Julian Assange is concerned not about any proceedings in Sweden as such, but believe that his deportation to Sweden could lead to politically motivated deportation to the United States, where he could face severe penalties, up to the death sentence, for his activities related to WikiLeaks. On 16 August 2012, Foreign Minister Patiño announced that Ecuador was granting Assange political asylum because of the threat represented by the United States secret investigation against him and several calls for assassination from many American politicians. In its formal statement, Ecuador reasoned that "as a consequence of [Assange's] determined defense to freedom of expression and
Julian Assange WikiLeaks emailed the GRU via an intermediary seeking the DNC material and that the GRU sent the documents to Wikileaks in mid-July 2016 as an encrypted attachment. Assange is an advocate of information transparency and market libertarianism. He has written a few short pieces, including "State and terrorist conspiracies" (2006), "Conspiracy as governance" (2006), "The hidden curse of Thomas Paine" (2008), "What's new about WikiLeaks?" (2011), and the foreword to "Cypherpunks" (2012). He also contributed research to Suelette Dreyfus's "Underground" (1997), and received a co-writer credit for the Calle 13 song "Multi_Viral" (2013). "Cypherpunks" is primarily a transcript of the