visited Sweden in August 2010. During his visit, he became the subject of sexual assault allegations
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